0:00

Hi, friends, and

0:03

welcome to the Robcast. This

0:06

episode is about a piece of music, and

0:10

this piece of music is called Quartet

0:14

for the End of Time.

0:16

And I

0:18

want to tell you about what happened recently

0:22

when I experienced Quartet

0:24

for the End of Time. About a month

0:27

or so ago, my friend Karenza Peacock,

0:29

who plays the violin, she's actually been on the

0:31

Robcast, I don't know, a couple years ago.

0:34

And if you've heard her play the violin, it is something.

0:37

She told

0:39

me she was going to be in Ojai at the

0:41

Art Center, and that she was

0:43

going to be

0:45

performing with three other musicians this piece.

0:49

And then she sent me this fascinating

0:52

story about the piece. So

0:54

Quartet for the End of Time was written by a French

0:57

composer named Olivier Messiaen.

1:00

He was born in 1908. He was drafted

1:02

into the French army in World War II

1:04

and captured by the Germans. On

1:07

May 6, 1940, Messiaen

1:10

was taken to Gorlice,

1:13

which is now Poland, which was a

1:15

Nazi

1:16

prisoner of war camp. It was designed to hold 15,000

1:19

prisoners of war. But

1:24

at the time Messiaen got there, there

1:26

were 50,000 prisoners of war there.

1:29

Yeah,

1:33

so this is where he

1:35

wrote this piece

1:38

called Quartet for the End of Time. And

1:41

if you do just a little bit of internetting,

1:43

that's a verb, about Messiaen

1:47

and get a little background, he

1:49

wrote this about arriving at Gorlice.

1:51

He said, When I arrived at the camp,

1:54

I was stripped of all my clothes

1:56

like all the prisoners, but naked

1:59

as I was.

1:59

I clung fiercely

2:02

to a little bag of miniature scores,

2:05

like sheets of music, that served

2:07

as consolation

2:09

when I suffered.

2:11

The Germans considered me to be completely harmless,

2:14

and since they still loved music, not

2:16

only did they allow me to keep my scores, but

2:18

an officer, Karl Albert Bruhl,

2:21

also gave me pencils, erasers,

2:24

and some music paper. So

2:27

while he's imprisoned in

2:30

this prisoner of war camp during World War

2:32

II, Messian sets out

2:34

to write quartet for

2:37

the end of time, and then in January

2:39

of 1941, with three other musicians

2:43

in freezing snow, they

2:47

premiere quartet for the end

2:49

of time, using beaten-up instruments

2:52

that they had sort of scavenged. The

2:54

cello player played on a three-string cello,

2:57

and it was just other guards and

3:00

prisoners who heard them perform

3:02

this piece. So a week ago

3:04

Sunday, the

3:07

piece is 50, five

3:09

zero, 50 minutes long. On

3:11

Sunday, a week ago Sunday, I got to experience

3:14

this piece, which is like a legendary classic

3:18

piece that has gone on to influence

3:21

so many people. And

3:25

the first thing that happened is

3:28

the musicians each spoke of

3:31

how they came to the piece, which was

3:34

utterly fascinating. One

3:36

of them talked about how Messian loved birds

3:38

and bird sounds, and how he would listen

3:41

to bird sounds and then transcribe them, like

3:43

take the songs, he would take the songs that

3:45

birds sing and write

3:48

out the actual notes they're singing, and

3:51

that when humans try and play bird

3:53

songs, it's like incredibly difficult. Like

3:55

the best musicians on earth

3:58

really have to stretch themselves. to play

4:01

those noises that you and I hear in the morning when

4:03

we walk out our front door. How fascinating is that?

4:06

And actually in quartet for the end

4:08

of time, there are these moments

4:12

when you can hear bird sounds in

4:15

what they're playing. So we

4:17

sat there, there were probably 70 or 80

4:22

of us, and before

4:24

we heard the piece, we heard

4:27

how the clarinet player, the piano player,

4:29

cello player, and Carrenza, how they came

4:31

to this piece. And

4:34

several of them reflected on how they

4:37

have revisited and played the piece over

4:39

the years and how each time they

4:41

play it, if they haven't played it for a number

4:44

of years, the piece reflects back

4:46

to them because it's apparently very, very difficult to play.

4:48

It reflects back to them their own evolution.

4:51

One of them said their own evolution as

4:54

a musician, but also as

4:56

a human. Yeah. So

4:59

before we heard the piece, we heard

5:01

from the people who were going

5:04

to play the piece, what

5:07

their relationship was

5:10

with what they were about to

5:12

give us. Think

5:14

about music and how the music

5:17

that we listen to, oftentimes

5:19

you have headphones in or it's a car stereo,

5:22

or it's like a speaker in the house. But

5:24

think about prior to the recording of music,

5:28

which was most of the history of music.

