For the End of Time: The Story of the Messiaen Quartet

Olivier Messiaen (1908–1992) was one of the great composers of the twentieth century. The premiere of the French composer's Quartet for the End of Time on January 15, 1941, at -4 degrees Fahrenheit in Stalag VIII A, a Nazi prison camp, has been called one of the great stories of twentieth-century music. A devout Catholic with an interest in mysticism and the supernatural, Messiaen was also a poet and an accomplished amateur ornithologist. He mixed sounds as a painter mixes colors, associati...