Sunday Afternoon Reflections

I've been listening to a lot of Pärt's music lately...I've been researching for a paper on his music, and so while I read and take notes I've had several pieces on as a vivid reminder of what I'm working with.


This particular incarnation of Spiegel im Spiegel is one of my favorites. The piece is made up of tonic triads that repeat with little directed movement as in functional (i.e. common practice) harmony. There is motion, but Pärt manages to create a sense of timelessness and of tranquility. The stillness is neither stagnant nor unsettling; it is not a silence of despair or existential contemplation.


If I remember my high school German properly, that title translates to "Mirror within mirror". Perhaps, typical of Pärt, the mirror could represent contemplation of God and the divine. Humans being made in God's image and their attempts to mimic good works in honor of God. It would be an easy argument. However, the title could also be evocative of individual experience and contemplation-personal interaction with the work as it unfolds. I get the sense when I'm listening that it's ok that my mind is wandering. Pärt's music does not hit you upside the head and tell you to pay attention. It is there if you seek it but it does not evangelize.


That seems incredibly counter to most of my musical experience. The idea that you don't have to interact with the piece in an active, participatory way in order for it to be effective. It just is. An aural space to reflect...does anybody see where I'm going with this?


Frikkin' John Adams. On the Transmigration of Souls. If you're not familiar, the piece was written after 9-11. Its text is derived from missing persons posters from around Ground Zero. Names of the missing people are read quietly as a chorus drones in the background (there's more to the piece, such as an awesomely poignant quote from Ives' The Unanswered Question, but just go take a listen and I'll make my point here). Adams has famously referred to the piece as a "memory space"; a musical place for reflection. I find the piece completely haunting, and at times the piece interferes with any individual contemplation I might attempt. But the approach is similar, the concept of creating a moving-yet-timeless musical space.


How many 20th century composers have utilized this technique? Certainly the minimalists have the spare quality necessary, but many see the minimalist music of the 60s and 70s to be fiercely repetitive. The music of Pärt, and Adams' On the Transmigration of Souls seem to take the aesthetic a step further. 


Rather than state, I have nothing to say, and I'm saying it, and that is poetry (John Cage), these pieces seem more zen. The music just is. It unfolds, and you can interact with it however you choose. I think Paul Hillier summed it up quite well in his book Arvo Pärt: "The content of such art moves before us as in a procession, one thing after another; whatever particular detail may be foremost at any given moment, the procession is always simply there, and will continue until it is over: it does not have to get anywhere else-it has no appointments to keep."


What do you think? Am I crazy to draw this parallel between Pärt and Adams? Do you get the same sense listening to these pieces?