On the New Music - Part 4
After silence that which comes nearest to expressing
the inexpressible is music. -Aldous Huxley
Introduction
Initially I was inspired to write on the New Music and thought a few articles would be sufficient to express the background and direction of our effort in OM Choirs throughout the world, the aspiration of the collective body and the method of the music's descent, but I find myself inspired to write still more in the light of recent experiences, correspondence and talks with others who see the emergence of a new spiritual dimension, especially in all music.
On the evening of my return to the United States I attended the OM Choir in Auroville prior to departure and was blessed by participating in moments of unparalleled beauty as the group sang as one body to the Divine in a call for the descent of the New Music. Among the singers are a few musicians and each expressed the same experience, that they had never heard such beauty and richness, such exquisite harmonies, interweaving melodies, unique modulations and wondrous progressions that seemed infinite and effortless, as if a Divine Musician had written the score and poured it through our souls. Returning from the OM Choir we spoke little but there was a unity so profound it was palpable.
My studies of the human voice as a solo instrument, in a small ensemble, chamber choir, or as part of a full choir, span more than 55 years. Though I am deeply moved by the beauty of the piano, cello, violin, etc. again, as individual instruments or in an orchestral setting, I feel competent only to speak on the human voice.
This instrument that is given to us, within us, is capable not only of an extraordinary range from the highest coloratura soprano to the basso profundo, but has the flexibility to produce overtones, sing a straight tone or employ vibrato, to blend perfectly with another voice or voices, to sing the softest pianississimo to a powerful fortissimo as in the Wagnerian voice that can be heard over a full orchestra. Almost all composers have written works for solo voice or chorus, either a cappella or accompanied, the greatest of them bringing down from spiritual heights a music to uplift, inspire or lead to meditative reflection. And yet there remain greater depths to plumb and heavenlier heights for music to descend into the very cells of the body and from there into the earth itself, transforming man and his world.
An unparalled moment in the world's history is unfolding, especially in choral music, the music of the human voice in its highest aspiration as many feel the emergence of a new spiritual or mystical dimension. There many composers receiving touches of the "Music of the Spheres" or music from the highest reaches of the heavens and translating it into works of profound beauty. The list is extraordinary and formidable. Some of the names have become beloved of thousands who sing their music, others have still to gain a wider audience as the world opens to the beauty they have brought down. I list here a number of composers who have caught the threads of a diviner music, based on my research of more than 50 years. The works of Arvo PŠrt, Eric Whitacre, John Tavener, and Morten Lauridsen are now standards in the choral repertoire. The output of others varies but the sound-significance of a descent from above is clearly present. Among these are Pēteris Vasks, Ola Gjello Javier Busto, Rene Clausen, Alfred Schnittke, Georgy Sviridov, Sofia Gubaidulina, Einojuhani Rautavaara, Henryk G—recki, Stephen Chatman, Imant Raminsh, Pawel Lukaszewski, Paul Mealor and many others. The list goes on and on, a flowering unprecedented since the age of Bach.
Here is a quote from Pēteris Vasks: "Most people today no longer possess beliefs, love and ideals. The spiritual dimension has been lost. My intention is to provide food for the soul and this is what I preach in my works."
Music fills the infinite between two souls -
Rabindranath Tagore
Words of the Mother on Music
1953
"There is a state of consciousness in union with the Divine in which you can enjoy all you read, as you can all you observe, even the most indifferent books or the most uninteresting things. You can hear poor music, even music from which one would like to run away, and yet you can, not for its outward self but because of what is behind, enjoy it. You do not lose the distinction between good music and bad music, but you pass through either into that which it expresses. For there is nothing in the world which has not its ultimate truth and support in the Divine."
Questions and Answers 1929 - 1931 (28 April 1929)
What is there "behind" the external form of music?
Music is a means of expressing certain thoughts, feelings, emotions, aspirations. There is even a region where all these movements exist and from there, as they are brought down, they take a musical form. One who is a very good composer, with some inspiration, will produce very beautiful music, for he is a good musician. A bad musician may also have a very high inspiration; he may receive something which is good, but as he possesses no musical capacity, what he produces is terribly commonplace, ordinary, uninteresting. But if you go beyond, if you reach just the place where there is this origin of music ̶ of the idea and emotion and inspiration ̶ if you reach there, you can taste these things without being in the least troubled by the forms; the commonplace musical form can be linked up again with that, because that was the inspiration of the writer of the music. Naturally, there are cases where there is no inspiration, where the origin is merely a kind of mechanical music. It is not always interesting in every case. But what I mean is that there is an inner condition in which the external form is not the most important thing; it is the origin of the music, the inspiration from beyond, which is important; it is not purely the sounds, it is what the sounds express.
So the expression cannot be better than the inspiration?
