Olivier Messiaen’s most famous work had sombre beginnings: it was written and first performed in a German prisoner of war camp during World War II

 

It’s the night of January 15, 1941, and at Stalag VIII – a prisoner-of-war camp in Görlitz in Silesia – a few hundred prisoners and a small number of guards are gathering in Barrack 27. It’s freezing cold. There is no heating.

Among the prisoners is a famous composer; also a French soldier. One of the guards, Karl-Albert Brüll, loved music and knew who he was. Brüll was a German patriot with anti-Nazi sympathies and he provided music paper, pencils and solitude for the composer to work. Now they were going to hear what he’d written.