Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Creative Silence

Hello friends. I have nothing to show you this week. But I have been doing a lot of inner work. I think this is good! And very different for me.

I just now led myself to a few quotes from Arvo Part - this amazing contemporary composer I am deeply enchanted with.

I am working on being a better listener these days. I want to be God's prism. I want a little quiet, for a little while and to feel the wisdom of a moment of nothingness.

Here are 4 Arvo Part quotes that move me:

"I could compare my music to white light which contains all colours. Only a prism can divide the colours and make them appear; this prism could be the spirit of the listener."

"I have discovered that it is enough when a single note is beautifully played. This one note, or a silent beat, or a moment of silence, comforts me."

"Silence is the pause in me when I am near to God."

"The human voice is the most perfect instrument of all."

I first heard his music in the soundtrack of There Will Be Blood. Shortly after, I bought much of his work and dove right in and really let myself sink into it. Check out his Variations For The Healing Of Arinushka, For Piano. You'll get it.

And here's one last tidbit I found while surfing:

"Arvo Pärt’s contribution to the future of sacred music is wonderfully summed up on the Vale of Glamorgan’s website:

“Possibly the world’s most celebrated living composer, Arvo Pärt is at the centre of the movement which has become known as New Spirituality—a musical philosophy which, for Pärt at least, came out of a long period of creative silence and introspection, and emerged from under the aggressively secular cloud of the Soviet state. This is a pared-down, purified music, which delights in a halo of bell-like sonorities surrounding perfect single notes; and yet this simplicity sustains some of the most hauntingly beautiful and profoundly moving pieces.”"

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