Sultan Mehmed Ii: The 21 Year Old Who Brought an End to The Roman Empire

The ConstruKction Of Light is the twelfth studio album by English band King Crimson, released in May 2000 by record label Virgin. It has the distinction of being the first studio album to be released by King Crimson without two longtime members (the first without drummer Bill Bruford who debuted with the band for 1973's Larks' Tongues in Aspic and without bassist Tony Levin who joined in 1981). The departure of these stalwarts brought an end to the "double trio" era of the band and their return to a quartet: Robert Fripp, Adrian Belew, Trey Gunn and Pat Mastelotto. Fripp was now not only the last remaining member from any lineup prior to 1981 but the only Englishman left as well.

"… he sat down in an armchair, pored over for the last time the score of the mourning music he himself had composed for his funeral, and - when lightly touched by the angel of death - bowed his head and passed away." C. F. Schubart's description of the death in 1789 of the eighty-year-old F. X. Richter, Kapellmeister of the Cathédrale Notre-Dame in Strasbourg, may be rather romantic (two years later an almost identical story related to the last moments of W. A. Mozart), yet when looking at the clean copy of the autograph score we cannot resist the idea that the Requiem encapsulates the quintessence of his legacy.