There are musical pieces which have no inspiration, they are like mechanical works. There are musicians who possess a great virtuosity, that is, who have thoroughly mastered the technique and who, for example, can execute without making a mistake the fastest and most difficult things. They can play music but it expresses nothing: it is like a machine. It means nothing, except that they have great skill. For what is most important is the inspiration, in everything that one does; in all human creations the most important thing is inspiration. Naturally, the execution must be on the same level as the inspiration; to be able to ex- press truly well the highest things one must have a very good technique. I do not say that technique is not necessary; it is even indispensable, but it is not the only indispensable thing, it is less important than inspiration.
The essential quality of music depends upon where the music comes from, upon its origin.
For music it is very special; it is difficult, it needs an intermediary. And it is like that for all other things, for literature also, for poetry, for painting, for everything one does. The true value of one's creation depends on the origin of one's inspiration, on the level, the height where one finds it. But the value of the execution depends on the vital strength which expresses it. To complete the genius both must be there. This is very rare. Generally it is the one or the other, more often the vital. And then there are those other kinds of music we have ̶ the music of the cafe ́-concert, of the cinema ̶ it has an extraordinary skill, and at the same time an exceptional platitude, an extraordinary vulgarity. But as it has an extraordinary skill, it seizes you in the solar plexus and it is this music that you remember; it grasps you at once and holds you and it is very difficult to free yourself from it, for it is well-made music, music very well made. It is made vitally with vital vibrations, but what is behind is frightful.
But imagine this same vital power of expression, with the inspiration coming from far above ̶ the highest inspiration possible, when all the heavens open before us ̶ then that becomes wonderful. There are certain passages of Cesar Franck, certain passages of Beethoven, certain passages of Bach, there are pieces by others also which have this inspiration and power. But it is only a moment, it comes as a moment, it does not last. You cannot take the entire work of an artist as being on that level. Inspiration comes like a flash; sometimes it lasts sufficiently long, when the work is sustained; and when that is there, the same effect is produced, that is, if you are attentive and concentrated, suddenly that lifts you up, lifts up all your energies, it is as though someone opened out your head and you were flung into the air to tremendous heights and magnificent lights. It produces in a few seconds results that are obtained with so much difficulty through so many years of yoga. Only, in general, one may fall down afterwards, because the consciousness is not there as the basis; one has the experience and afterwards does not even know what has happened. But if you are prepared, if you have indeed prepared your consciousness by yoga and then the thing happens, it is almost definitive.
What is the cause of the great difference between European and Indian music? Is it the origin or the expression?
It is both but in an inverse sense. This very high inspiration comes only rarely in European
music; rare also is a psychic origin, very rare. Either it comes from high above or it is vital. The expression is almost always, except in a few rare cases, a vital expression ̶ interesting, powerful. Most often, the origin is purely vital. Sometimes it comes from the very heights, then it is wonderful. Sometimes it is psychic, particularly in what has been religious music, but this is not very frequent.
Indian music, when there are good musicians, has almost always a psychic origin; for example, the ragas have a psychic origin, they come from the psychic. The inspiration does not often come from above. But Indian music is very rarely embodied in a strong vital. It has rather an inner and intimate origin. I have heard a great deal of Indian music, a great deal; I have rarely heard Indian music having vital strength, very rarely; perhaps not more than four or five times. But very often I have heard Indian music having a psychic origin, it translates itself almost directly into the physical. And truly one must then concentrate, and as it is ̶ how to put it? ̶ very tenuous, very subtle, as there are none of those intense vital vibrations, one can easily glide within it and climb back to the psychic origin of the music. It has that effect upon you, it is a kind of ecstatic trance, as from an intoxication. It makes you enter a little into trance. Then if you listen well and let yourself go, you move on and glide, glide into a psychic consciousness. But if you remain only in the external consciousness, the music is so tenuous that there is no response from the vital, it leaves you altogether flat. Sometimes, there was a vital force, then it became quite good.... I myself like this music very much, this kind of theme developing into a play. The theme is essentially very musical: and then it is developed with variations, innumerable variations, and it is always the same theme which is developed in one way or another. In Europe there were musicians who were truly musicians and they too had the thing: Bach had it, he used to do the same sort of thing, Mozart had it, his music was purely musical, he had no intention of expressing any other thing, it was music for music's sake. But this manner of taking a certain number of notes in a certain relation (they are like almost infinite variations), personally I find it wonderful to put you in repose, and you enter deep within yourself. And then, if you are ready, it gives you the psychic consciousness: something that makes you withdraw from the external consciousness, which makes you enter elsewhere, enter within.
In what form does music come to the great composers? That is, is it only the melody that comes or is it what we hear?
But that depends upon the musician. This is just what I was saying. For example, here in India, the science of harmony does not exist much, so the thing is translated by melody. As soon as the vital intervenes, there comes a kind of harmonic complexity in the music. That gives it a richness, a plenitude which it did not have.
But is it the melody that comes?
No, it is the music, and music is not necessarily melody. It is a relation of sounds which is not necessarily melodic. Melody is a part of this relation of sounds.
After death, does the inner being continue to progress?
