The masterpiece ‘beyond Time’ that is the Quatuor pour la fin du Temps first saw the light of day in Barrack 27 of the World War II prisoner-of-war camp Stalag VIII-A in Görlitz, Silesia, performed by its composer Olivier Messiaen on piano along with fellow prisoners Jean Le Boulaire on violin, Henri Akoka on clarinet and Étienne Pasquier on cello. The unusual ensemble forces were dictated by what musicians were available in that environment of deprivation, and the prisoners’ coping mechanisms in response to it played a part: Akoka's clarinet and the singing of birds during dawn watches with Pasquier inspired the third movement, Abîme des oiseaux for solo clarinet.

As Messiaen himself explained before the concert, it is the first six verses of the Book of Revelation Chapter 10 that inform the piece as a whole. Starvation in the camp had provoked in him vivid, colourful dreams of the Angel's Rainbow, and the End of Time represented eternity in the face of the mortality confronting the internees. The sensory deprivation he experienced while imprisoned caused (or exacerbated) his synaesthesia, such that his hearing of harmonies and his vision of colours became blended in his mind.

The work’s difficulty is well known; in Görlitz, from musicians already unbalanced by Messiaen’s unconventional rhythms, the composer demanded extreme and unusual instrumental effects: dynamic extremes, unheard-of force and maximum precision. Clarinettist Akoka complained about overly high notes and long phrases; violinist Le Boulaire about wide, inhumanly slow string melodies. But Messiaen’s serenity at the piano instilled confidence, making the impossible possible and raising everything to a higher level.

On a formal level, the eight movements of the Quatuor, linked by symbolic correspondences, reflect the biblical perfection of the number seven: the six days of Creation followed by the day of Rest, which is prolonged into Eternity becoming an eighth of indefectible light and unalterable peace.

‘I composed this quartet to escape from snow, from war, from imprisonment and from myself,' Messiaen said. But the religious silence that enveloped the premiere demonstrated the Quatuor's ability to raise everyone in its first audience along with him, above the barbarity, hunger and cold. Today, hearing this music that is ‘alien to earthly beauty and pervaded by the idea of God’, we perceive its essence ‘beyond Time’, imbued with faith and religiosity.