What Remains: Roukens, Reich & Messiaen

Artists

Album Info

Release Date: 2023-06-30

Label: Rubicon Classics

The title ‘What Remains’ of String Quartet no.4 (2019) by Joey Roukens can be understood in various ways. On a poetic level, the words correspond to the character of the music, which often seems to hark back to ‘something remaining’ from a previous era – ruins, ghosts, scraps or memories. This interpretation, both of the words and of the music itself, marked the beginning of the associative exploration that led to this album of the same title.

Drawing on music from the 13th, 14th and 16th centuries, with 20th-century works by Messiaen and Reich, this album leads into the 21st century with the work that provides the album’s title, the Fourth String Quartet by Roukens, commissioned by the Dudok Quartet. Both Reich and Roukens’s music was influenced by Gregorian chant, and the early organum and polyphonic music that followed.