That depends altogether upon the person. For everyone it is different. There are people ̶ for example, writers, musicians, artists ̶ people who have lived on intellectual heights, who feel that they still have something further to do, that they have not finished what they had undertaken to do, have not reached the goal they had fixed for themselves, so they are ready to remain in the earth atmosphere as long as they can, with as much cohesiveness as possible and they try to manifest themselves and continue their progress in other human bodies. I have seen many such cases, I have seen the very interesting case of a musician who was a pianist (a pianist of great worth), who had hands which were a marvel of skill, accuracy, precision, force, rapidity of movement, indeed, it was absolutely remarkable. This man died relatively young with the feeling that if he had continued to live he would have continued to progress in his musical expression. And such was the intensity of his aspiration that his subtle hands maintained their form without being dissolved, and each time he met anyone a little receptive and passive and a good musician, his hands would enter the hands of those who were playing ̶ the person who was playing at the time could play well but in an ordinary way; but at that moment he became not merely a virtuoso but a wonderful artist during the time he played. It was the hands of the other that were making use of his. This is a phenomenon I know. I have seen the same thing in the case of a painter: it was also a matter of hands. The same thing with regard to some writers, and here it was the brain that kept quite a precise form and entered the brain of someone who was sufficiently receptive and suddenly made him write extraordinary things, infinitely more beautiful than anything he had written before. I saw that taking hold of someone. It was in the case of a composer of music ̶ not one of those who execute, but who compose, like Beethoven, like Bach, like César Franck but César Franck executed also). The composition of music is an extremely cerebral activity. Well, here also the brain of a great musician came in contact with one who was engaged in writing an opera and made him compose wonderful things and arranged on paper all the parts. He was busy writing an opera and it is extremely complex for the performers who have to bring out in the music the thought of the person who has composed; and that man (I knew him) when he received this formation had a blank paper before him and then he started writing; I saw him writing, putting lines, then some figures, on a big, very big page and when he reached the bottom, the orchestration of the Overture (for example, of a certain act) was completed (orchestration means the distribution of certain lines of music to each one of the instruments). And he was doing it simply on a paper, merely by this wonderful mental power. And it was not only his own: it was coming to him from a musical mind that incarnated in him.... Whilst I was there I saw him writing in front of me a page like that: it took him about half an hour or three-quarters of an hour. And he got such a reputation that even big well- known musicians brought him their works for orchestration. He did it better than anyone, and just in that way on his paper. He had no need to hear the music or anything. Afterwards, it was tried out and it was always very good. There were so many violins, so many cellos, so many altos, all the instruments: some were playing this, others playing that, yet others playing other things, sometimes all together, at other times one after another (it is very complicated, not a simple thing), well, there, while playing, hearing or even reading (sometimes he took the score and read it) he knew which notes had to be distributed to which instrument, which notes had to be played by another, and so on. And he had very clearly the feeling of something entering into him and helping him.
"There is a domain far above the mind which we could call the world of Harmony and, if you can reach there, you will find the root of all harmony that has been manifested in whatever form upon earth. For instance, there is a certain line of music, consisting of a few supreme notes, that was behind the productions of two artists who came one after another - one a concerto of Bach, another a concerto of Beethoven. The two are not alike on paper and differ to the but in their essence they are the same. One and the same vibration of consciousness, one wave of significant harmony touched both these artists. Beethoven caught a larger part, but in him it was more mixed with the inventions and interpolations of his mind; Bach received less, but what he seized of it was purer. The vibration was that of victorious emergence of consciousness, consciousness tearing itself out of unconsciousness in a triumphant uprising and birth.
If by Yoga you are capable of reaching this source of all art, then you are master, if you will, of all the arts. "
"Among the great modern musicians there have been several whose consciousness, when they created, came into touch with a higher consciousness. Caesar Frank played on the organ as one inspired; he had an opening into the psychic life and he was conscious of it and to a great extent expressed it. Beethoven, when he composed the Ninth Symphony, had the vision of an opening into a higher world and of the descent of a higher world into this earthly plane. Wagner had strong powerful intimations of the occult world; he had the instinct of occultism and the sense of the occult and through it he received his greatest inspiration. But he worked mainly on the vital level and his mind came in constantly to interfere and mechanised his inspiration. His work for the greater part is too mixed, too often obscure and heavy, although powerful. But when he could cross the vital and the mental levels and reach a higher world, some of the glimpses he had were of an exceptional beauty, as in Parsifal, in some parts of Tristan and lseult and most in its last great Act. "
The Mother
Of the communion between Nature and Spirit the Mother, while describing an experience, said:
"... suddenly I heard, as if they came from all the corners of the earth, those great notes one sometimes hears in the subtle physical, a little like those of Beethoven's Concerto in D-major, which come in moments of great progress, as though fifty orchestras had burst forth all in unison, without a single false note, to express the joy of this new communion between Nature and Spirit, the meeting of old friends who come together again after having been separated for so long."
"There are sounds which belong to the highest regions, and in fact, the sound we have here gives the feeling of a noise in comparison with that sound.
