The Rite of Time

The Ragged Music Festival concludes with a deeply affecting climax: a stellar performance of Olivier Messiaen’s Quatuor pour le fin du temps. Messiaen composed his deeply moving plea for peace in a German prisoner-of-war camp where he was detained in June 1940. The music of Alfred Schnittke and of Morton Feldman, master of silence, also has a relationship with death and the relentless passage of time in human life.

Messiaen’s famous quartet is a religiously inspired vision in which an angel stops time. But it is also a testament to life, expressed through imitations of birdsong and rich, warm harmonies. That warmth, and the subtle melancholy for all that makes the world beautiful, are also expressed in the wonderfully consoling Andante from Schubert’s most famous piano trio.