Music for Watching Gray fade into Black
Music for Watching a Drizzly Gray Sunday Evening Fade into Black Night
Arvo Pärt (paert or peart),
an Estonian composer of classical and religious music who is exactly my age within a few days, is said, by people who count these things, to be the most widely performed living composer in the world today. I’m trying to understand that, to grasp “why.” Pärt grew up in the Soviet system in which he suffered much abuse from authorities charging that his music did not meet acceptable soviet standards. That I could understand from a government system so totalitarian that it would care to control music composition: why bother, why not just ignore him, but, no all government is all ways always all bad, government of officious bureaucracy is the worst possible, and Pärt suffered as a victim of oppressive bureaucracy until he managed to obtain permission to leave the Estonian SSR and emigrate to Austria, then to Germany.
I do not understand Pärt. Written in his minimalist style, and is indeed minimal, “Fur Alina” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmBrepbZji0 is an example that I've listened to any number of times, and I just don’t get it other than as drift peacefully off into dreamland music. Would you give “Fur Alina” a standing ovation, no, you’d be asleep.
Or another: how about “Silentium”? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHJ5qleyzyk
Someone explain Pärt’s appeal to me. Maybe it's that there’s so much accompaniment he could have pounded and crashed that was left out so we could hear the silence. IDK. Or is Pärt messing with me? Minimalist? Comes to mind the emperor’s new clothes.
When you reach the ripe old age of 82, as Arvo and I have, may you have equally productive things to worry about.
T
Painting: oil and canvas, Arvo Pärt, Pablo Schugurensky, Spain
Arvo Pärt (paert or peart),
I do not understand Pärt. Written in his minimalist style, and is indeed minimal, “Fur Alina” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmBrepbZji0 is an example that I've listened to any number of times, and I just don’t get it other than as drift peacefully off into dreamland music. Would you give “Fur Alina” a standing ovation, no, you’d be asleep.
Or another: how about “Silentium”? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHJ5qleyzyk
Someone explain Pärt’s appeal to me. Maybe it's that there’s so much accompaniment he could have pounded and crashed that was left out so we could hear the silence. IDK. Or is Pärt messing with me? Minimalist? Comes to mind the emperor’s new clothes.
When you reach the ripe old age of 82, as Arvo and I have, may you have equally productive things to worry about.
T
Painting: oil and canvas, Arvo Pärt, Pablo Schugurensky, Spain