Tackling seminal works can be either brave or reckless, especially when it comes to something as towering as Quartet for the End of Time. Neither an act of quiet courage nor a calculated risk, Filippo Lilli and Ludovica Manzo’s Abisso points to a third path: one of absorption.
Freely inspired by Olivier Messiaen’s wartime composition—written between 1940 and 1941 in a concentration camp and rooted in the apocalyptic suspension of chronological time—the duo re-centres their work on Abîme des oiseaux, its most exposed and fragile movement.
Lilli’s opening clarinet solo inhabits that abyss with patience and control, stretching phrases into near-stasis, where breath, silence, and tone become indistinguishable. Electronics enter gradually, almost imperceptibly—not to augment, but to refract—casting faint shadows of the clarinet into a widening acoustic space. As the instrument retracts and dissolves, the work opens outward: birdsong slowly fills the air before developing into a dense dawn chorus that floods the aural field, shifting the listener from introspection to immersion, and from darkness to light.
At the centre of this transformation, Manzo’s voice emerges—not as a dominant presence, but as a porous one—woven through the avian textures in a respectful interplay where the human presence coexists within a natural frame. Her vocal line drifts between restraint and expansion, at times nearly instrumental, at others unmistakably corporeal, grounding the piece in breath and body.
The discreet electronic layer continues to bind these elements, creating a sense of suspended resonance that recalls Messiaen without succumbing to quotation. Abisso ultimately resists homage as replication; instead, it internalises its source, rearticulating it as a meditation on circular time, where endings fold back into beginnings and listening itself becomes a threshold into another dimension.
As Messiaen wrote: “The abyss is Time with its sadness, its weariness. The birds are the opposite of Time; they are our desire for light, for stars, for rainbows, and for jubilant songs.”
Lilli and Manzo have kindly articulated their approach to the work through an email exchange.
Filippo Lilli – photo by Daniele di Nunno
Abisso draws from Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, yet avoids direct quotation. How did you approach “absorbing” such a monumental work while maintaining your own sonic language?
Abisso was created on the occasion of Concerto per la fine del tempo, a project curated by Esposizione a Sud Est in December 2025. It therefore emerged from an invitation, from a curatorial suggestion that led us to engage with the work of Olivier Messiaen.
Almost instinctively, we chose to focus on the third movement, Abîme des oiseaux.
Despite the reverence we feel toward this work, we decided to listen to it again—and to keep searching. In my view, this is the most effective way of assimilation: to expose oneself to the sound, to let it pass through us, to let it resonate within us, to allow it to act upon us.
At a certain point, it became clear to us what we wanted to convey.
The opening clarinet solo engages deeply with Abîme des oiseaux, stretching time into near-stasis before dissolving into birdsong. How did you think about this transition—from solitude and interiority to an expansive, almost ecological listening space?
The opening clarinet solo is deeply intertwined with Abîme des oiseaux, stretching time to the point of near stillness before dissolving into birdsong. How did you conceive this transition—from silence and interiority to a broader, almost ecological space of listening?
“The abyss is time, with its sadness and its weariness. The bird is the opposite of time; it is our desire for light, for heights, for rainbows, and for joyful songs!”
This is how the composer himself summarizes Abîme des oiseaux. The sound of these animals was, for Olivier Messiaen, a precious and ever-present symbol.
In our composition, the clarinet narrates the abyss, advancing toward stasis, stealing moments of eternity. The irruption of the sound of around 300 species of birds (organized as a sound installation diffused through eight speakers arranged in a circular formation in space) carries us far from ourselves, into a natural, ecological, but also critical dimension. Above all, however, it leads us into that space that is created when time breaks.
Ludovica Manzo – photo by Daniele di Nunno
Ludovica, your voice enters as something both embodied and almost instrumental, moving between intimacy and openness. How did you shape this balance between the corporeal presence of the voice and its integration into the surrounding sonic environment?
The shift from instrumental sound to vocal sound always requires a number of steps. The first phase is imitation—Olivier Messiaen wrote specifically for this instrument, so the music already carries certain characteristic elements of the clarinet. Here, I tried to follow the exact progression of the writing and of the instrument itself, approaching the musical material from a technical and vocal perspective while trying to understand its sonic meaning.
It then became necessary for me to arrive at a kind of embodiment of this material, insofar as my voice and my person bring different qualities compared to the original instrument. By altering the exact duration of the notes, while maintaining the melodic and dynamic contour, and by introducing the articulation of phonemes that evoke language, I tried to give it a more personal interpretation.
It is not an easy melody—it requires a great deal of concentration, especially when the other voices, generated through Filippo’s electronic processing, overlap unpredictably, creating harmonies that can easily shift points of reference. Each time, it’s a beautiful dive into the abyss!
The work seems to revolve around the idea of suspended or circular time, echoing Messiaen’s notion of an “end of chronological time.” How did this concept influence your compositional and performative decisions?
The movement of Abisso is circular. It is impossible not to inherit the philosophical weight and the perpetual rotation that follows when engaging with a composer of this stature.
We therefore sought to write a kind of pas de deux, in which a wooden-like sound emerges in space. Ludovica takes care of it, guiding it through its repetitions, transformations, and modifications using processors, in order to expand it and re-signify it. In this way, a little later, when it becomes a voice—first in dialogue with the birdsong—emerging from the void, that care and guidance are returned to it.
Together, at the central moment of the performance, we activate a kinetic sculpture that makes this circularity visible, now also expressed through light.
photo by Daniele di Nunno
The presence of the kinetic mirrored sculpture introduces a visual dimension that reflects and refracts the sound. How do you see the relationship between light, movement, and sound in shaping the listener’s perception of space in Abisso?
A mirrored bird begins to spin in space, reflecting its motion into a cosmos of tiny luminous dots swirling across the walls and ceiling. At the same moment, the thunderous chorus of birds begins. The space transforms; the elements relate to one another and generate further, unexpected meanings.
I am increasingly interested in the connections between things, in the thought that sets them in motion. The sculpture lives and brings the space to life, already traversed by sound. The listeners—and we ourselves—are also part of this relationship.
Abisso feels like a deeply interwoven dialogue between clarinet, voice, and space. How did your collaboration unfold in practice—was it built through improvisation, structured exchange, or a gradual shaping of shared ideas over time?
The collaboration with Ludovica began with listening, with the idea of resonating with a shared vibration. In practice, this translates into an exchange of thoughts, compositional ideas, and suggestions tied to sensitivity. The compositional process benefits from this harmony and becomes enriched over time.
Filippo and I first met during a site visit in a Mithraeum in the underground of Rome. Our sensibilities are similar, and when we were invited to work on the Quatuor pour la fin du temps, we decided to come together and share ideas and sounds. We talked, listened, imagined—then each of us worked separately on the chosen musical material with our own instrument.
We later met again with our respective versions and brought them into dialogue, subsequently working on the electronic processing. We imagined that the exchange of roles would take place not only in the acoustic domain, but also in the electronic one. During the performance, each of us processes the other’s sound using the same instruments, which are positioned opposite the performer currently playing.
We also wanted to give a sense of circular movement to our bodies in space, moving from one station to another. (Gianmarco Del Re)
a closer listen 