This chapter examines the function of memory in Max Richter’s music, arguing that it forms a key ingredient in the composer’s aesthetic.

Given its presence in Richter’s oeuvre in general, and especially on the composer’s debut album, Memoryhouse (2002), it is surprising that comparatively little has been written about this aspect of Richter’s music. When Kyle Lemmon suggested in a 2008 interview with the composer that his albums often ‘[dealt] with the concept of memories or … lost snippets of them’, the composer’s response was to note that the ‘partial … fragmentary and imperfect’ nature of memory was what appealed to him the most.

Drawing on Jann Pasler’s concept of a musical ‘memory palace’ (Pasler 1993), Richter’s bricolage-like, scrapbook-style approach to memory in Memoryhouse — where fragments are fused from a variety of musical and extramusical sources — yields a rich panoply of intertextual layers where collective and personal memory, history and testimony, overlap and interact. However, a closer study of the album’s intratextual design reveals the presence of several recurring themes and connecting devices, which suggests that the memories contained in Memoryhouse may not be as ‘partial’ and ‘fragmentary’ as the composer suggests.