Yesterday was Armistice day, and although there are a number of pieces of music that could be selected to mark that occasion. For me, inevitably, the first to come to mind is the work commissioned by André Malraux, Minister of Cultural Affairs in France, from Olivier Messiaen in 1963 as a sacred work to commemorate the dead of the two World Wars.

The work delivered, first performed the following year, is a suite for wind orchestra and percussion in five movements entitled in Latin Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum, (And I look for the resurrection of the dead), the phrase taken from the creed looks towards the life of the world to come; already a strong statement of theological hope in the face of the possibility for a maudlin response to such a commission.

The five movements are superscripted with quotations (sometimes paraphrases), most of them from scripture:

i. “Des profondeurs de l’abîme, je crie vers toi, Seigneur: Seigneur, écoute ma voix!” (from the depths of the abyss I cry towards you Lord : Lord, hear my voice)
“Le Christ, ressuscité des morts, ne meurt plus; la mort n’a plus sur lui d’empire.” (Christ, raised from the dead, dies no longer ; death no longer has dominion over him)
“L’heure vient où les morts entendront la voix du Fils de Dieu…” (the hour is coming when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God)
“Ils ressusciteront, glorieux, avec un nom nouveau — dans le concert joyeux des étoiles et les acclamations des fils du ciel.” (they will be raised, glorious, with a new name – in the joyful concert of the stars and the acclamations of the sons of heaven.)
“Et j’entendis la voix d’une foule immense…” (and I heard the voice of an immense crowd…)

The premier of Et Exspecto took place in Sainte-Chapelle in Paris; the second performance was the grander-scale event after Mass at Chartres Cathedral and in the presence of the President of the French Republic (Charles de Gaulle), blurring, perhaps, the distinction between religious ritual and secular pomp and ceremony with this highly Catholic musical vision of a future even for those who have died. A similar blurring might be heard, too, in the use of wind instruments in divisions which might recall the pipe organ, Messiaen’s own instrument…

As we too remember and honour those who have made sacrifices for the lives and freedoms of others, in war and elsewhere, might this magnificent music help us to remain aware of our own finitude – even our own capacity for violence and evil – and at the same time the permanence of the love of God in Christ from which even death does not separate us?