KAPmodern: Lob auf die Unsterblichkeit

In Finitude and Eternity: Shimmering Music Oscillating Around Zero Points by Messiaen, Ptaszyńska, Grisey, and Dusapin

Once again, Olivier Messiaen’s “Quartet for the End of Time” takes center stage this evening. This biblical vision, composed during dark times, is eternity and hope cast in music—and at the same time, both an end and a new beginning. Marking the zero point, as it were, the quartet was composed on the threshold between Impressionism and Modernism. Messiaen’s colorful sound structures paved the way for new musical ideas such as spectral music and serialism; his students became the “beacons” of the avant-garde.

Gérard Grisey brings the prisms of the overtone spectrum to life. Marta Ptaszyńska composes radiant light full of sparkling colors, which she perceives—like her teacher—through hearing, that is, synesthetically. And Pascal Dusapin unfolds dreamlike, hallucinatory, and subtle color gradients in the flow of time.