Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time to be played in Hong Kong with new composition partly inspired by the seminal 1941 work, bringing solace in an unsettling time

Olivier Messiaen wrote his Quartet for the End of Time in 1941. A new work by Joshua Chan partly inspired by it will accompany it at a concert in Hong Kong

The concert marks the Messiaen work’s 80th anniversary and 40 years since the founding by Rayson Huang of the University of Hong Kong’s department of music

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French composer Olivier Messiaen in the early 1950s. His influential Quartet for the End of Time, written and first performed in a German prisoner-of-war camp in 1941, will be heard in a rare live performance in Hong Kong to mark its 80th anniversary. Photo: Roger Viollet via Getty Images

Published: 5:45pm, 4 Oct 2021Updated: 11:15am, 7 Oct 2021

Eighty years ago, French composer Olivier Messiaen and three fellow inmates at a German prisoner-of-war camp performed a groundbreaking piece of chamber music in front of prisoners and Nazi guards on a freezing winter day.

Mournful, foreboding and ultimately transcendental, Quatuor pour la fin du temps (Quartet for the End of Time) is today considered a Messiaen masterpiece and a potent symbol of how great art is called forth in dire circumstances.

This deeply spiritual work will bring solace in our own unsettling time when it is given a live performance in Hong Kong on October 8 as part of celebrations of the 40th anniversary of the University of Hong Kong’s Department of Music.

The concert programme will begin with Fiery Rustles of Rain, a new work by Professor Joshua Chan Kam-biu inspired by Messiaen’s work and by Chan’s own experience this summer.

Professor Joshua Chan has composed a new work, “Fiery Rustles of Rain”, to be performed on October 8 with Messiaen’s quartet to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the department of music at the University of Hong Kong and the 80th anniversary of the French composer’s work. Photo: University of Hong Kong

“I was in Beijing for two months. That’s where my wife works, and I hadn’t seen her for a while because of the pandemic. One day, we were caught in a rainstorm as fierce as what we get in Hong Kong when there is a No 10 typhoon. It was very sudden and came from nowhere,” he recalls.

It was an angst-inducing moment. But waiting out the storm in the presence of a loved one created a warm memory, he says. As an allegory for coping with unforeseen events, his music celebrates the camaraderie within the university.