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4 unusual facts about Quatuor pour la fin du temps


Desmond Hoebig

He is featured on at least eight CDs, including Quartet For The End Of Time by Olivier Messiaen, as a member of the Houston Symphony Chamber Players.

Quatuor pour la fin du temps

He was captured by the German army in June 1940 and imprisoned in Stalag VIII-A, a prisoner-of-war camp in Görlitz, Germany (now Zgorzelec, Poland).

While in transit to the camp, Messiaen showed the clarinetist Henri Akoka, also a prisoner, the sketches for what would become Abîme des oiseaux.

The music is arranged from an earlier, unpublished piece, "Oraison" from "Fêtes des belles eaux" for 6 Ondes Martenots, performed at the Paris World Fair in 1937.


Piano quartet

In the 20th century, composers have also written for more varied groups, with Anton Webern's Quartet, opus 22 (1930), for example, being for piano, violin, clarinet and tenor saxophone, and Paul Hindemith's quartet (1938) as well as Olivier Messiaen's Quatuor pour la fin du temps (1940) both for piano, violin, cello and clarinet.


see also