5:31

Prior to the music being recorded, you

5:34

only ever experienced music live.

5:38

And you only ever experienced

5:40

music live. And

5:42

the people playing the music and singing the music,

5:44

that unique combination in space and

5:46

time in that room, that building with those

5:48

people at that event was like

5:51

a one-off. You might hear that same

5:53

song later, but it would be in a

5:55

different time or a different place or a slightly

5:58

different group of people. So

6:00

when you and I listen to recorded music, and

6:03

if you're like me, you've got songs you've listened to hundreds

6:05

of times, the same song,

6:07

that's actually brand new in the

6:11

history of music. For most

6:13

of the history of music, human beings only

6:16

ever experienced music being

6:20

played live and sung live

6:22

as a 100% unique experience. Us

6:27

hearing and singing and playing this

6:29

right now.

6:32

Yeah,

6:34

so fascinating when you sit

6:37

and you listen to people

6:40

talk about how they found their way into this piece

6:42

of music and then they played

6:44

it.

6:45

And I'm telling you,

6:47

it's 50 minutes long and

6:52

it starts out and you

6:54

know that you're going to be there for a while.

6:57

By the way, they also mentioned that Messian

6:59

had syncythesia

7:03

where he sounds

7:06

and music to him was related to color.

7:09

He literally said some

7:11

music has color and some music doesn't. And

7:13

you can actually – it's hard to explain.

7:17

But it was the only month that said talking about music is

7:19

like dancing about architecture. Even

7:22

telling you the story of what happened to me a couple

7:26

Sundays ago.

7:27

It's

7:29

like the words are just grasping for

7:32

what is ungraspable. And

7:35

what was so interesting sitting there is the first

7:37

notes. They –

7:42

it's like you have to commit to it. You're

7:45

not feeling on Spotify when you play a

7:47

song and

7:50

you give it – what do you give it? Five seconds? Ten

7:52

seconds? And if it doesn't grab you, you're on to the next

7:54

one. But this piece, it's

7:57

like you have to commit on the front end.

8:01

And so the

8:03

first notes, and it starts slow,

8:06

not a lot of notes. Compared

8:09

to what happens later, not a lot of this happening at the beginning.

8:14

So if you're in, if you're

8:16

committed, and you know you're going to go somewhere,

8:19

and for me, I knew this is like a classic,

8:22

incredibly influential piece

8:25

of music. So I'm going

8:27

to go along for the ride. But

8:30

if you were just checking it out, like you check out other

8:32

music, you'd listen for the first couple seconds and be like, God,

8:34

there's nothing going on here. But if you

8:37

stay, something

8:40

begins to happen. Yeah,

8:44

a number of the musicians at the beginning, several mentioned

8:46

that time signatures are different, and they played us

8:48

samples of how Messian

8:51

wanted it. There are certain notes he wanted held

8:54

like almost as long as you can, like the time signature

8:57

was really, really slow.

9:03

It's hard to explain because some of the sections are

9:06

really, really fast, and others, they hold

9:08

notes for a long time.

9:10

But what happens over the course

9:13

of the piece of music is

9:15

you get pulled

9:17

into it, and you have

9:19

to like, not

9:22

adjust, it's like you acclimate to

9:24

the time of the piece

9:27

of music, and it's almost like you leave

9:31

music, you leave normal

9:33

time behind. It

9:35

struck me partway through a quartet for the end of time.

9:38

It's like, oh yeah, like he was experiencing an apocalyptic

9:41

World War II, right? Tens of millions

9:43

of people are dying. Like this is quartet

9:46

for the end of time. It's like the end of the world. But

9:48

when you experience the piece of music, it's like the end

9:50

of time, meaning linear.

9:53

You're in some other place

9:58

that the piece takes you where you lose. track

10:00

of time and it's so beautiful.

10:04

It's like so beautiful.

10:08

And these notes, at the very

10:12

very end it ends with the violin

10:16

playing these high, like

10:19

I was asking Karenza afterwards and she

10:22

was saying essentially almost like the highest notes

10:24

that a violin can play. And

10:27

after, because there are moments when it's very loud,

10:30

there's also something fascinating happen because you and

10:33

I we know energy and we

10:35

know volume and generally when

10:37

you turn music up like on the car stereo

10:40

it increases the energy. But energy

10:42

and volume are actually two different things.

