Arvo Part, building emotions on a single pivot.

My recent favorite composer is Arvo Part. I actually listened to his music before but not very systematically. He is amazing of using very simple melodic and harmonic material to develop beautiful and profound music, which is a big contrast to many other contemporary classical music composers. His uses a lot of elements from medieval chants and some renaissance harmonic scales. He can create pure, lyrical and minimal-technique piece such as " fur Alina" and also rather dense, tragic, profound piece such as " Cantus for the memory of Benjamin Britten".

In " cantus", the basic music material is a dialogue betwween a descending natural scale on the " A" played by the strings and the repeatable " church bell" sounds played at the high end of the scale by the percussion session. The piece starts with a few remote sounds of "church bells". Then the string session opens the piece by repeating a descending of natural scale of "AGFEDCBA" in very quiet "pianissimo" dynamics. The violin session and viola/cello session plays the scale with a different time difference as if it is a counterpoint. This descending scale sounds almost unbearably sad because it feels like you are walking down the steps toward an unknown abyss and it repeats itself again and again with different parts in the string sessions. In its increased dynamics from "pianissimo" to " forte", you almost felt waves and waves of nothingness are approaching you. In parallel, the "church bells" from faraway strike at the top end of that scale on "A" to contrast this draggy scale as if to remind you the existence of pains and time. As the string sessions become louder and more grave, the "church bell" sounds changed its strength accordingly. The " church bells" in this piece have two roles. They are not only a marker of in space as to contrast the sound of the string session, they are also a marker in time to keep the listeners aware of the procession of teh melodic line. Toward the end of the piece, the descending of the scale become extremely slow and grave and the strings all linger at one note "B" before the resolution to "A" for a long time. And You, the listener and also a passenger, is stuck at the step on the descending staircase toward death and it is so painful that you can not reach the next one. And yet, the church bells still ring to remind you the time is imminent. At the end of the piece, when the strings are all trembling at the end of the scale, you feel like you are choked and your heart stops. At this moment, you felt the death is falling upon you and part of you has transcended with the church bell. Your body and soul are separated and you reach eternity.