Roger Rudenstein - "An American Requiem - Part 1"

 Roger Rudenstein - An American Requiem - Part 1

More of a warning than a review...

Recently, I became aware of the so-called classical composer, Roger Rudenstein, through targeted paid ads via multiple social media services. A first red flag, especially coming from an individual who claims to be more popular than Philip Glass and John Adams. This American Requiem, a secular mass, is in fact just another form of some old guy complaining about politics and the younger generation. It is both irritating and disheartening to see a composer this out of touch with reality attempting to utilize modern political issues to bring attention to his music, as opposed to the other way around.

Topic of the piece aside, Rudenstein's actual music is honestly just awful. The Requiem is listed as having a live orchestra, chorus, and soloists, but Rudenstein has added in distracting, cheap MIDI replacements (not to mention the live singers are poorly recorded and out of tune). The text setting is amateur-level, resulting in emotional dissonance with the incredibly serious topics. This, plus the terrible mixing and blatant editing mishaps, make the already poor piece intolerable at best. 


© 2023 Brutal New Music Reviews

originally written and published 19 July 2023

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