Revolutionary

Over the past couple months my half-attention to music coming in over the radio as I sit at the keyboard has some half-dozen times been almost forcibly converted to full attention by music I've never before heard. I love when that happens because for me that's a sort of litmus test for new-to-me music that tells me this is music I should get to know more intimately. And I especially love it when the composer of that new-to-me music is one I've either never before heard of, or heard of and dismissed almost out of hand.

But taken together, these last half-dozen times proved a first for me as the new-to-me music that forced my full attention was in each case written by the same composer; one whose name I knew, but whose music I never before these past couple months knowingly heard: Arvo Pärt.

It wasn't that the music had anything startlingly new or original to offer in terms of its harmonic, melodic, contrapuntal, or rhythmic qualities (it didn't). It was merely — all of it — arrestingly, compellingly ... beautiful.

What a novel idea for a postmodern-era composer. Forget adherence to this or that system. Forget mind-bending complexity. Forget about being part of this or that school, group, or trend. Forget Uptown. Forget Downtown. Forget all that empty, meaningless crap. Instead, make music that's merely arrestingly and compellingly beautiful even when it's saying or expressing things that are anything but beautiful.

For this postmodern era, a truly revolutionary concept that.