A Short Film For the End of Time – Part 1
Olivier Messiaen: Quartet for the End of Time; Movement 7
A Short Film For the End of Time – Part 2
Olivier Messiaen: Quartet for the End of Time; Movement 8
“I am…affected by a kind of synopsia, found more in my mind than in my body, which allows me, when I hear music, and equally when I read it, to see inwardly, in the mind’s eye, colors which move with the music, and I sense these colors in an extremely vivid manner… For me certain complexes of sound and certain sonorities are linked to complexes of color, and I use them in full knowledge of this.”
—Olivier Messiaen, in conversation with Claude Samuel, 1976
The music of French composer Olivier Messiaen is inextricably connected to color. Messiaen was synesthetic—when he heard music, he saw colors. Although Messiaen’s chamber music masterpiece, the Quartet for the End of Time, tells a powerful religious story, the music is nevertheless intensely colorful in a tradition dating back to the French Impressionists. Tristan Cook, the brilliant young filmmaker whose work has illuminated Chamber Music Society events in the past, gives us a provocative interpretation of the work that explores the colorful side of Messiaen.
—David Finckel, Co-Artistic Director of the Chamber Music Society
Visual Artist: Zack Smithey
http://www.myspace.com/smitheyzack
Concept and Direction: Tristan Cook
http://www.peachtoad.com
Camera: Zac Nicholson
Performance by David Shifrin, clarinet; Daniel Hope, violin; Paul Watkins, cello; Gilbert Kalish, piano
Special thanks to Cathy Levin and Jihyun Kim.
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