Quatuor pour la fin du Temps

Album by Olivier Messiaen

Quatuor pour la fin du Temps is a chamber work by French composer Olivier Messiaen, composed and first performed in 1941. Written while he was held as a prisoner of war, the piece deploys Messiaen's characteristic modes of limited transposition, non-retrogradable rhythms and birdsong-influenced motifs across an unconventional quartet of clarinet, violin, cello and piano, and occupies an important place in his artistic development and 20th-century chamber music for its distinctive harmonic language and temporal structures.