Combat In The Year Thousand

Edward Rushton's Combat In The Year Thousand for Piano Quartet.

Combat in the Year Thousand is based on material from my Schubert Ensemble commission, L'An Mil. Both pieces take their inspiration in part from the writings of Rodolfus Glaber, a rebellious monk who chronicled world history and current events around the turn of the last millennium.

Banners fly, thousands of knights wield axes and swords with brutal disregard for human life. The living shout, trumpets blare, the dying scream. At night the tumult abates and there is time for peaceful meditation, but the new day is full again of the incessant sounds of combat. A thousand years later, we still hearthe same sounds. - Edward Rushton

Commission made possible by Tuuichiro Nakajima for Hisako.