For example, there are regions harmonious and musical in which one hears something which is the origin of the music we have here - but the sounds of material, physical music seem absolutely barbaric in comparison with that music! When one has heard that, even the most perfect instrument is inadequate. All constructed instruments, among which the violin certainly has the purest sound, are very much inferior in their expression to the music of this world of harmonies.
The human voice when absolutely pure is of all instruments the one which expresses it best; but it is still . . . it has a sound which seems so harsh, so gross compared with that. When one has been in that region, one truly knows what music is. And it has so perfect a clarity that at the same time as the sound one has the full understanding of what is said. That is, one has the principle of the idea, without words, simply with the sound and all the inflexions of the . . . one can't call it sensations, nor feelings. . . what sees to be closest would be some kind of soul-states of consciousness. All these inflexions are clearly perceptible through the nuances of the sound. And certainly, those who were great musicians, geniuses from the point of view of music, must have been more or less consciously in contact with that. The physical world as we have it today is an absolutely gross world; it looks like a caricature.
The Mother
The role of music lies in helping the consciousness uplift itself towards the spiritual heights.
The Mother
Sri Aurobindo on the Arts
"I do not know what to say on the subject you propose to me - the superiority of music to poetry - for my appreciation of music is bodiless and inexpressible, while about poetry I can write at ease with an expert knowledge. But is it necessary to fix a scale of greatness between two fine arts when each has its own greatness and can touch in its own way the extremes of aesthetic Ananda? Music, no doubt, goes nearest to the infinite and to the essence of things because it relies wholly on the ethereal vehicle, sabda, (architecture by the way can do something of the same kind at the other extreme even in its imprisonment in mass); but painting and sculpture have their revenge by liberating visible form into ecstasy, while poetry though it cannot do with the sound what music does, yet can make a many-stringed harmony, a sound revelation winging the creation by the word and setting afloat vivid suggestions of form and color, - that gives it in a very subtle kind the power of all the arts. Who shall decide between such claims or be a judge between these god-heads?"
Music . . . can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable.
Leonard Bernstein
The New Music is not 'New Age' music nor is it 'Soul Music' though both of these may have inspirational and/or meditative content. The music of the OM Choirs is a music of transformation. As Buckminster Fuller wrote, 'Now there is one outstandingly important fact regarding Spaceship Earth, and that is that no instruction book came with it.", so too there is no road map for OM Choirs.
The following quote found on the internet explores a theme of a divine unity in music. I have attempted to find the author but was unsuccessful. Here is the complete quotation:
The Music of the Spheres
A great song has, as it were, several unities which can be perceived. There is, first of all, the basic unity that unfolds itself when the four voices of each section come together in a common movement. This unity consists in singing the right notes at the right time in the right way. No song that lacks this unity is worth hearing, except for love.
But this is not the end of singing. There are moments when listening to polyphonic chant or to classical music (or some sweet blend of the two) that I hear what I can only say is "something else." It is rare. Not every choir can achieve it, and it is not something one can train for. The same song when sung by one choir may come no further than this first unity, but when sung by a different choir the song may reach another level of perfection. It is something suffered by a choir, not in their person but in their voices. As each individual voice is united to form the overall voice of that section, which is a deep, rich and singular voice, so the separate voices of each section -- especially in polyphonic chant -- can, at times, come together in the creation or revelation of a single voice.
It is as if within the folds of the song an inexplicable and immediate voice waits. And the basic unity of a song exists solely for the revelation of this second thing. For the four voices, in a literal and profound way, become married, and from the intimate union of their activity proceeds a single voice. It is as if an archangel comes down and begins to whisper, and that fierce seraphic whisper shatters the song: an inaudible shaft pierces its side and wounds it, it fails -- and yet it was for this that that song came into the world.
This single voice is Music.
Mozart's "Ave Verum Corpus" lends itself to being thus broken. In it one can hear the music of the spheres, a note in the primordial song through which the universe was made.
Credo
I believe in the Music of the Spheres, primordial and powerful, a cause of the universe; it's echo sounds in the best of music, and all melodies flow from it with fear and trembling. I believe in the single voice which can proceed from the union of human voices, which wounds the song with its glory and is infallible.
I believe in the Secret Fire that burns at the heart of all created matter, which can neither be destroyed nor possessed; it was begotten of fire. It is not the life of a thing, yet nothing lives without it. As the All-Father created he poured forth like lava this imperishable flame into things, and saw fit to fix it as a beacon in the bodies of the sons of Adam and the daughters of Eve.
I believe in the Muse, who has spoken through the great poets, who is the author of that irreducible complexity of poetry which is not explained by the poet. She is wise, and though never infallible, always indefectible.
posted by benthegreen at 3:18 PM
I read an article some time ago written by Rich Heffern and wrote to him asking permission to quote it as I found it most illuminating with regard to some modern composers in whose music I have heard touches of the 'New Music'.
Here is the complete article.
