For the end of time https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Y87KYqLf60A (somewhat long-winded) lecture explaining Messiaen's "Quartet for the End of Time".
Messiaen wrote that piece while incarcerated in a war prisoner's camp near Dresden. I always thought of this piece strictly in the context of the 2nd World War. However, recently I attended
a lecture by Humanities West on the cultural aftermath of the 1st World War. The lecture was accompanied by a performance of some music by Eric Satie and
Les Six. The music was striking and especially eye-opening in the context of the devastating impact of WW 1 on the culture. The entire treasure of European high culture was negated: after all, it was that same high culture and its emphasis on honor, beauty, sacredness, loyalty and all that, that ultimately produced the horrors of the war. This realization crushed the entire world outlook of the romantic era and ushered in the "anything goes" attitude typical of the modernist mentality of the 20th century.
The music of Satie and Milhaud sounded quite mechanical; it did show beauty and joy - quite as it was in old times - but now mindlessly combined with ugliness and destruction. It was as if a puppet had some of its internal springs broken but others still operational, and made happy movements with only one hand - a pitiful puppet who still thinks it can be happy about something, and is not conscious of its own brokenness, and of the meaninglessness of its entire act.
Indeed, people came back from the war, having wrought untold evils with their own hands, - evils that destroyed the very meaning of what is good in life. But human nature is such that humans still need to feel happy about
something even after such deeds. As Stanislawsky said, "After what people have seen, we can't show them the old stories and expect them to weep for an officer's lost girlfriend..." Stanislawsky's conclusion was that the playwrights and the theater directors have to find
new ways of entertaining the public.
The music of the early 1920s is full of that somewhat mechanical, forced laughter of the people who could not face what they have done and instead make up the pretense that the past is overcome and that "life goes on"...
Messiaen grew up with that atmosphere. In his class, he was the best student in both composition and organ performance. His solution was to withdraw completely from the dealings of this world into Christian faith and to compose music wholly devoted to the "visions of the beyond". Messiaen's first published piece was
Le banquet céleste ("The heavenly banquet"), - a striking vision of what eternal life is actually like - followed by several piano and organ pieces on either highly abstract or religious themes, such as
Apparition de l'église eternelle,
Transports de joie d'une âme devant la gloire du Christ qui est la sienne, and
Dieu parmi nous.
Once you accept that everything is lost and the world simply goes on mechanically, it is only logical to expect further horrors to come. And they did come...
Messiaen ends up in a concentration camp and composes "
The quartet for the end of time" and later "
Trois petites liturgies pour la présence divine".