12. Avro PärtLamentate
The same teacher that showed me Philip Glass showed me Avro Pärt as well. It’s hard for me to choose a favourite from him. It’s an absolutely beautiful record – it has one long piece in many sections. The record starts off with a choral piece, I think it’s called ‘Da Pacem Domine’ and it is just an absolutely beautiful, serene piece of choral music. Then it goes into this long piece, ‘Lamentate.’ I just consider his music to be absolutely devastating. He’s made some soft and peaceful stuff too, but a lot of his music just has this, like, [laughs] ‘the Lord is coming to take you’ vibe!’ I know he is a very religious man, and I don’t follow any specific religion or anything, but I get the sense that he taps into some incredibly powerful source of something or other, and just feels this conviction of some kind. His music is just so powerful and devastating, and sometimes so incredibly beautiful too. I haven’t listened too much to Avro Pärt for a while, but I think at some point it was like I’d had enough for a little while, but it’s often like that with music – if you listen to something too much, you take a break, and often it comes back around at some point when it’s relevant again. His music, for me, has always been a very solitary listening experience. I’ve got one friend named Greg Hayes and we have sat down a couple of times and listened to Avro Pärt together, but other than that I would tend to put that on myself on headphones or on a stereo or in a closed-off room, and just listen. You can’t really listen to it in a car because it’s too dynamic – his music will just go from the loudest loud to the quietest quiet. You really just have to go somewhere quiet and take it in I think. I guess I did the majority of that in my late teenage years. I wouldn’t be surprised if it comes back around again.
