From the magazine

The mystical masterpiece from Stalag VIII-A

A meditation on Quartet for the End of Time, Oliver Messiaen’s great prison camp composition, should bring the strange, bird-fixated religious avant-gardist new admirers

Ian Thomson
Olivier Messiaen in 1962.  adoc.photos/Corbis via Getty Images
EXPLORE THE ISSUE 19 April 2025
issue 19 April 2025

  • Quartet for the End of Time: On Music, Grief & Birdsong

    Michael Symmons Roberts

    Jonathan Cape, pp. 283, £20

Olivier Messiaen was a French composer steeped in the solitude and ecstasy of Catholic mysticism: everything he wrote was dedicated to the greater glory of God. He was in thrall to the liturgical works of Stravinsky, but also to the percussive cling-clang of Javanese gamelan music and other eastern sonorities.

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