Paert songs (and the Pärt COTW generally...)

[french frank]

Accepted by whom? I have never seen his name rendered thus. I genuinely didn't know who was being referred to.

I believe the distinction is that in German, for example, the diæresis in ä indicates an alteration, raising (umlaut) of the simple a, which may serve a grammatical function (e.g. Apfel/Äpfel), whereas in Estonian ä is a letter in its own right. The alternative of adding e (ae,oe, ue), as in German, to indicate the vowel alteration is not strictly available in Estonian.

That, at least, is my (inexpert) understanding.

[Honoured Guest]

Meanwhile, Terry Riley celebrates his 80th birthday today, a few weeks before Arvo Pärt.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

How much consciousness-enhancing modernism would the young Arvo Pärt have encountered?

Well, from his Music of the '60s, it can be deduced that he was at least ... ahem ... partially aware of it. I would also suggest that this Music also makes it clear why the composer moved from such Music - he isn't very good at it. Perhaps more important to him, it's rather anonymous - it doesn't sound like any individual composer, (I'm trying to avoid puns on "particular") but just a general, all-purpose Modernist-ish. Whatever one feels about the later Music, it sounds like no other composer (other than, superficially, his many imitators).

[ahinton]

I think that if you have been exposed to the numbing idea of materialism as perpetrated by Stalinism, embracing religion can seem attractive as a form of rebellion against such regimes - and it certainly required courage for people to embrace religion under such regimes which I think deserves credit.

Fair comment.

The most significant living religious composer at the time when Part was writing his first such works in the late '70s was Messiaen - and it is interesting that the characteristic Partean sound-world has its origins in the Louange à l'Immortalité de Jésus as I think a comparison of this piece with Speigel im Speigel illustrates. Nonetheless, I think it is still clear that this is an individual sound world, one which has distinct expressive potential (as its use as incidental music demonstrates), and one rich in possibilities for development - and I don't hear for myself the composer showing any interest in investigating such developments in the works that he has produced since his emigration from Estonia in the early '80s.

Well, for me, as one who has no specific religious identity/persuasion to get in the way, the profoundly moving expressions in the Messiaen find no counterpart whatsoever in anyting by Pärt; Ok, that's only me, of course, but...

I experience from the Music he wrote in the late '70s reactions not dissimilar to those I get from Delius' Music - a beguiling, individual language that doesn't allow for extended Musical discourse.

That is in and of itself a most fascinating and telling notion, even though one to which I could not possibly contrive to subscribe in the particular context under discussion!

[Nick Armstrong]

Whatever one feels about the later Music, it sounds like no other composer (other than, superficially, his many imitators).

True enough but, my goodness, I find it (and his earlier music) profoundly unrewarding...

Oh well, there's plenty of different music out there! Thank the Lord!

[Flay]

For Alina had an enchanting simplicity

[Nick Armstrong]

For Alina had an enchanting simplicity

I thought it outstayed its welcome a long long time before it took its leave!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

True enough but, my goodness, I find it (and his earlier music) profoundly unrewarding...
Oh well, there's plenty of different music out there! Thank the Lord!

Yes - and when I posted my comments earlier in the week, I realized that I hadn't really paid much attention to Part's more recent stuff, so listened to Adam's Lament on Friday. Oh, dear - not only a quite dreary half-hour (yes - I know it's a "lament" but so are life-enhancing , masterworks by Tallis and Monteverdi), but also without any sense of individuality in the Music, I thought. It could have been Tavener or Gorecki or any one of their superficial imitators.

Heigh-ho - plenty of different stuff out there, as you say!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I thought it outstayed its welcome a long long time before it took its leave!

"Too many pieces of Music finish too long after the end." (Stravinsky.)

[Serial_Apologist]

"Too many pieces of Music finish too long after the end." (Stravinsky.)

Reminds me of bandleader Stan Tracey's comment re overlong solos, to the effect that in general he preferred them kept short, unless it was obvious to everyone including the bar tender that levels of inspiration had truly taken off!

[Nick Armstrong]

"Too many pieces of Music finish too long after the end." (Stravinsky.)

Good one, not heard that before!

[Serial_Apologist]

Good one, not heard that before!

Stravinsky is also quoted somewhere as saying, "If I had my way, I'd eliminate all those development sections from the Mozart symphonies; they'd be fine then!"

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Stravinsky is also quoted somewhere as saying, "If I had my way, I'd eliminate all those development sections from the Mozart symphonies; they'd be fine then!"

Ah; interesting - in a recorded BBC interview between Birtwistle and Carter, they both agreed on this point. (I disagree, btw! )

[Roehre]

Ah; interesting - in a recorded BBC interview between Birtwistle and Carter, they both agreed on this point. (I disagree, btw! )

Mahler said: for me Mozart ends with the double bar (i.e. at the end of the exposition)

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Mahler said: for me Mozart ends with the double bar ( i.e. at the end of the exposition)

Really? That's more surprising, given Mahler's own sense of what constituted the "tradition" to which he felt he belonged.

With Stravinsky, Carter and Birtwistle it's more understandable, with their enthusiastic emphasis on juxtaposition rather than transition - in fact, it's often struck me that it was/is more the transitionary episodes of the Sonata principle that most conflicted their own notions of what Music could best "do".