Ernst Reijseger – Requiem for a Dying Planet

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Cuncordu e Tenore de Orosei, Ernst Reijseger, Mola Sylla, Music review, Requiem for a Dying Planet, Soundtrack, Werner Herzog, World music review

Shivery, aching music for the end of time

This is an utterly splendid, stunningly beautiful, piece of music, which, even without the Werner Herzog films it is soundtrack for, suggests space opening up, relics of all we have loved and lost, and humanity itself, vanished on the wind. All we were, all we created, gone. The first track, a richly pure unknown vocalist floats a classical devotional `Thanks Be to God’ Danke Sei Gott’ in a way which seems to lift into the stratosphere, dissolving into Reijseger’s cello and disembodied isolated notes. This then settles into the overall musical flavour, which is a rich weaving of the cello, accompanying the ancient, earthy, visceral sounds of the vocalists – Senegalese singer and musician, Mola Sylla, singing in Wolof, with a voice of rich ululations and resonance (he also plays kalimba, xalam, percussions), weaving with some of the amazing drones and tapestry of throat music sounds of Sardinian polyphonic music, both sacred and secular, sung by Cuncordu e Tenore de Orosei, marrying two traditional singing modes.

The powerful combinations of voices, cello, other instrumentation, and natural sounds which come at the ends of songs – water, wind, thunder, suggest the sadness of a planet now without life.

This is music for and by those who value and hold sacred Gaia, and all that creeps, and bounds upon her, swims within her waters, or flies in her skies It also speaks to those who treasure and value our several histories, as creatures who are nurtured by earth, even as we destroy her
Requiem for a Dying Planet Amazon UK
Requiem for a Dying Planet Amazon USA

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Arvo Pärt – Alina

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Alina, Arvo Pärt, Classical music, Für Alina, Music review, Spiegel im Spiegel

“And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.”
T.S.Eliot : Four Quartets, Little Gidding

How can something so slow and so outrageously simple be so profound? If you sit down and break apart Spiegel im Spiegel note by note, it is seemingly nothing, a repetition over and over, scarcely travelling, which ought to be trite. Yet nothing in the previous sentence is true. Instead there is something heart-stopping, so sad, so dignified, so quietly resolute, so possessed of humility, so mysterious, so humane that it becomes almost unbearably overwhelming. To listen to this analytically is to find oneself doubting and mocking oneself in one’s purple prosiness. But the point of it is not to approach the music (or an experience which feels true, in the way this music does) with that sort of cynicism. I don’t know how Part does what he does, all I know is there is truth here.

Fur Alina is more open, more spare, there are spaces between the notes, which, if the listener waits inside, resisting the tendency to want to rush forward to a resolution, is like the offering of a dizzying freedom of choice – putting me in mind of Robert Frost’s poem The Road Not Taken :

“I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”

The CD repeats the tracks, playing Spiegel im Spiegel, with different instruments, 3 times and Fur Alina, the solo piano piece, twice, by the same pianist, but on separate occasions. This adds to the profundity, to the sense of being unable to step into the same river twice. Everything has changed, although everything remains the same. The paradox of stillness at the heart of motion.

Arvo Pärt – Alina Amazon UK
Arvo Pärt – Alina Amazon USA
For some reason, the UK site has this to download/hear samples, the USA site only has the CD

Arvo Pärt – Sanctuary

Tags

Arvo Pärt, Classical music, Music review, sacred music

Music arising out of, and returning into, the empty space

Arvo Pärt’s sense of the numinous imbues his music. It would be difficult to imagine a composer without a spiritual faith creating this – not just because clearly some of the tracks come out of a tradition of Christian choral music.

This is music which demands the listener settles into spacious, unyearning waiting. Many tracks arise out of a quite long period of no-sound, a prolonged pause, and this is part of the piece itself.

The opening track Cantus In Memoriam, Benjamin Britten, starts with a typical Part single bell, there is an opening, high transcendency, an ascending, and the journey of the piece then continues to slowly build textures and layers of strings, getting deeper and more sombre, more dense, more clay like, a body returning to the earth, to burial, the bell notes now sombre.

The second track teases with similarities at the opening to another piece which comes from a relationship to death, and to faith, Gorecki – Symphony No.3: Sorrowful Songs

The vocal pieces are sweet and grave, even ‘Magnificat’ is quiet in its fullness

Pärts approach to faith is personal, self-effacing. There’s little triumphalism, little ostentation, few grandly glorious moments of easy comforts. The music is curiously humble, surrendering, the use of strings drawn out endless sostenuto, slow repetitions of phrases, slow accretions of texture, unfoldings, returns, and again unfoldings and infoldings. This is faith that can embrace despair, deep grief, and doubt. I have experienced hearing Part’s music live, in concert. It is the experience of joint meditation practice, silent contemplation, guided and supported by music which is always connected to an eternal, dynamic stillness.

The only track which hints that this quiet place, though always present, is also readily lost, is the final piece, the aptly named Tabula Rasa for 2 violins, ‘prepared piano’ and chamber orchestra. The violins arise out of that still place, and again and again are briefly interrupted by a repeating rush of short piano interjections; these go nowhere, and fall back down into the stillness of sustained and twining strings. A very beautiful mirroring of a meditation practice, where out of silence, the mind emerges into chatter, and can be allowed to sink again into the dynamic no-thing, from whence again thoughts will arise, scurry and be allowed to dissolve.

Unfortunately I can’t find this particular CD on a link to mp3 listening, it is a collection of his pieces, with different choirs and orchestras, taken from other CDs where one choir and one orchestra performs different selections of his work

Arvo Pärt-Sanctuary Amazon UK
Arvo Pärt-Sanctuary Amazon USA