Paring Away

Globe thistles and mirror - 2

Art is a strange master, and it doesn't really matter what medium we're talking about. All artists have to struggle with certain similar issues.

Our choir is preparing for a concert this Friday, devoted to the music of the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt (you can listen to it all here) so I've been thinking about his music a great deal. Today I was reading a recent article in the New York Times, written because it's Pärt's 75th birthday this year, in which he discusses his search and his method. Pärt began, like so many other 20th century composers, writing dissonant and aggressive 12-tone music. But the path to his own compositional style, which departs radically from that mode, came about after many years of struggle, both internal and with the Soviet authorities. For a long time, he stopped composing completely because this musical language no longer spoke for him; at the same time his personal experience and philosophy toward the world deepened:

“I think if the human has conflict in his soul and with everything, then this system of 12-tone music is exactly good for this,” he told me. “But if you have no more conflict with people, with the world, with God, then it is not necessary. You have no need to have a Browning in your pocket, or a dagger.”

One day he heard some Gregorian chants, and became captivated - even obsessed - with plainsong, these very simple medieval one-line, unison melodies of rising and falling notes. He filled pages and pages with these melodies.

“In one moment it was clear how much deeper and more pure is this world. Everyone has many antennae, and they catch what we cannot even register in our minds. But the feeling is clear.”

I was struck by these quotes, because they encapsulate a lot of what I've been thinking about in my approach to visual art. There is always a lot of pressure to work in the prevailing "modes," which might be, for example, conceptual art, more intellectual than visual; or pure abstraction; or a kind of expressionism that draws on the violence and chaos of modern life. All of these styles have attraction to me; I understand them and why they are valid. But the fact remains, when I look deep inside, that I have no need to make any artistic points through visual intellectualism, nor to express dark, turbulent emotions. This doesn't mean that I don't feel - of course I feel - or that I don't have anythign to say. But my emotional world, and the visual aspects of the real world that I'm drawn to look at and respond to, are much more akin to what Arvo Pärt found in plainsong and tries to do in his music. His example gives me courage to find my own way.

Singing this music has been very interesting, and will be even more so now. Pärt is not a minimalist, though he's sometimes been lumped in with that school of composition. To say there is no conflict or turbulence within his music would be wrong, but these are emotions that have been processed in some way and to some extent, resolved, as they are in Bach, the composer whose music perhaps speaks to me the most. Nor is the music simple, any more than any human being is simple, but out of complexity comes a musical expression that feels whole, unified, beautiful, and, in some undefinable way, simple.

Some call Pärt a mystic; I doubt he would use that term, but I understand what he said below to the article's author. Note that he's not saying that Holy Scripture itself was the focus for composers - he is explaingin why plainsong, Gregorian chant, was "Holy Scripture" for centuries of composers:

I asked if his attraction to religious music drew him into the church, but that was a distinction he didn’t recognize. “There is no border that divided,” he said. “Religion and life — it is all the same.” He was reading early Christian writings while he was immersing himself in musical study. “The old music, when it was written, the focus of this music was the Holy Scripture for composers for centuries,” he said. “It was the reality for every artist. Through one, you can understand the other. Otherwise, you are like some teachers in the Soviet Union who say, ‘Bach was a great composer but he had a defect; he was religious.’ It means this teacher cannot understand the music of Bach.”

Comments

[Peter]

"I have no need to make any artistic points through visual intellectualism, nor to express dark, turbulent emotions. This doesn't mean that I don't feel - of course I feel - or that I don't have anything to say. But my emotional world, and the visual aspects of the real world that I'm drawn to look at and respond to, are much more akin to what Arvo Pärt found in plainsong and tries to do in his music. His example gives me courage to find my own way."

That speaks to me today on an academic and a personal level. Thanks, Beth.

(This post is wonderful reading, by the way.)

[Dick]

I have loved Pärt's music for a long time. As a listener, discovering him was for me, in a sense, the next step on from plainsong. Having always bracketed the cool, stark, even architecture of plainsong separately from the more sequential, developmental patterns of all other music, suddenly there was Arvo Pärt constructing both polyphony and orchestration according to the same principles.

A fine article, Beth. Thanks for the link. I was especially taken with the image of Pärt bopping his musicians on the head with a red rose! Thanks too for your reflections, which, as ever, bring insights and provocations for further reflection!

I look forward to any accounts of the choir's work on/performance of the pieces this Friday. Go well!

[john]

thanks for this piece.It was an absolutely beautiful day out here in the West so i didn't feel like working.Went home early and after a run in the country and a good dose of Jose Saramago,the music was a nice respite and mellow conclusion to the day

[Laurel Massé]

This piece is exactly what I needed this morning. Thank you.

[Jean]

I just listened to the whole of this - utterly gorgeous. How absolutely wonderful to be singing it. I love Part's music so much.

[Seth]

"I have no need to make any artistic points through visual intellectualism, nor to express dark, turbulent emotions. This doesn't mean that I don't feel - of course I feel - or that I don't have anything to say."

Thanks for this - exactly where I am right now. Nothing wrong with intellectualisation per se, but it seems that in contemporary art, a kind of self-absorbed focus on cleverness and novelty often forces aesthetics and craftsmanship into the back seat.

[Natalie]

Beth, I *love* these drawings - both versions but especially the one on the dark side. I had just been looking at some of Matisse's simple line drawings and yours have the same spirit of pared-down joy and loving attention to the subject. I hope you'll keep on exploring this track.
Bravo too for the Arvo Part connection.