Quartet for the End of Time

A personal reckoning with grief, doubt, faith and poetry set to one of the most celebrated musical works of the twentieth century, from the award-winning poet and librettist. The story goes like this: on a freezing winter night in 1941, a new piece of chamber music was performed to a crowd of prisoners of war on a three-stringed cello, clarinet, violin and pub piano with sticky keys. It was the premiere of Olivier Messiaens Quatuor pour la fin du Temps. Listeners since then have been captivated by the ecstatic music and mythology of Messiaens masterpiece. Michael Symmons Roberts own lifelong fascination with the Quatuor having chanced upon it in a record shop in his late teens and fallen in love with its title - leads him on a quest to understand its enigmatic power. His fascination at times frustration with Messiaens vision opens into an exploration of grief, of personal faith and doubt, of the end of time and what may lie beyond it. Interwoven with poetry and wit, this book is an expansive evocation of music, loss, hope and time, seen through the lens of Messiaens technicolour, apocalyptic vision. Quartet for the End of Time is a moving, intimate and unforgettable book, attentive to ways of listening in our noisy world to birdsong, music, poems and radio silence, and to the call and response that we may find.