Green Energy
Composer: Olivier Messiaen
Messiaen was 31 years old when France entered the war against Germany. He was captured by the German army during World War II in June 1940 and was imprisoned in a prisoner-of-war camp. While in transit to the prisoner of war camp, Messiaen showed the clarinetist Henri Akoka, also a prisoner, the sketches for what would become Abîme des oiseaux. Two other professional musicians were also among his fellow prisoners (violinist Jean le Boulaire and cellist Étienne Pasquier), and after he managed to obtain some paper and a small pencil from a sympathetic guard, Messiaen wrote a short trio for them; this piece developed into the Quatuor for the same trio with himself at the piano. The combination of instruments is unusual, but not without precedent: Walter Rabl had composed for it in 1896, as had Paul Hindemith in 1938.
The quartet was premiered in Stalag VIII-A in Görlitz, Germany (currently Zgorzelec, Poland) outdoors in the rain on January 15, 1941, with old, broken instruments before an audience of about four hundred fellow prisoners of war and prison guards. Messiaen later recalled: "Never was I listened to with such rapt attention and comprehension.
V. "Praise to the eternity of Jesus", for cello and piano.
Jesus is considered here as the Word. A broad phrase, "infinitely slow", on the cello, magnifies with love and reverence the eternity of the Word, powerful and gentle, "whose time never runs out". The melody stretches majestically into a kind of gentle, regal distance.
"In the beginning was the Word, and Word was with God, and the Word was God." (John 1:1 (King James Version))
The music is arranged from an earlier, unpublished piece, "Oraison" from "Fêtes des belles eaux" for 6 Ondes Martenots, performed at the Paris World Fair in 1937. The tempo marking is infiniment lent (literally "infinitely slow").
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Green Energy
Quartet For The End Of Time
Composer: Olivier Messiaen
Messiaen was 31 years old when France entered the war against Germany. He was captured by the German army during World War II in June 1940 and was imprisoned in a prisoner-of-war camp. While in transit to the prisoner of war camp, Messiaen showed the clarinetist Henri Akoka, also a prisoner, the sketches for what would become Abîme des oiseaux. Two other professional musicians were also among his fellow prisoners (violinist Jean le Boulaire and cellist Étienne Pasquier), and after he managed to obtain some paper and a small pencil from a sympathetic guard, Messiaen wrote a short trio for them; this piece developed into the Quatuor for the same trio with himself at the piano. The combination of instruments is unusual, but not without precedent: Walter Rabl had composed for it in 1896, as had Paul Hindemith in 1938.
The quartet was premiered in Stalag VIII-A in Görlitz, Germany (currently Zgorzelec, Poland) outdoors in the rain on January 15, 1941, with old, broken instruments before an audience of about four hundred fellow prisoners of war and prison guards. Messiaen later recalled: "Never was I listened to with such rapt attention and comprehension.
V. "Praise to the eternity of Jesus", for cello and piano.
Jesus is considered here as the Word. A broad phrase, "infinitely slow", on the cello, magnifies with love and reverence the eternity of the Word, powerful and gentle, "whose time never runs out". The melody stretches majestically into a kind of gentle, regal distance.
"In the beginning was the Word, and Word was with God, and the Word was God." (John 1:1 (King James Version))
The music is arranged from an earlier, unpublished piece, "Oraison" from "Fêtes des belles eaux" for 6 Ondes Martenots, performed at the Paris World Fair in 1937. The tempo marking is infiniment lent (literally "infinitely slow").
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Tibor “Teddy” Rubin died this month of natural causes in Garden Grove, Calif. His was an extraordinary life: A Hungarian-born Holocaust survivor, he moved to America, joined the Army, fought heroically in the Korean War and performed even greater...
- On The Transmigration Of Souls
John Adams is a composer of modern Classical music. This is his piece on 9/11. The word you hear repeated at the beginning is "Missing". After that, there is a litany of the names of the missing. ...
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from ABC: Workers find message hidden in Auschwitz wall Posted Tue Apr 28, 2009 5:11am AEST Workers demolishing the wall of a building that once belonged to the former Nazi German Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp have found a message in a bottle written...
-
Builders find Auschwitz message Builders working near the site of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp have found a message in a bottle written by prisoners, museum officials say.BBC The message, written...
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The Germans are being courted by a new suitor, and his words are sweet music to their ears: BERLIN (Reuters) - Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told Germans they should no longer allow themselves to be held prisoner by a sense of guilt over the...