On January 15, 1941, in the freezing barracks of Stalag VIII-A in Gorlitz, four prisoners played a 50-minute piece on a battered piano, a violin, a clarinet, and a cello bought with pocket change collected by fellow captives. This episode tells how Olivier Messiaen, made a medical auxiliary because of his poor eyesight and captured in June 1940, met clarinetist Henri Akoka, cellist Etienne Pasquier, and violinist Jean Le Boulaire, and received pencil and manuscript paper smuggled in by a German guard named Karl-Albert Brull.

The hosts explain how the title Quartet for the End of Time comes from Revelation chapter 10 and how Messiaen tried to suspend the listener's sense of time using mismatched rhythmic cycles, additive rhythms, and birdsong. They walk through the crystal liturgy, the abyss of the birds, the dance of fury, the recycled duet ...