Wednesday 7 April 2010

Arvo Part





I went you Tube searching for this piece of music... It's Arvo Part's Spiegel Im Spiegel, a piece of music which sends shivers down my spine.
Part wrote this piece in 1978. He was born in Estonia but moved to Austria and ultimately Germany. He was responsible for the style of music he called Tintinnabuli.

"Tintinnabuli is the mathematically exact connection from one line to another.....tintinnabuli is the rule where the melody and the accompaniment [accompanying voice]...is one. One plus one, it is one - it is not two. This is the secret of this technique." - from a conversation between Arvo Pärt and Antony Pitts recorded for BBC Radio 3 at the Royal Academy of Music in London on 29 March 2000, as printed in the liner notes of the Naxos Records release of Passio.

During the hunt I came across several pretty picture videos which were ok...... you know... just ok.
Now I'm no big fan of ballet or 'the dance'.... can't really make head nor tail of it, if I'm honest. But I liked this. If you have 5 minutes to spare, fill your brain with this... and let me know what you think.

5 comments:

  1. I like Arvo Part's music - it's very 'spare' and haunting. I'd never considered it as ballet music, nothwithstanding that anyone can dance to anything that has a recognisable rhythm and I'm not sure about this - I shall have to watch it again. At present I feel the visual element obstructs the music . . . but what do I know?

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  2. Now, I liked the music but I loved the dance. She is one talented and beautiful dancer. Thanks for sharing, and now I'm off to find more Arvo Part to see if it "speaks" to me any more - without lovely dancers distracting me!

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  3. I've heard this played often on Classic FM and never knew the tale behind it. Very interesting indeed. This reminds me of the Fibonacci Series employed by Bartók and Debussy on occasion. I admit i do enjoy ballet, this one was nicely choreographed, and i think it suits the piece.

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  4. Oh,thanks for this. It reminded me that I used to"enjoy" listening to Gorecki's Symphony of Sorrowful Songs" I don't know why it reminded me but it did!

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  5. I wish I had a nice ass like that.

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