One of the best lectures on any composer I have ever watched anywhere. Just a magnificent clarity of thought and presentation. Bravo & thank you dearly for making this available for us.
I really like the depth of this video! If anyone wants a practical toolkit/guide for composers about Arvo Pärt's style, I've put that up over on my channel.
Once a serialist, always a serialist! Thank you for this illuminating lecture. I believe that Arvo Part is the great composer of our time. He represents an artistic shift. A tectonic shift. One we have yet to absorb. This lecture is a great help in doing so.
Part uses modernist techniques to transcend modernism to express Tradition. He is a new paradigm. Not only for composers, but for poets, theologians, and contemplatives, etc. Thank you for opening up his compositional process further.
The genius is Arvo Pärt isn't (just) in coming with these interesting patterns and rules for generating music, but in working out which ones sound good and can be realized in a way that is musical. We don't know how many variations of a pattern he tries out to find the best one :-)
The octaves in Spiegel im Spiegel work out according to the following pattern: the first (low) octave is played on bar 2, and the next one after 4 bars, followed by another 4 bars, then 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10, 11, 11, 12, and the final octave breaks the sequence after only three bars. The high octaves are played at the each _first_ odd number in the series (5, 7, 9, 10, 11, and the last 3). This makes a pattern of 3 low octaves + 1 high octave, which is also played out with the accompaniment tintinnabuli voices: every fourth phrase begins with a low accompaniment tone as opposed to the usual high one. (And I'm sure you've figured it out, but the accompanying voices are either two F triad notes above the diatonic scale note or one triad note below it.) This was a fantastic presentation, too! It gave me a whole new appreciation to Pärt's music to be able to see the parametrization and the strict processes behind the pieces. It almost makes them seem greater than they already were.
Wonderful video. A little note about "Sarah was Ninety Years Old" at about 14:30. The voice progress is actually simpler. After each cell, the bottom voice moved to the top voice and the top voice moves to the bottom voice and skips one note. ABCDE (1) flip to bottom BCDEA (2) flip to top and repeat BCDEA (3) while the bottom voice does the same; play, flip to top and repeat, flip to bottom and move one note forward, flip to to and repeat, flip to bottom and move one note forward. Thanks!
Thank you Milton for this incredible explanation of Arvo Pärt's music. His music touches my soul and now because of your analysis of his process I can understand why. There is a fundamental connection to the harmonies of this universe in his compositions that is unlike any other music I have listened to. Infinity.... I remember 10 years ago I decided to get back into playing piano and started taking lessons after a career in fashion. I had to perform a song for my new teacher. I chose to play Fur Elina. It was actually quite funny because I was quite a novice at the piano and I remember trying to express this huge emotion I was feeling all through the two opening notes of B and D. I think I got through the first 4 bars and she said " OK, what else have you got?!" 10 years later I am still at it and I love playing this piece. Your analysis has opened a door of understanding - not just a window. Sincere thanks for this beautiful lecture. Evalina
One thing I've always found interesting is that Part's Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten is as structurally rigid as Boulez's Structures I. Both are nearly 100% algorithmic music, which implies that the composer's will and emotions play no role in the compositional process . And yet, Boulez's music is seen by most people as dry, soulless, academic music while Part brings people to tears. If one asks why, the reasons are quite mundane. Part's music is diatonic while Boulez's is chromatic. Part uses long notes, which create a dense texture, while Boulez uses very short to medium length notes, creating a sparse texture. Those 2 factors are enough to completely change people's emotional reaction.
Arvo Pärt is one of my favorite composers of all time, and his music is sublimely beautiful. Thank you for this lecture on the amazing structure of his work.
Also a lot of this does remind a lot of serialism and some techniques messiaen used... It's like a place in between serialism and minimalism, landing it in a place with good balance between complexity and simplicity!
