Quatuor pour la fin du Temps

Quatuor pour la fin du Temps is a chamber work by French composer Olivier Messiaen, composed and premiered in 1941. Scored for clarinet, violin, cello and piano, it combines Messiaen's modes of limited transposition, complex rhythmic structures and bird-song influences to produce sparse, meditative textures, and it was written during his imprisonment in World War II, marking a pivotal moment in his early output and in the development of 20th-century chamber music.