10:45

That's why like

10:48

you think about like that Nirvana, that classic

10:50

Nirvana unplugged set isn't

10:53

the highest volume but

10:55

the energy is just

10:59

like just bowls you over. So what

11:01

happens in the piece is there are moments

11:04

when they're playing quietly

11:07

but the energy is just

11:09

blasting you. And then when they do, a

11:12

couple times when all four were playing

11:14

the same notes and it's happening

11:17

and they're playing very fast. I was

11:19

gonna say aggressive but if it's clarinet is aggressive

11:21

the word. What

11:25

happens is

11:27

your,

11:30

it's like a door and you're entering

11:33

into the energy of the piece

11:35

which is coming to you over history

11:38

and it's coming to you from this freezing

11:41

cold Nazi prisoner

11:44

of war camp in World

11:46

War II and you're all of

11:48

the people who have heard this piece and what

11:50

it's done to them and how it's moody. There's

11:53

an energy in the collective human

11:57

experience of this piece which

11:59

is the experience of cataclysmic

12:01

events, which is the experience of loss and

12:03

suffering, which is the experience of somebody

12:07

creating something beautiful in

12:09

the midst of turbulent times

12:12

that are filled with despair and agony, something

12:14

transcendent. And

12:17

at the very, very end, it ends with the

12:20

violin playing these single

12:24

high notes that

12:27

almost don't sound like an instrument, and

12:29

it just gets quieter and

12:32

quieter.

12:34

I was telling Karenza afterwards, they felt like

12:36

those last notes that

12:39

just, they don't drag,

12:42

it's like they float

12:45

outside of time, and it's like you're

12:47

being set down gently after a

12:49

50-minute experience that you don't even,

12:52

you can't even quite explain where you've just been.

12:55

I told her that it was like fretless portals,

12:58

like all these little passageways

13:01

or doors into some other place

13:04

because you've been on this ride.

13:07

And at the Art Center there's this main

13:09

gallery room and it has these double doors that open

13:12

onto the courtyard where the trees are,

13:14

and I'm sitting there and, you

13:19

know, it's only like 30 feet away that I sit under

13:21

the trees with you people. In January,

13:23

February, March, April, I'll be there. Two

13:26

weeks I'll be there, and I've

13:28

had these experiences with sitting

13:31

with you all in the two days just right outside

13:33

the door. So this Art

13:35

Center and my

13:38

family and our new life in Ojai, the

13:40

history of the piece, and I'm experiencing

13:43

that,

13:45

and then it's talking to my history

13:47

with this valley where we now live in

13:49

this new life and these things that have happened

13:51

to me over the past couple of years

13:54

that have healed me

13:56

and opened me and given my

13:58

life a whole new sense of... I

14:01

don't know what the word is, not direction,

14:03

but vitality and freedom and

14:05

liberation and lightness and joy

14:08

and man,

14:12

man, man. Whoo!

14:17

And there's a little breeze outside

14:19

the doors and it's a Sunday afternoon

14:21

and this piece is coming to

14:23

an end and there are these single sustaining

14:27

highs, so high you can almost like

14:29

your heart can hear them but your mind is like I don't

14:31

even know what's going on here. I

14:36

think I was the youngest person

14:40

there by a couple decades

14:42

maybe.

14:43

It struck me, the

14:45

vitality of this piece and

14:48

how I would say 90% of

14:50

the people there were 70 or 80

14:53

and it hit me part

14:55

way through. I

14:58

wonder if something like this,

15:01

it's almost like you

15:03

can only really begin to appreciate

15:06

it when you're older

15:11

because you've been through some stuff. You've

15:14

lived long enough to

15:17

appreciate, it's

15:22

like you've lived long enough to know when to sit

15:24

perfectly still. No one had

15:27

their phone out needless to say,

15:29

no one was anywhere

15:32

other than here. I would

15:34

look around a couple times during

15:37

the performance

15:40

and everybody in the room was absolutely

15:43

still. It

15:45

was like we had all found

15:48

ourselves in some sort of temple to

15:51

sound which is really vibration which

15:53

is…

15:58

In many ways the piece…

16:00

It like invited but it also

16:03

kindly demanded that

16:05

you only be there. Yeah I

16:10

wonder if there are things like

16:12

that that it's

16:15

like there are dimensions to it that you can

16:17

only begin to feel and

16:19

appreciate later.

16:22

Yeah yeah.

16:25

It's

16:26

interesting this piece I

16:29

find it so compelling. Messianes

16:33

was he was trying to make sense

16:37

of what was happening in the world around

16:39

him. That's

16:41

how quartet for the end of time

16:44

came to be. He

16:47

found himself I mean if you think about World War

16:49

II and you think about Germany

16:52

and you think about

16:55

how in many ways we're

16:57

still processing

16:59

that

17:01

event let alone all the

17:03

other events we are processing in history let

17:05

alone current events that we are

17:08

fight trying to find our way through. And

17:12

Messianes essentially created

17:16

this piece as

17:18

a way of trying to make sense

17:21

of the world around him in a way that he

17:23

knew how. Almost like this was the language

17:25

he spoke.

