Quatuor pour la fin du temps

Quatuor pour la fin du temps is an eight-movement chamber work by French composer Olivier Messiaen, composed and first performed in 1941. The piece combines modal and non-traditional harmonic language, bird-call-inspired motifs, and shifting rhythms and textures to create a meditative, time-expanding soundworld, and it marks a defining moment in Messiaen's early career and in mid-20th-century chamber music for its experimental approach to form and timbre.