Amazing pieces of classical music - 26
Olivier Messiaen's "Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum: III. L'heure vient où les morts entendront la voix du Fils de Dieu" (Jean V, 25), a suite for wind orchestra and percussion instruments composed in five movements, performed by the Groupe Instrumental à Percussion de Strasbourg and the Orchestre Du Domaine Musical conducted by Pierre Boulez in 1967.
It's one of the many iconic moments in the 70s BBC TV series Civilization because it's the music after about three minutes into the piece when we see a Viking longship in the first episode. The music itself came, however, from only a little more than four years earlier when Messiaen had been approached by André Malraux, Minister of Culture under Charles de Gaulle, with the commission to create a sacred work in memory of the victims of the two world wars.
After the fall of France in 1940, Messiaen was interned for nine months in the German prisoner of war camp Stalag VIII-A, where he composed his "Quatuor pour la fin du temps" (Quartet for the End of Time) for the four instruments available in the prison—piano, violin, cello and clarinet. The enforced introspection and reflection of camp life bore fruit in one of the Twentieth Century's classical music generally acknowledged masterpieces. The title's "End of Time" alludes to the Apocalypse, and also to the way that Messiaen, through rhythm and harmony, used time in a manner completely different from his predecessors and contemporaries
The title of the piece written almost a quarter of a century later comes from the penultimate line of the Nicene Creed: "Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum, et vitam venturi sæculi" (And I look forward to the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come). Personally, I love the moment itself in Kenneth Clark's series when the music, "The hour is coming when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God," sounded almost too perfect
[media=https://youtu.be/nMH6e-pizlw]
It's one of the many iconic moments in the 70s BBC TV series Civilization because it's the music after about three minutes into the piece when we see a Viking longship in the first episode. The music itself came, however, from only a little more than four years earlier when Messiaen had been approached by André Malraux, Minister of Culture under Charles de Gaulle, with the commission to create a sacred work in memory of the victims of the two world wars.
After the fall of France in 1940, Messiaen was interned for nine months in the German prisoner of war camp Stalag VIII-A, where he composed his "Quatuor pour la fin du temps" (Quartet for the End of Time) for the four instruments available in the prison—piano, violin, cello and clarinet. The enforced introspection and reflection of camp life bore fruit in one of the Twentieth Century's classical music generally acknowledged masterpieces. The title's "End of Time" alludes to the Apocalypse, and also to the way that Messiaen, through rhythm and harmony, used time in a manner completely different from his predecessors and contemporaries
The title of the piece written almost a quarter of a century later comes from the penultimate line of the Nicene Creed: "Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum, et vitam venturi sæculi" (And I look forward to the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come). Personally, I love the moment itself in Kenneth Clark's series when the music, "The hour is coming when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God," sounded almost too perfect
[media=https://youtu.be/nMH6e-pizlw]