17:30

Yeah

17:32

yeah art in

17:35

many ways you could speak of art is all

17:38

of life

17:40

but in this case

17:42

a French composer.

17:45

Art in many ways is how we transcend

17:47

our pain. It's the

17:50

creative activity. It's

17:53

what we throw ourselves into. It's that which

17:55

we arrange and order

17:57

and structure and bring into being. In

18:01

many ways you could see it as what we do with our pain.

18:04

Yeah. Because

18:05

anger, frustration,

18:08

disorientation, disillusionment,

18:11

rage, those are senses,

18:14

feelings, perceptions, emotions, they're also

18:16

energies.

18:18

Yeah.

18:20

And there is something about that man at

18:22

that time whose

18:24

response was not disempowerment,

18:29

was not passivity, was

18:32

not blaming the actions of others

18:35

for his own inaction, however much I,

18:37

he obviously was a very human person going

18:40

through, I can't even imagine, but

18:43

somewhere in there was also this

18:46

instinct

18:49

to

18:50

make something, to

18:53

express himself, to

18:56

do something in the

18:59

midst of that horrific suffering and pain

19:01

and oppression and imprisonment. And

19:06

so he does.

19:07

He makes what's available to him.

19:09

He gets these little

19:12

pieces of music paper and he gets

19:15

some writing utensils and he, they

19:17

give him a little space where he can work and he

19:20

makes something that he scrounges together broken,

19:24

battered instruments and organizes

19:26

a world premiere of

19:29

this piece that man, 2023,

19:32

this piece. Oh,

19:36

yeah. Yeah. And

19:40

I sat there

19:42

thinking of all the people everywhere,

19:47

like me trying to make sense of the world,

19:51

trying to make your way in

19:54

all this sadness and disappointment

19:57

and despair and all

19:59

all of what is part of this

20:02

experience we call being human. And

20:06

the power of

20:08

what happens when we respond to it

20:10

with, well,

20:15

what do you wanna make?

20:16

What do you wanna try? What

20:20

do you wanna give yourself to with

20:22

whatever bits and pieces

20:24

and fragments of energy or resolve

20:27

or? Yeah,

20:30

impetus you might have.

20:33

Yeah. I'm telling

20:35

you, quartet for

20:37

the end of time,

20:39

there was something about the presence of

20:41

the piece and how you could feel

20:44

through these musicians who

20:47

have given themselves to music and

20:50

this just ferocious skill

20:52

and passion. I mean,

20:54

this guy playing the clarinet, I

20:56

mean, that guy, have you ever, I mean, what is your

20:59

experience with the clarinet? I didn't know the clarinet

21:01

could do that. That guy, I've

21:03

never said this phrase, but man, that guy in the

21:05

clarinet was on fire. Ha

21:07

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

21:09

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha and even there

21:12

are moments in the piece where

21:14

there are these pauses and the pauses

21:16

are as, they're

21:19

as loaded as the

21:22

sounds.

21:23

I mean, wow, wow,

21:26

wow. There's

21:28

no microphones, there's no amps.

21:31

It was just four people in

21:33

a somewhat large art gallery, but

21:37

wow, it was like history

21:40

itself. It's like this one

21:45

man decades ago who

21:48

decides in some small way in

21:51

the way he knows how to

21:53

transcend the pain of the

21:55

moment.

21:56

And

21:57

it's like you can't...

22:00

It's power and it's depth

22:03

and it's beauty and it's

22:05

resolve. Wow.

22:09

Yeah.

22:11

So thank you, Carrenza. Shout out to my friend, Carrenza.

22:14

Thank you. Thank you for the invite. I'm

22:16

still afterwards. I said

22:20

thank you and I wanted to talk, but

22:23

I realized I was going to burst

22:25

out crying. And

22:30

they also had free cookies and I was like I don't want someone to,

22:33

you know, I got to get to the cookies. So

22:37

Carrenza, this is, I was like Carrenza,

22:40

at some point I'm going to tell you what the experiences

22:42

are like just to thank you again

22:45

for

22:46

thinking of me. So maybe this episode

22:48

is that. Yeah,

22:53

maybe that's maybe this episode is a thank

22:55

you, but it's also

22:58

to me like this invitation

23:03

to just keep in

23:07

the midst of the sadness and disappointment

23:10

and pain all around us.

23:14

Try and find a pencil and

23:16

some paper or whatever it is for you. You got your own pencil

23:18

and paper. You got your own notes in your head. We

23:21

each have our own, but wow.

23:25

Wow. Yeah.

23:28

So that's a bit of

23:32

what happened to me when I experienced for the first

23:34

time,

23:35

quartet

23:37

for the end of time.