Reliquary

reliquary for piano quartet (2019) fragments and collages an array of pieces in the “classical canon”—a moniker that ascribes an almost religious reverence to the music of the 18th- and 19th-century Western European aristocracy, as “canonized” by imperialist violence and “revered” by bourgeois cultural institutions as an image of hegemonic power. In that sense, the title refers to the relic not only as a purportedly holy object, but as an anachronistic remnant of the past, kept for its association with the romanticised notion of the “great masters.” Thus viewed, these relics lose their quality of “artness” and become mere objects serving soft power, eventually repeating themselves like a broken record. At the end, the piece disintegrates into sparse noises before the musicians ultimately walk off the stage, the music itself having been exhausted.

Recorded and mastered at Oktaven Studio

Charles Mueller, producer