Spirit in sound: new sacred musicBy RICH HEFFERN
Good heavens, this is gorgeous music," exclaimed a reviewer after a concert featuring a symphony and a flute concerto from contemporary composer Einojuhani Rautavaara. Finnish composer Rautavaara and a number of his colleagues in nearby countries are putting together musical works that express religious awe, explore the numinous and continue the ancient traditions of sacred music into the future.
They have chosen beauty for their medium, thereby making a sharp turn from the discordant sounds that have characterized much 20th-century music toward new kinds of melodic and harmonic concoctions that are spiritually nourishing and soul-stirring.
Contemporary classical music composers like Finland's Rautavaara, Arvo PŠrt from Estonia, John Tavener of England, Henryk G—recki of Poland, Peteris Vasks of Latvia, Sofia Gubaidalina of Russia and Giya Kancheli of the former Soviet republic of Georgia are all unafraid to write music that, in the tradition of sacred music, echoes the beating heart of God.
Their music looks back to the roots of sacred music, combining the past with the present to anticipate the future.
Critics note that the theme and tone of sorrow and suffering often expressed in the musical works of these composers is a tribute in art to the collective passion of the whole world suffered in the last century by millions of victims of war and tyranny.
A compositional style has emerged in the music world, uniting, after a 400-year separation, classical music with contemplative spirituality. This "spiritual" music, including popular works like G—recki's "Sorrowful Songs" Symphony, PŠrt's "Tabula Rasa" and Tavener's "Song for Athene," often resonates even with people who have never listened to classical music.
* G—recki is the first living classical music composer whose music topped both the world's classical and popular music charts. His Third Symphony has sold over a million copies.
* A hospice worker mentioned the cult status Arvo PŠrt's "Tabula Rasa" holds among terminally ill patients. They called it "angel music" and asked to hear it as they died.
* In 1997 the public became aware of John Tavener's music when the achingly lovely "May Flights of Angels Sing Thee to Thy Rest," from his choral work "Song for Athene" was performed at the funeral of Princess Diana.
With the exception of Tavener, these composers all hail from small Northern European countries around the Baltic Sea and from former republics of the Soviet Union. Gubaidalina is a woman, a rarity in the classical composing field.
Classical music performed live is music we shine our shoes to listen to. We buy tickets because we both want to hear the museum pieces -- the Mozart, Brahms, Beethoven -- and also take in the new sounds contemporary composers are making. In the late 20th century, serious or "classical" music became intellectual and experimental, sounding ever more discordant, atonal, even gimmicky. Composers like Arnold Schoenberg and Karlheinz Stockhausen influenced even the Beatles, but the sound of their music has been compared to "an explosion in a boiler factory."
Meanwhile composers of "sacred" music since the Enlightenment had tended to merely graft secular music forms, like the fugue, onto religious texts, a purely intellectual, rational approach. In recent years there has been a return not only to sonorous harmony and songful melody but also to a rediscovery of the sacred nature of music itself.
Tavener and PŠrt experienced a spiritual awakening through the Greek and Russian Orthodox churches, with Tavener visiting the monks of Mount Athos for theological and aesthetic instruction. G—recki found renewal in the Catholic church in Poland. Rautavaara incorporates both Lutheran and Orthodox influences together with the folk art, poetry and natural beauty of his native Finland.
Their spiritual and theological journeys have led them to create new sacred sounds that can be heard both in concert halls and at home. Conductors speak of choral performers coming to them and expressing in different ways that it's a great honor to be able to sing this music.
In search of a new sacred sound, these composers have turned to pre-Enlightenment musical forms, going all the way back to the very beginnings of music, in Gregorian and Byzantine plainchant, medieval polyphony and the sacred music of non-European lands. This music, "though inspired by ancient sounds, has a captivating freshness that strikes a resonant chord in audiences weary of the harsh dissonance of much contemporary classical music," wrote musicologist Martha Ainsworth. "They breathe new life into a beleaguered art form, as for Ezekiel God breathed life into dry bones."
Somber shades
Public attention to this turn toward the spiritual began with Henryk G—recki. His Third Symphony, known as the "Sorrowful Songs" symphony, scored for soprano and orchestra, had a long run at the top of the music charts in the United States and Britain in the mid 1990s.
The 69-year-old composer claims he was nourished by the folk music of his home region, the city of Katowice near the Tatra mountains of Poland. Katowice sits not far from the town of Oswiecim, which the Germans called Auschwitz.
Much of G—recki's popular Third Symphony is tinted with somber shades, sorrowful and slow. It relentlessly builds to several shattering climaxes. The sense of religious awe in both the music's gentle hush and its heart-rending cruxes is palpable and powerfully moving.
The text for the first movement is a 15th-century Polish monastic prayer known as the "Lamentation of the Holy Cross" in which Jesus' mother begs her dying Son to speak to her from the cross. The second movement's text is a prayer found scratched on a Gestapo prison wall in 1944 by Polish teenager Helen Wanda Blazusiakowna:
Mother, no, do not cry
Most chaste Queen of heaven
Help me always. Hail Mary.