You Sir, are to me, one of the most inspired persons to comment upon music I have heard in my 55 years on this planet. It was a joy to listen to you for a number of reasons, one because my whole idea of what music was, got completely blown apart. I had no idea that the divinely beautiful music of Arvo Part was so mathematically composed, I fully believed that he was hearing this and writing it down. Also your analysis and explanation was so clear and precise it was like no presentation I had ever heard before. But the real joy in your work is your character. You come across as being completely in love with the music and the composer and not at all in any competition with him. I think the word is non-envious. This is so rare in this world. I am grateful to you for the life changing education I have received today on music that I love very much. I am now going to search You Tube for music composed by your good self, and I am fully confident that I am going to find something very beautiful. Thankyou very much. Hare Krishna
What a fantastic lecture. I have been a fan of Arvo Pärt music for some years now and its simplicity and ethereal atmosphere always enchanted me, so much so that I always recommend people to listen to either Fratres or Spiegel im Spiegel once in their lifetime. Thank you so much for explaining Arvo Pärt's techniques in such an accessible way. I feel like I have now a bag of toys with which I want to play. :D
I think this might be the best thing I have ever found on youtube, thanks so much for such clear analysis and explanation. I'm gonna go make a tintinnabulator rack in ableton now using an instrument rack with a scale midi plug in on one synth to automatically add the tintinnabuli
@@miltonline Thanks yes I already downloaded it eaerlier when I noticed you with it on screen, but I prefer to build it out myself first for the joy of the practice - and also to be able to have fun bending the rules by putting making a whole stack of different presets for the scale plugin to try out different patterns easily
this is amazing. really. i'm so thankful. his composing mindset feels so close to me for some reason. this video helped me a lot, especially I can't read sheet music, so it is imposibble to me to discover rules and patterns under the surface. you helped me a lot. sending much love to you!
This is an AMAZING resource, thank you so much for uploading! The Tintinnabulalator is especially cool! I wish it was a VST so I could use it in Reaper. I have a pet project where I try to program serialistic music in programs like Wwise. Getting to Spiegel Im Spiegel to work could be so much fun!
12:28 Trying to explain how he worked this out: he probably just had the idea of creating the maximum number of variation of the 12 rhytmical unity (seen as a block at this point), starting every variation with a different note of the 8 starting values (thus obtaining 8 variation of the rhytmic pattern). Finally he ordinated these units in a way that every one of them started with the last note of the precedent unit, giving this way a sense of continuity and hiding the otherwise too obvious mathematical trick.
This is so wonderfully clear and helpful. I marvel that such simple process music can be so deeply communicative, and you help me understand that. Thank you!
Much gratitude for this wonderfully well explained/narrated account on some of Arvo Pärt composition techniques and his geniality and inventive.As mentioned by other people prior to me on this video, I also wished that the Tintinnabulalator was also available as a VST plugin or stand alone app. Kind regards and blessings, MaxT
Thank you! I now understand -- a little bit of -- Pärt's minimalism. The tintinnabli technique is rooted in his physical/cultural place and the religious nature of much of his music. So, while I'm tempted to just start using it, the real challenge is to _develop_ harmony based on one's own place and concerns. Not an easy task!
I can't tell you how much I appreciate this. This is a treasure trove both for my own compositions but understanding more deeply Pärt's work. I could feel the depth of his composition, and now with your help I understand it more deeply. Thank you so very very much.
This is a beautifully prepared and delivered lecture and your admiration for Pärt's music comes over abundantly. I find his style the most convincing of the Big Three Holy Minimalists and it was fascinating to follow your explanation of the composer's various techniques.
@@miltonline I have just watched this the second time and enjoyed it even more. This lecture really repays repeated study. I would like to find my own form of minimalism, but I have not yet been able to make anything quite work. I think the key could well be found here. There are some interesting parallels with the work of Josquin. Many of Josquin's pieces are controlled by an almost bone-headedly simple structural principle ("Miserere mei, Deus" being a good example with its stepwise ostinato iterations). Yet, as with Pärt, there is always a something else, but it doesn't have to anything enormous. A little ingenuity is all that's needed, but it goes such a long way.
@@TamsinJones Thank you Tamsin, I'm with you! Part (and others) somehow find a small but profound twist of something almost naively simple. The additive rotations of 'Sarah was" and Tintin in general can be explained in 2 minutes but create a whole compositional identity and body of works...
about 12:29 3 and 8 are coprimes. Any musician interested in theory knows stuff like this by looking at how a fifth generates all the chromatic scale and a minor third doesn't Otherwise its basic cyclic groups about 14:06 i find it simpler to tell that the voice below goes above and the voice above is going below being shifted by one. thus any two positions, the first configuration is just completely shifted by one and after twice the length of the motif, we are back to start to me the mastership is more on the non rigid choices made in these rigid situations, but i am no expert ^^ his attention to the accoustic qualiy
I'm not super clear on how the sets in Psalom affect the variation. Is each set supposed to represent the notes you play and their order? As in {2 3 0 2 1} {EFBCD} would mean play E twice , then play F, skip B, play C twice, and D once? Or is it more like a set of parameters to then use for constructing the melody for that length of time?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe Pärt actually completes a pivot group around C# in The Beatitudes. It sounds like he stops on C# major in the middle of the Amen, before progressing through all previous keys in reverse.
