Hi friends and welcome to the Robcast. This episode is about a piece of music and

this piece of music is called Quartet for the end of time.

And I want to tell you about what happened recently

when I experienced Quartet for the end of time.

About a month or so ago, my friend Correnza Peacock, who plays the violin.

She's actually been on the Robcast, I don't know a couple years ago.

And if you've heard her play the violin, it is something.

She told me she was going to be in Ohio at the art center and that she was going to be performing with three other musicians this piece.

And then she sent me this fascinating story about the piece.

So Quartet for the end of time was written by a French composer named Olivier Messien.

He was born in 1908.

He was drafted into the French Army in World War II

and captured by the Germans.

On May 6, 1940, Messien was taken to Gordlets,

which is now Poland, which was a Nazi prisoner of war camp. It was designed to hold

15,000, 1 5, 15,000 prisoners of war, but at the time Messian got there, there were 50,000 prisoners of

war there.

Yeah, so this is where he wrote this piece called Quartet

for the end of time and if you do just a little bit of interneting, that's a verb, about Messien and get a little background.

He wrote this about arriving at Gourlets.

He said, when I arrived at the camp I was stripped of all my

clothes like all the prisoners but naked as I was I clung fiercely to a little bag of miniature scores like sheets of music that served as

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