The music that accompanies the doomed girl's prayer is gently lyrical, making the sung prayer even more poignant and heart-piercing.
This symphony is not dramatically operatic but rather deeply human. Written in 1976, it was used on the soundtrack in a 1987 French film. The music eclipsed the forgotten film as it caught the ear of a whole new generation of listeners.
In the 1960s, G—recki was among the small group of the most avant-garde composers of the time, writing the kind of dry, academic music that got funding from foundations. He studied for a time with the influential Catholic composer and organist Oliver Messiaen in Paris. In the 1970s, G—recki turned from modernism to study medieval church music, combining in his compositions early techniques of sacred music with his fascination with the sounds a large modern orchestra can make.
G—recki is a devout Catholic and supporter of Pope John Paul II. He opposed Poland's former communist rulers. G—recki claims he experienced a spiritual reawakening through the Polish Catholic church. One of his major works, "Beatus Vir," is dedicated to the pope, who was present at its premiere performance.
"With its glow of calm harmonies and clustered sonorities, his music taps elemental musical forces," said musicologist Maria Harley. "G—recki reaches into archetypes. His music has a relevance to the mood of today, its anxieties, sorrows and hopes."
G—recki himself doesn't give interviews, though he once quoted the pope to the press: "Artists know that what they do is only a distant echo of God's word."
Bright sadness
Arvo PŠrt was born in 1935 in Estonia, a country with cultural traditions rooted in an ancestrally religious past while being part of a secular state as a Soviet republic. PŠrt began his career by composing symphonies in the Western tradition, music influenced strongly by Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich. He experimented with musical trends like serialism, then for a time wrote music patterned after Bach, finally finding his true identity after investigating Russian Orthodox church music, medieval music and the mathematical polyphony of Renaissance composers such as Ockeghem and Machaut. Thereafter PŠrt began to compose music that is, in musicologist Wilfrid Mellers' phrase, "extraordinarily simple and simply extraordinary."
His most popular works -- "Fratres," "Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten," "Festina Lente," "Tabula Rasa" -- are austere, mysterious and hauntingly beautiful, evoking feelings that deepen with each careful listen. The vocal pieces are overtly ecclesiastical. The instrumental works "seek the eternal silence at the heart of sound," according to Mellers.
PŠrt pioneered a musical technique called "tintinnabulation" (from the Latin word for "little bells"), in which a single triad, the most basic chord, predominates in one or more voices. In a four-voice context, it is likely that two of the voices will sound only notes of a single triad, while the other two voices move in a stepwise fashion. This triad is the tonal center of a musical piece. The effect of this spare use of notes is to evoke the pealing of bells, with the bells' complex but richly sonorous mass of overtones and swells, a sound that is simultaneously static and in flux. The overtones are called "God's music," because they come from the physics of sound itself.
"The complex and many-faceted only confuse me," wrote PŠrt describing his musical idiom, "and I must search for unity. What is it, this one thing, and how do I find my way to it? Traces of this perfect thing appear in many guises, and everything that is unimportant falls away."
One critic characterized PŠrt's music as permeated with a "bright sadness." Another said that his best works remind one of the passionate tranquility of a Russian icon. "PŠrt's music issues from the spirit of Lent," wrote Hermann Connen. "It comes to us unaffected by the plethora of styles, techniques and values offered in luxurious array by the music industry. É His music enfolds the manifest sufferings of mankind in the declining years of the last century which through great upheavals have been reduced to an inhuman common denominator."
Typical of these new "spiritual" composers, PŠrt rejected values associated with contemporary classical music. His style has been called "holy minimalism."
"This minimalist style is to music what contemplative practices are to prayer," said Martha Ainsworth. Contemplative practice involves listening in receptive silence, using a mantra or scriptural phrase as a tool to keep one coming back to a center. In traditional classical music, themes and ideas are developed and move forward to a conclusion. "PŠrt's music is more like contemplative prayer," said Ainsworth. "It is meditative, repetitive, filled with silences, using simple combinations of notes. The effect is a feeling of being suspended in time."
PŠrt limits his tonal and rhythmic materials to the bare minimum. When the musicians who first premiered his most famous work first saw the score of "Tabula Rasa" in 1976, they cried out: "Where's the music?" PŠrt employs techniques such as slow tempi, use of silence, long rhythmic values, textural contrasts, stepwise melodic motion, and repetitive patterns, out of which comes music that is at once austere and sensuous, without any extravagant use of the orchestra.
Brian Morton and Pamela Collins, editors of Contemporary Composers, write that PŠrt's music "seems to be hardly of our time. Yet there can be little doubt that the revelation of his music has been one of the most important factors in the development of a new sensibility in recent music."
Sacred music is thus reborn in the religious sensibility of a man from a small country until recently under the thumb of an antireligious superpower, well off the beaten path of world culture.
