Quatuor pour la fin du Temps

Quatuor pour la fin du Temps is a chamber work by French composer Olivier Messiaen, composed and first performed in 1941. Scored for clarinet, violin, cello and piano, it employs Messiaen's emerging modal harmonies, additive and non-retrogradable rhythms and bird-song influences to create austere, contemplative textures that reflect its wartime context and represent a pivotal moment in his early career and in 20th-century chamber music.