Joey Roukens, composer of new Requiem, went through a deep valley: ‘I changed from a healthy person into a zombie’

It is a bit crazy, says composer Joey Roukens: the two greatest pieces he has written so far, on which he has worked for years, will premiere within a few weeks of each other. Mid October was there First Symphonywhich was greeted with jubilation by the public and press – NRC spoke of a ‘new milestone’. And Thursday will be in the Muziekgebouw in Amsterdam Requiem premiered for the Nederlands Kamerkoor and Amsterdam Sinfonietta. Roukens wrote the work as the annual ‘Bosch Requiem’ of the November Music festival in Den Bosch, where it can be heard on Friday.

“With my symphony I came close to something like pride for the first time, a feeling that is actually foreign to me,” says Roukens (1982). “I’m quite a perfectionist, usually I hear in a performance especially what is not right. But now I thought: I’ve finally written a good piece.” It is precisely because of this that he feels pressure: “The symphony also arrived well in the hall and with the critics. But the requiem is a completely different work, with a more sober line-up of choir, strings and two percussionists. Are people waiting for that? Or does Joey Roukens fatigue set in, because of two of those great works right after each other?”

At the concurrence of two major premieres, something else comes: since the summer, Roukens has been struggling with health problems. Mild tinnitus he’d had for a year suddenly worsened to an excruciating ringing in both ears. At the same time, he suffered from “a burning sensation in the seat”, which means that he cannot sit for long: “I used to have that too, but only after three hours, or at a Wagner opera. Last summer I suddenly got it after sitting for fifty minutes, and then after half an hour, fifteen minutes.” A major handicap for someone who works sitting down and often composes at the piano.

Roukens: “In a very short time I changed from a healthy person into a zombie, I ate and slept badly, ended up in a negative spiral. Even listening to music was impossible. It was very frightening, I panicked and didn’t recognize myself anymore. In retrospect, it must have been related to stress; August was very intense, with deadlines and people pulling at me.”

Complaints back

Fortunately, after a deep dip, things are going a bit better. Roukens is happy that he has both versions of his First Symphony was able to attend, although the complaints have subsequently intensified again. That is also the reason that we do the interview via Skype.

Anyone who listens to previous work by Roukens, such as the high-energy Chase (2013) for the Concertgebouw Orchestra, does not immediately suspect that he is on the trail of an aspiring requiem composer. But appearances can be deceiving, because Roukens is a real requiem nerd, who has been under the spell of the genre since his teenage years. That of Cristobal de Morales was the first thing he had on CD; the first from Cherubim is another favorite (“more balanced than Mozart’s”). In the fifth grade of grammar school, he boasted that one day he would write a requiem himself – it took a while, but it happened.

In the Requiem Roukens shows his ‘meditative side’, a side that is in any case more prominent in his more recent work, also in the symphony. “You have very good composers who have one kind of expression, such as Morton Feldman or Arvo Pärt,” says Roukens. “But I’m more interested in composers with a wider expressive bandwidth. Like Beethoven: he can express everything from joy and ecstasy to anger and the deepest despair. I sometimes miss that ambition in contemporary composers. I am looking for that bandwidth myself.”

This is how he channels into the Requiem his great love for early religious music. “I had a Christian upbringing, but I am no longer religious and this preference is separate from that. The beauty of Bach, Gesualdo or de Symphony of Psalms by Stravinsky – in my opinion his best work after the early ballets – attracts me incredibly. Such works tap into a deeper spiritual layer and are often highlights in the oeuvres of the composers concerned, such as Mozart and Verdi. It is striking that many of them for their requiem fall back on polyphonic techniques from the old style of someone like Palestrina.”

Roukens also uses such Renaissance composition techniques: “The sound of sung Latin is so beautiful, it really belongs to the genre for me. And sung Latin comes out best when you use those techniques. At the same time, you have to be careful not to turn it into a Renaissance pastiche. I consider my Requiem rather like dreamed renaissance music, it pays homage to the genre.”

Secular Poems

Roukens has considerably ‘filtered’ the traditional requiem text, in order to arrive at an essence that also appeals to non-Christian listeners, while retaining its individuality. “The Latin texts give rise to a sacred kind of expression. But I wouldn’t be Joey Roukens if I didn’t put something in return. In the second part I use three secular poems in English, which call for a more contemporary expression. The epilogue, on a text by Mark Twain, is almost a singer-songwriter song. I also want it to be sung pop-like, certainly not with a puffy classical sound.”