Conductor Paul Hillier who has worked with the composer told NCR: "PŠrt uses the simplest of means -- a simple note, a triad, words -- and with them creates an intense, vibrant music that stands apart from the world and beckons us to an inner quietness and an inner exaltation."
Icons in sound
British composer John Tavener was knighted in 2000 for his contributions to music. His career had taken off in 1968 when his music began to be recorded on the Beatles' Apple label. In 1977 Tavener joined the Greek Orthodox church. Mother Thekla, the abbess of a Greek monastery, has been his spiritual guide, and has contributed texts for his work.
Major works of the 1980s and 1990s include "Orthodox Vigil Service," "The Protecting Veil," and "Akathist of Thanksgiving," which was given a standing ovation in Westminster Abbey at its premier in 1988. Tavener was born in 1944. Describing himself as a deeply spiritual person, he believes that music is prayer. He is also known to love fast cars and good French restaurants.
Tavener claims that the wellspring of his creativity is his belief in the divine. Besides the influence of the Orthodox church, Tavener includes Indian and Iranian Sufi music, jazz saxophonist John Coltrane and many others. One of his recent works employs Eastern musical instruments like the kaval, Tibetan temple bowls and a ram's horn trumpet.
In talking about a recent work, "The Protecting Veil," Tavener outlines his strategy in composing religious works:
"I wished to make a lyrical icon in sound, rather than in wood, using the music of the cello rather than a brush. The work is highly stylized, geometrically formed and meditative in character. I have tried to capture some of the almost cosmic power of the Mother of God."
Tavener feels the religious artist is swimming against the tide of world culture: "We are living in an age that does not believe that sound is capable of putting us in touch with higher levels of reality. So I am out on a limb."
"If only the church were the wise master it once was! How I would like to have lived in the glorious days of Byzantine Greece! I would have been part of the society of icon painters and writers and thus much more anonymous."
He also sees a messianic role for sacred music: "Music can soften men's hearts. I feel that any future has to do with religions uniting -- and that music can do that."
Finland's Einojuhan Rautavaara has been named by many music critics as the best composer of serious music alive today. His music is ravishingly beautiful, they say, yet stalwart and grounded in mainstream musical traditions. He calls himself a mystic. His most famous composition is a concerto for orchestra and arctic birds. Many of his works concern the spiritual phenomenon he calls "angels." His Eighth Symphony was released first only on the Internet.
Music critic Brian Blackwell called Rautavaara "the greatest composer alive today. His harmonic language is basically tonal, but highly original -- in particular, his penchant for extraordinary harmonic sequences that seem to spiral endlessly is very distinctive. He likes luscious orchestrations, and his grasp of large-scale symphonic structures is second to none."
Rautavaara said he is fascinated with pure sound. His organ work, "Annunciations," explores every aspect of that instrument, including turning off the blower while still playing, while his "Cantus Arcticus" ("Concerto for Birds and Orchestra") incorporates the eldritch cries of Arctic birds that the composer himself recorded at the Bay of Liminka in northern Finland. He has even included a synthesizer in his Sixth Symphony.
His musical experiments are always in service of intelligent music and sonorous beauty.
Forgetting to breathe
"In 'Vigilia,' he has composed a setting for the Orthodox Vigil and Matins services that exploits vocal effects I'm not sure I'm capable of describing," wrote music critic Wes Phillips. "The women's choir chants the 'Hymn to the Mother of God' in a suspiring whisper over a male drone on the tonic. High above it all, a soprano soloist sings the chanted words. It's so beautiful and complex and, somehow, simple at the same time, I find myself forgetting to breathe."
Born in Helsinki, Finland, in 1928, Rautavaara studied music in his homeland at the Sibelius Academy, then for a time at the Juilliard School in the United States, where he studied with American composers Aaron Copland and Roger Sessions. Like PŠrt and G—recki, he wrote avant-garde compositions, gradually abandoning those and moving toward his own unique style. The composer claims that it was the music itself "that wrenched itself free" and liberated him from "the serial straitjacket and quasi-scientific thinking of modern music toward organic music-making."
He was written many operas, including one based on the art and life of Vincent van Gogh. He is currently writing an opera based on the life of Grigori Rasputin, the monk who helped foment a revolution in the large country on Finland's doorstep.
Rautavaara treasures his heritage as a Finn, claiming that "this is a country with dramatic destinies, situated between the East and West, between tundra and Europe, between the Lutheran and Orthodox faiths. It is full of symbols, ancient metaphors, revered archetypes."
Among his most popular works are several compositions with angelic titles: "Angels and Visitations," "Angel of Light (Seventh Symphony)," "Angel of Dusk." Rautavaara claims that the angels he has in mind in these works are not the sentimental guardian angels depicted on holy cards but rather the beings the poet Rainer Maria Rilke referred to in his Duino Elegies:
Beauty's nothing but the beginning of Terror we're still just able to bear, and why we adore it so is because it serenely disdains to destroy us. Each single angel is terrible.
