Here was the plan for this week: I would run a search for a list of the greatest classical music composers, scroll down the list until I came to an unfamiliar name, and then pick a piece by that composer to listen to. Sure enough, I found a list of "The Top 100 Greatest Classical Composers" at RateYourMusic.com -- HERE. I clicked on the link and began to scroll down. I wasn't surprised at all to see J. S. Bach listed as number one followed by Beethoven as number two -- but then...
From an article in Wikipedia, I found this information: "Arvo Pärt (Estonian pronunciation: [ˈɑrʋo ˈpært]; born 11 September 1935) is an Estonian composer of classical and religious music. Since the late 1970s, Pärt has worked in a minimalist style that employs tintinnabuli, a compositional technique he invented. Pärt's music is in part inspired by Gregorian chant. His most performed works include Fratres (1977), Spiegel im Spiegel (1978), and Für Alina (1976). From 2011 to 2018, Pärt was the most performed living composer in the world, and the second most performed in 2019—after John Williams." Okay, I'll look up "tintinnabuli" later, but for now, " From 2011 to 2018, Pärt was the most performed living composer in the world, and the second most performed in 2019—after John Williams." I suppose that is plausible, but I have to be honest -- I listen to classical music on the radio all the time, and I've been to many concerts, and I've never even heard nor come across his name. And he's listed as the third "greatest classical composer" of all time as ranked by RateYourMusic.com? I'll listen to "Tabula Rasa" later this week and see what I think. Stay tuned. Pärt.So here's what I did"
When I listen to classical music throughout the day -- on TV (a Music Choice channel), on my cell phone (usually through Spotify), over the internet (most often WQXR out of New York City) or on the radio (generally WVTF) -- if a piece "speaks to me" or piques my interest in some way, I'll stop what I'm doing, listen a bit more intently, and think to myself, "What is that piece? Who composed that?" So after I listened to "Tabula Rasa' one time, I thought I'd run a little experiment: as I sat on the couch working a crossword puzzle, and my wife sat across the room scrolling through messages on her phone, I played Pärt's piece loud enough so that she could hear it. I wanted to see if -- in any way -- this piece would "speak" to her. I mean after all, Pärt was listed as the third greatest composer ever -- would this work pique her interest in such a way that she would stop what she was doing and look up to listen? Very scientific, huh? I hit the play button, continued my crossword puzzle, and waited to see what would happen. Nothing. Things continued status quo. Toward the end of the work, I said something like, "What do you think of this piece?" She kind of grunted out the equivalent of a "meh." "It's good background music," she said. True, that it is. I did enjoy the work, and it has an interesting structure, though I don't think it's a piece I'd go back to very often. "Tabula Rasa" was written in 1977, and it contains two movements, "Ludus" (Latin for "game") and "Silentium" ("silence"). It was composed as a double concerto for two solo violins, prepared piano (a piano that has had its sounds temporarily altered by placing bolts, screws, mutes, rubber erasers, and/or other objects on or between the strings), and chamber orchestra. The first movement begins with the two solo violins playing a double-f octave "A," and then after an eight beat pause, the string section of the orchestra plays a simple pulsating rhythm The two solo violins then offer a few bars of a simple melody before the work fades into a pause. The pattern is then repeated: the strings begin the pulsating rhythm, the solo violins develop their melodies are bit more, and then it all fades into a pause before the patten begins anew. Each time the added sequence plays for a few beats more than the previous statement. Things get interesting just after seven minutes into the piece when the piano strikes an ominous and very deep bass chord, and the ever-developing melodies of the violins get more frantic if not panicky. The mood calms at the start of the second movement, described in an article on Wikipedia as a "mensuration canon." Here's the description: "Pärt divides the instruments into three sections; solo violins, violin I and violin II, and viola and cello. Each pair, divided into melodic and tintinnabuli voices, begin on a central pitch, and move at a different rhythmic speeds. Pärt expands the music by adding one pitch above and below the central pitch of each pair in each successive section. Every time the solo violins reach their central pitch, “D,” the piano again plays a D minor chord and the contrabass plays an octave “D.” Once each of the sections reach their expanded octave range, they fade out of the texture. The solo violins, moving at the slowest rhythmic speed, reach their octave span in measure 130, and then begin a downward descent of a D minor four-octave scale. As the violins move down the scale, the lower voices return to the texture and assist in the downward motion, until the violins finish their scale, leaving solo viola, solo cello, and solo bass to continue the scale in their low register. The viola and the cello finish the scale, leaving only the contrabass, which continues to play until reaching “E,” or the second scale degree of the D minor scale. Pärt omits the final “D” of the scale, leaving the listener with four written bars of silence in which to resolve the piece." The complete article is HERE. In a section of the article labeled "Notable Performance," Wikipedia notes, "The first performance of Tabula Rasa in Tallinn 1977 was considered to be a major success. The composer Erkki-Sven Tüür, said about the performance: 'I was carried beyond. I had the feeling that eternity was touching me through this music...nobody wanted to start clapping.'" Well, I did enjoy the work, and I found the information about Pärt, his minimalist style of tintinnabuli (info HERE), and the structure of this piece to be fascinating. However, I can't say that I was "carried beyond" by this piece or that "I had the feeling that eternity was touching me through this music" -- not, say, like I feel when I listen to Mahler's Adagietto from his Symphony Number 5 -- but, like my wife said, it makes for decent background music.
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A New Hope:As the header above says, each week I will listen to a piece of classical music that I've never heard before, and then I will report out what I thought about it. Archives
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