The Bible and Music

Last Wednesday in class we had two guest speakers come in who talked to us about Arvo Part, the performed living composer today. Part writes spiritual music despite not being spiritual himself because religion was linked to so many negative things for him. He claims that “the most sensitive musical instrument is the human soul” and he writes to make the soul feel. The human soul can be touched by music, and that is the goal of the compositions that Part writes. Other goals he has are to bring religion to people who don’t have it through music.

Part’s music (note wise) is fairly simplistic, often only moving one tone at a time in a scalar fashion and looks “easy” although in practice it is actually quite difficult to play well. He likes to denote two “voices” in his works: the divine and the human. The divine voice is often simple and sticks to a steady pattern while the human voice is more variant moving all around and occasionally hitting the note that matches the divine. In addition to this, the divine voice is lower than the human voice, grounding it.