Note: aside from the obvious this is all my opinion etc, I have to mention this: while writing this article, someone DID bring up this artist and a small discussion occurred (between him and I). I've also mentioned him before in passing on IRC. I debated over not doing it, but I think it's one of those albums that is unambiguously necessary for anyone that enjoys classical music. So my apologies for the slightly misleading title.

Also because of the nature of classical music being performed by different musicians, I mentioned the first time it was released at 1941, but I think the recordings are from 1991. I could not find a youtube of the original.



97.Olivier Messiaen- Quatuor pour la fin du Temps (1941)

I read The Soloist by Mark Salzman a few weeks ago. It was one of the best books I've read (and not just because it dealt with music and courtroom drama) and had this wonderful ending where the man sits with his cello in the dark and feels the strings vibrate in his chest, and it was a wonderful way to describe music.

I've found it takes a certain person to really appreciate classical music. You almost never meet them; I won't claim the title, that's for sure, and I fucking love everything. No, what I'm talking about is when you know them as a kid and they hear some Bach and suddenly they freeze in place and don't move, intensely listening to the music, and they look really unkidlike.

Classical music requires something of a person other genres don't, a sort of co-mingling of the technical and the emotional that happens not on levels but somehow simultaneously. The example in the Soloist is when the main character goes to a performance of Strauss's Thus Spake Zarathustra with a young prodigy. The piece purposefully ends half resolved, and both characters pick up on not just Strauss's intent (much like man and the universe never fully understand each other, the piece never quite finshes) but also the technical problem that occurs; it drives the child prodigy nearly to tears.

This illustrates a bit about classical music that I think is necessary to understand about Messiaen. A French composer, Messiaen was the anti-thesis of the traditional western classical musician. He was responsible for modes of limited transposition (a musical idea similar to scales, but that can have limitations on repetitions) and suffered from synaesthesia, a disorder that let him see musical notes.

(Before anyone excitedly claims that YES PIANOS ARE BLUE, synaesthesia involves actually seeing the colors, okay. Chances are you aren't synaesthesiac).

Messiaen fell in love with non-traditional musical scales, grabbing hold of Hindu and Greek scales, and employed the Indonesian gamelan in his works.

But I'm not a scholar of classical music; I can't even say I'm particularly good at describing it.

I'm not a historian either. But I don't need to be to describe the next part of the story.

Messiaen was captured during WWII as a POW, and sent to a prison camp. It was there that he met a violinist, a cellist, and a clarinetist. And so he wrote Quatuor pour la fin du temps or Quartet for the End of Time. He played it in front of the prisoners and the guards, 5,000 of them, all quiet, listening to the music.

There are few words I can use to describe the power of this work. As I said, I'm not a classical music scholar or a historian. But there's no doubt that the horror of the war reminded Messiaen of the Apocalypse, and with only four instruments, he managed to show it.

There is a more or less substantial wikipedia article on the subject, with links. I advise you read it.



Why Doesn't GW Talk About This?

It's a forum devoted to Final Fantasy VII fangames. If anyone in GW had the money to seriously be into classical music they would have spent it on Hironobu Sakaguchi soundtracks instead. That and classical music is already way hard to get into since it's all old dead guys for the most part (whoops I stepped in some Phillip Glass *scrapes it off with a Xenakis* ah...Shostakovich...I prefer the New York Orchestra to the London do you see how hard it is)

Why Would GW Like This?

It's really good classical music, and conveys the theme without bludgeoning you over the head (but...the Metal Gear Solid theme...). Videogames have their traditions in classical instruments (And chiptunes but who listens to that shit) and yet only a few composers are even close to decent; maybe listening to someone really tragic and good will appeal to GW!

Messiaen also uses birdsong all the time and that's just kitschy appeal (what a whore).