Concert à quatre

Concert à quatre (Quadruple concerto) is one of the final works of the French composer Olivier Messiaen. It is written for four solo instruments (piano, cello, flute, oboe) and orchestra.

Messiaen first considered writing an oboe concerto for Heinz Holliger then a piece for oboe, cello, piano, harp and orchestra on the subject of Grace.

In its final form (oboe, cello, piano, flute and orchestra), Concert à quatre was conceived in 1990 and begun in the summer of 1991. Messiaen worked on it steadily until December of that year. He originally intended the piece to have five movements but at the beginning of 1992, his decline in health slowed the piece's progress and ultimately prevented him from completing it before his death.

As it stands, the work is in four movements, in which Messiaen draws inspiration from Mozart, Scarlatti and Rameau as well as from his usual birdsong transcriptions. His notes also mention Dutilleux and the orchestration of Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit by Constant.

Of the completed movements, Messiaen's widow, Yvonne Loriod, in conjunction with the composers George Benjamin and Heinz Holliger, orchestrated the second half of the first movement and the whole of the fourth. Messiaen described the latter in the draft score as "completely reviewed - good in terms of sonority, length and dynamics". Furthermore, Messiaen had intended to include a free meter sequence based on various birdsongs. To write it, Loriod used similar sketches discarded from his opera Saint François d'Assise and included them in that last movement. She also added a chorus of bells from the same source.

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