I admit, I have an affair with Messiaen’s compositions. It started with his irresistible Variations for Violin and Piano, which I was introduced to last semester, and climaxed last Friday, when I turned pages for the Guest and Faculty recital of James Howsmon, piano; J. Patrick Rafferty, violin; Steven Cohen, clarinet; and Carlton McCreery, cello, performing Quartet for the end of time.

The Quartet was written in 1940 in a German prison camp where Messiaen was interned, and it was performed in 1941 with three other prisoner-musicians. It consists of eight movements, the titles of which bear biblical references. Messiaen was inspired by a line from the Book of Revelation regarding the descent of the seventh angel and his trumpet announcing that “there should be time no longer.” He emphasized the concept of Time as the end of past and future and the beginning of eternity.

The piece presents many technical and ensemble difficulties, all skillfully handled by the quartet. Howsmon is an associate professor of instrumental accompanying at the Oberlin Conservatory. Violinist Rafferty, a member of the faculty at the University of Louisville, also gave a master class. Cohen is a clarinet professor and head of the clarinet program at the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and McCreery is a principal cellist of the Huntsville Symphony Orchestra and has a career in conducting.

Messiaen provides short comments about each piece in the preface of the score.

“Between three and four o’clock in the morning, the awakening of the birds: a blackbird or a solo nightingale improvises, surrounded by efflorescent sound, by a halo of trills lost high in the trees” sets the mood for the first movement, “Liturgy of crystal.” The violin brilliantly bore most of the high-notated repetitive interruptions, while the chords in the piano underlined the rhythm. The clarinet trilled and led its crafted melody through the relaxed, moderate tempo.

“Vocalise, for the Angel who announces the end of Time” was meant by Messiaen to “evoke the power of this mighty angel, a rainbow upon his head and clothed with a cloud, who sets one foot on the sea and one foot on the earth.” The four performers were extremely focused on not allowing a displacement of a single note during the tempo changes in the beginning and at the end.

“In the middle section are the impalpable harmonies of heaven,” points out Messiaen, and the accidental-heavy score certainly required close to heavenly skills, although it was helped by the relatively slow motion of the chords. Howsmon beautifully overcame the difficulties.

“In the piano, sweet cascades of blue-orange chords, enclosing in their distant chimes the almost plainchant song of the violin and violoncello,” Messiaen adds.

“Abyss of the birds” was written for solo clarinet. Cohen’s long crescendos (from triple piano to triple forte) on a single note were literally breathtaking, carrying the listener away. The contrast between the solitude lyrical melodies and the interruptive short, humoristic sixteenths was masterfully handled.

Messiaen stated, “The abyss is Time with its sadness, its weariness. The birds are the opposite to Time; they are our desire for light, for stars, for rainbows, and for jubilant songs.”

In the fourth part, “Interlude,” the clarinet, the violin and the cello led a humoristic, scherzando conversation. Messiaen connected it to the other movements by “certain melodic recollections.” The page-turner rested, enjoying being in the midst of a high quality contemporary music making.

An unearthly tranquil duet between the piano and the cello followed. The silence in Warner Concert Hall was significant for the degree to which the audience was engulfed in the slow moving conversation between Howsmon and McCreery.

“Praise to the Eternity of Jesus” was a superb example of a skillful teamwork as well as profoundly moving. “Jesus is considered here as the Word. A broad phrase, infinitely slow, on the violoncello, magnifies with love and reverence the eternity of the Word, powerful and gentle,” states Messiaen.

The sixth movement, “Dance of fury for the seven trumpets,” could be considered one of the most tricky parts in the entire work, because the performers are required to play in perfect unison, both pitch- and rhythm-wise. The instrumentation makes the task even more complicated. Everything has to match — the articulation, the intonation and the color.

If one of the performers accidentally holds a note for just a split second more than required, the whole movement could collapse. Determined and categorical, the faculty member and the guests held everything on its place.

Messiaen envisioned the sound of gongs and trumpets: “Music of stone, of formidable, sonorous granite...”

“The powerful angel appears, above all the rainbow that covers him... In my dreams I hear and see a catalogue of chords and melodies, familiar colors and forms... The swords of fire, these outpourings of blue-orange lava, these turbulent stars.” Such melodies are connected to “A mingling of rainbows for the Angel who announces the end of Time,” which starts off like a second duet between the piano and the cello but the clarinet and the violin soon join them. Combining motives and phrases from the previous movements, its climax in triple forte lasts for a whole three pages in moderate tempo, performed with much intensity and furiousness.

The last movement, “Praise to the Immortality of Jesus,” was another heartfelt dialogue marked on the score as “extremely slow and tender, ecstatic.”

The dotted heartbeat-like rhythm in the piano supported the many timbre and dynamic contrasts in the cello part. The high-pitched fortissimo climaxes were ecstatic, indeed, and after McCreery and Howsmon closed the Quartet in triple piano there was only quiet, eternal stillness, accompanied by sound of the rain on the concert hall’s roof.

In the words of Messaiaen, “Its slow ascent toward the most extreme point of tension is the ascension of man toward his God, of the child of God toward his Father, of the being made divine toward Paradise.”