DPO quartet performs Nazi prison camp chamber piece

Even in the worst of times, in the worst of places, music can play an important role. This is the message of a musical composition written by Olivier Messiaen entitled Quartet for the End of Time.

Principal instrumentalists with the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra will perform this work at the Schuster Center on Sunday, Oct. 9 at 3 p.m. It will be the first quartet performance in the Mead Theatre.

Music Director Neal Gittleman and Dr. Rebecca Rischin, author of a book about the piece’s history, will offer commentary about the work as part of the program.

Messiaen wrote the piece while imprisoned in the POW camp Stalag VIII A in Görlitz, Germany. He befriended three soldiers there who played musical instruments.

To lift their spirits, he wrote a short trio piece for them.

The clarinetist had somehow managed to keep his instrument when he was captured.

Obtaining a cello was not so simple. Messiaen’s small orchestra took up a collection from the other prisoners and, amazingly, the cellist was allowed to go to nearby Görlitz under guard to purchase a cello.

Messiaen became so pleased with the way the trio sounded that he added several movements to the piece and a piano part which he played himself on the camp’s rickety upright.

The theme for the piece came from the Book of Revelations in Christian scriptures. In it, an angel announces, “There shall be time no longer.”

The first performance of the piece was at the prison camp on Jan. 15, 1941. The temperature was four degrees below zero Fahrenheit.

An estimated 300-400 prisoners and some German officers attended the concert, held in a military barracks where weekly theater productions were presented.

Gittleman said he has had an affinity for Messiaen since his freshman year at college.

When he studied at the Conservatory of Music in France during the years 1974 through 1977 under the tutelage of Nadia Boulanger, he heard a pianist play Messiaen.

Last summer, he immersed himself in Rischin’s book.

“Messiaen had a personal unique style of composition,” Gittleman said. “Besides his strict traditional training in Catholic liturgical music, he also used Asian-Indian music from the Eastern culture. He created a unique sound that no one else had.”

Gittleman commented on the unusual circumstance of prisoners being allowed to perform while incarcerated.

“The Germans loved to be entertained,” he said. “Someone on the German side, who loved music, picked up on this (Messiaen’s composition).

“The worst thing is the time — if you are in a prison camp. A POW doesn’t know what is going to happen. Imagine an angel coming down and saying, ‘time will be no more.’ It translated people to another place. It was a kind of spiritual freedom.”

Gittleman said the piece reminds us how important art is to the human soul. “This thing we take for granted as a frill is the one thing we can cling to which keeps us from going over the edge,” he said.

“It is a very different concert. I love this piece so much. People will be blown away,” he said.

Rischin, an associate professor of music at Ohio University in Athens, is an award-winning clarinetist who performs regularly throughout the United States and Europe.

She said she wrote the book, For the End of Time: The Story of the Messiaen Quartet (Cornell University Press) because, “the entire story touches me: that these four men came together to prepare this premiere. Messiaen was the musical genius. The cellist, Ettienne Pasquier, was such an endearing man and became the most famous of the trio. The violinist, Jean Le Boulaire, became an actor.

The clarinetist, Henri Akoka, was Jewish and escaped from the camp. He and his family evaded the Nazis with one escapade after another. His father was deported to Auschwitz.

“Four such different men produced this premiere. All had such interesting lives. The Nazis were so hypocritical: they treated prisoners differently. Musicians were given special treatment. It intrigued me.”

From 1993 to 1995, Rischin lived in Paris, interviewing Pasquier, Le Boulaire, relatives of Akoka, and Messiaen’s widow. Rischin conducted extensive interviews and corresponded with camp survivors who witnessed the quartet’s premiere.

She applied for a grant and her research for the book was aided by a Harriet Hale Woolley Scholarship for study in Paris, awarded in 1993.

“It was easy to write,” she said. “It almost wrote itself. It had this great, inspiring story. It was a really fun, self-affirming thing to do. During the interviews, I felt I could listen to them forever.”

Quartet for the End of Time by Messiaen, a quartet featuring Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra principal instrumentalists with commentary by Music Director Neal Gittleman and Rebecca Rischin, will be performed on Sunday, Oct. 9 at 3 p.m. at the Schuster Center.

In conjunction with the concert, the Dayton Holocaust Resource Center and the Dayton Philharmonic will present a special display of art and poetry from past entries of the Max May Memorial Holocaust Art Contest and Holocaust Writing Contest. Two- and three-dimensional art works will be displayed throughout the Schuster Center lobby. Works of poetry will be displayed on banners.

In addition, a student from Chaminade-Julienne High School will create an original piece of art for the concert, inspired by Olivier Messiaen’s story, to be displayed in the lobby.

A book signing with Rischin will also follow the concert.

For tickets call 228-3630 or go to www.daytonphilharmonic.com.