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Quartet For The End Of Time
2018-10-25

Quartet For The End Of Time

By Olivier Messiaen (1908 – 1992)

25 October 2018

Odeion

19:30

“THE IDEA OF THE END OF TIME AS THE END OF PAST AND FUTURE AND THE BEGINNING OF ETERNITY”

Anmari van der Westhuizen and Samson Diamond (members of the renowned Odeion String Quartet), will join with the award-winning soloists Grethe Nöthling and Danrè Strydom to perform one of the 20th century’s most compelling chamber music works, Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time. These musicians need no introduction to Bloemfontein audiences.

Composed while he was a prisoner of war, Messiaen's Quartet has continually wowed audiences since its creation. The oppressive conditions within which the work was conceived - set against the backdrop of wartime conditions in Nazi Germany - contribute to the work’s inner narrative. In this unsettling time of global political and social uncertainty, we aim to reframe this work from the past in order to contemplate the present. Music woven together with other art forms elicit and explain a range of emotions where words often fail.

A selection of striking WWII photos will be projected behind the musicians - reflecting the theme and history of the composition.

About the composition
Olivier Messiaen (1908 - 92)
Quatour pour le fin du temps (1940 - 41)

Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time was written in perhaps the most incongruous spot any great score has been composed in: an unheated barrack in Stalag VIII-A, a German prisoner-of-war camp, during the second winter of World War 2. Messiaen wrote this mystical quartet for the instruments available in the camp (clarinet, violin, cello, and piano) in a setting that is arguably among the least conducive for creative work.

The quartet is Messiaen's musical depiction of and rumination on Revelation 10:1-7, which the composer included as a heading to the score:

“I saw a mighty angel descending from heaven, clad in mist, having around his head a rainbow. His face was like the sun, his feet like pillars of fire. He placed his right foot on the sea, his left on the earth, and standing thus on the sea and the earth, he lifted his hand toward heaven and swore by Him who liveth forever and ever, saying: "There shall be time no longer, but at the day of the trumpet of the seventh angel the mystery of God shall be consummated."

ADMISSION

  • R120 (adults)
  • *R80 (pensioners)
  • *R70 (UFS staff)
  • *R50 (students, learners and block bookings of 10+)

Tickets available at Computicket or online at http://online.computicket.com/web/

*Please note that tickets for pensioners, students, learners and UFS staff can only be purchased at a Computicket outlet (Shoprite Checkers) or at the doors since a valid card or ID has to be presented to qualify for the above-mentioned discount.

ENQUIRIES
Ninette Pretorius (tel. 051 401 2504)


Back
PIAD presents public talk: NEW FUTURES 19 Feb

New Futures: Innovations in arts and Science

 

public talks by Dr Keith Armstrong and Dr Angus Hervey on Friday, 19 February 2016 at 18:00
Oliewenhuis Art Museum, Reservoir

Presented as part of the Programme for Innovation in Artform Development (PIAD), an initiative by the Vrystaat Arts Festival and the University of the Free State. Supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Kindly hosted by the Friends of Oliewenhuis Art Museum.

Re-Future
by Dr Keith Armstrong

Keith Armstrong is an experimental artist profoundly motivated by issues of social and ecological justice. His engaged, participative practices provoke audiences to comprehend, envisage and imagine collective pathways towards sustainable futures. He has specialised for more than 20 years in collaborative, experimental practices with emphasis upon innovative performance forms, site-specific electronic arts, networked interactive installations, alternative interfaces, art-science collaborations and socially and ecologically engaged practices.

Keith's research asks how insights drawn from scientific and philosophical ecologies can help us to better invent and direct experimental art forms, with the understanding that art practitioners can also act as powerful provocateurs in the long journey towards sustainable futures. Through inventing radical research methodologies and processes, he has led and created over 60 major art works and process-based projects, which have been shown internationally, supported by numerous grants from the public and private sectors.

The Art (and Science) of Optimism: why the future is much better than you think
by Dr Angus Hervey

Dr Angus Hervey is a writer, technologist and science communicator. He is the co-founder of Future Crunch, a platform for intelligent thinking about the future of science and technology, and the current Australian manager of Random Hacks of Kindness, a global initiative started in 2009 by Google, IBM, Microsoft, NASA and the World Bank to create open-source technology solutions to social challenges. He is the former manager of Global Policy, one of the world's leading international political journals, and holds a Masters degree in International Political Economy and a PhD in Government from the London School of Economics, where he was also the Ralph Miliband Scholar between 2009 and 2012.

For more information, please contact the Johannes Stegmann Art Gallery, UFS at 051 401 2706 or dejesusav@ufs.ac.za

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