Two other professional musicians, violinist Jean le Boulaire [fr] and cellist Étienne Pasquier, were among his fellow prisoners, and after he managed to obtain some paper and a small pencil from a sympathetic guard (Carl-Albert Brüll [de], 1902–1989), Messiaen wrote a short trio for them; this piece later became the quartet's Intermède.

He later recalled how he visited Fritz Piersig (at the Propaganda-Staffel in Paris) in early 1941 to plead the case for Messiaen, and was assured that "in ten days’ time, at the latest, he will be in an office".

An emotional letter from Messiaen to Claude Arrieu announcing his newly found freedom allows us to date his return from Silesia (via Nuremberg and Lyon) to Neussargues in the Cantal.Messiaen and Etienne Pasquier (cellist at the initial premiere) later recorded the quartet on LP for Club Français du Disc (1956), together with Jean Pasquier (violin) and André Vacellier (clarinet).

Messiaen wrote in the Preface to the score that the work was inspired by text from the Book of Revelation (Rev 10:1–2, 5–7, King James Version): And I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed with a cloud: and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire ... and he set his right foot upon the sea, and his left foot on the earth .... And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his hand to heaven, and sware by him that liveth for ever and ever ... that there should be time no longer: But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished ...The work is in eight movements: Below, quotations are translated from Messiaen's Preface to the score.

In his preface to the score, Messiaen describes the opening of the quartet: Between three and four in the morning, the awakening of birds: a solo blackbird or nightingale improvises, surrounded by a shimmer of sound, by a halo of trills lost very high in the trees.

In the piano, sweet cascades of blue-orange chords, enclosing in their distant chimes the almost plainchant song of the violin and cello.Messiaen writes: The abyss is Time with its sadness, its weariness.

The birds are the opposite to Time; they are our desire for light, for stars, for rainbows, and for jubilant songs.A solo for the clarinet, this movement is a test for even the most accomplished clarinetist, with an extremely slow tempo marking quaver (eighth note) = 44.

A broad phrase, "infinitely slow", on the cello, magnifies with love and reverence the eternity of the Word, powerful and gentle, "whose time never runs out".

Music of stone, formidable granite sound; irresistible movement of steel, huge blocks of purple rage, icy drunkenness.