In a prisoner-of-war camp during the early days of World War II, French composer Olivier Messiaen (1908–1992) created his chamber music masterpiece Quatuor pour la fin du temps (Quartet for the End of Time). Rooted in his deeply Christian faith, it is inspired by the New Testament Book of Revelation. It premiered on 15 January 1941.
To celebrate the 75th anniversary Sinfini Music commissioned Simon F.A. Russell to create an animation around it. Working with Prof. Marcus du Sautoy I used the piece to explore Messiaen’s complex relationship to mathematics, music and religion. Prof. Sautoy explains some mathematical aspects in From Messiaen to Radiohead: How great music uses prime numbers
“I see colors when I hear sounds,” Messiaen said in an interview, “but I don’t see colors with my eyes. I see colors intellectually in my head.” This condition is called synesthesia; it’s when a perception in one sense triggers another. In the piano part of the “Vocalise, pour l’Ange qui annonce la fin du Temps” (“Vocalise for the Angel Who Announces the End of Time”), Messiaen refers to cascades of “blue-orange” chords—the first time he mentions specific colors in one of his scores. He may have been inspired by the phantasmagoric color imagery of the Book of Revelation, but also by seeing the Northern Lights—which he first thought to be hallucinations brought on by hunger and cold during the winter of 1940–1941.