ABSTRACT
Composed in February 1991, while Olivier Messiaen was still finalizing the orchestration of Eclairs, the Piece for piano and string quartet is an anomalous work in almost every respect, especially so in the context of the composer's other post-war music. In addition, Messiaen and Alfred Schlee had become long-term friends and so it was only natural that Messiaen should be particularly keen to write the Piece. The 37 pieces were commissioned to be played by the Arditti String Quartet and, while many of his fellow composers used just one, two or three players, Messiaen was alone in adding an instrument, piano, to the specified quartet. The sound-world of the Piece is closest in spirit and musical language to the radical works of the 1950s and 1960s. Messiaen may have been precocious in the development of his inimitable style, but it is inconceivable that he could have written the Piece with the compositional devices at his disposal in 1929.