Behind the religious and poetic symbol, Rautavaara feels there "exist different levels of knowledge, different truths, those that can be explained rationally and those that cannot be defined in words. Music is a language in which one can tell such truths ecstatically but without recourse to words. If one wishes to find words for them, one might speak of 'angels.' "
Having just turned 70 in 1997, Rautavaara wrote the choral fantasy "On the Last Frontier." It's a meditation on approaching death that uses as text the last lines of an enigmatic novella written by Edgar Allan Poe, "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym," featuring the final apparition of a vast human-like figure of snowy whiteness. About the work, Rautavaara said: "I knew I would soon be myself on that 'Last Frontier.' 'Frontier' means a borderland, the edge of an as yet unexplored area. I hope my own borderlands will be long and broad, full of interesting creatures and wonders, secrets still to be unraveled -- and composed." (An interview with Rautavaara appears on Page 30.)
Ellen Kushner, host of the National Public Radio program "Sound and Spirit," has featured the new sacred music of these composers on her program. She told NCR: "This music is popular, I think, because it's just plain beautiful. And this new 'spiritual' music is not being listened to in concert halls. It's playing in our cars and at home. That makes it a very personal experience, very intimate.
"Nobody understands how music works. It's magic," Kushner continued. "That's what makes it so powerful. Also, a great artist puts himself or herself, her beliefs and passions, into the work. There is a spirit there you can't help but be moved by because it's the spirit of their spiritual journeys. Their music mirrors their inner lives, the inner lives of all of us."
Healing music
Paul Hillier, music director of the Hilliard Ensemble and professor of music at the University of Indiana, has worked with Arvo PŠrt and with PŠrt's music for many years. He told NCR: "For a long time the kind of music that was composed just did not attract many. Now we have composers writing in a way that many more people can find a way into. The whole modern music scene is an extremely interesting one. PŠrt in particular has tapped into a fertile source of music that is healing in character."
Einojuhani Rautavaara composed a choral piece based on the creation myth taken from his country's folk epic, the Kalevala. "There is something delightfully Finnish," he said, "in the fact that out of all the myriad creation myths this version does not require the machinations of gods or men, but natural phenomena, passive nature spirits, and an animal -- namely a small diving duck called the 'goldeneye.' "
Describing the music he wrote to express the world's birth out of the waters, he said: "With an abrupt modulation, the land heaves up out of the sea. This needs no push from a giant orchestra," just a soprano soloist singing a simple melody, the cry of the little goldeneye who authors all that is.
Rautavaara concludes: "Music best expresses big things in a quiet way. If you wish to surrender to the music, as if to a lover, then experience the message whole, not as a narrative description, but as the creation of the world itself."
He suggests that because human creativity shares in the nature of God's own fertile womb, art has transformative power -- and surely music is the most mysterious and potent of the arts. These composers and the musicians who play their work often use riddles to describe their efforts. G—recki, asked to comment on the phenomenal success of his Third Symphony, responded: "Let's be quiet."
Conductor Paul Hillier said: "How we live depends on our relationship with death; how we make music depends on our relationship with silence."
"Stories abound of people who weep inexplicably upon hearing the music of these 'spiritual' composers," said Martha Ainsworth, "for whom its poignant beauty and simplicity touches a deep inner reservoir of joy and sorrow."
The simplest description of how this new sacred music works so well to move us mirrors modern science's explanation of our universe's source and fate. Out of a fecund and mysterious silence come plain tones that beckon to the heart, stir the soul and then return to brooding, pregnant silence.
By tapping into reservoirs of mythic and religious exploration, both new and old, and dipping out of the deep well of tears flowing from the vast human experience of grief and heartbreak caused by war and tyranny, these composers are bringing to us a genuinely spiritual music experience.
Rich Heffern is NCR opinion editor. His e-mail address is: rheffern@natcath.org
If you look deep enough you will see music; the heart of nature being everywhere music.
Thomas Carlyle
A few nights ago I had the strong impression of a voice saying, "There must be an OM Choir in Russia." I felt this to be exactly true, the next step in the progression of OM Choirs throughout the world chanting their aspiration to the Divine for the descent of the New Music and the New World. But, how to begin this choir?
The next morning I was walking on the Ashram street near the Post Office and a young man, Dimitri, approached me. He said, "We would like to begin an OM Choir in Russia. Would you help us?" Last night the members of a group from Russia that had come with Dimitri joined the adult voice class and we sang OM together. Russia is the 'soul' of choral song and the intensity and sincerity with which they offered their profound prayer surely was the beginning of the OM Choir in Russia.
OM CHOIR
The Om Choir is very happy to be able to meet in the garden of Savitri Bhavan to continue this experiment of a collective offering.
Confining ourselves in the simple gesture of a heartfelt Om, the flame of our singing aspiration rises high to invoke the descend of a new light and sound energy into the very cells of this earthly field
Aurelio
We are standing on the threshold and the door is open. Now we move into the light.
Narad (Richard Eggenberger)
Cleveland, Georgia
May 2011