Arvo Part and John Rutter

This week we continued by learning about John Rutter and Arvo Part.  Both of which are still living composers and are more modern than those we have previously talked and learned about in class.  John Rutter is more a contemporary composer whose works have been more popular with the general public.  He has set quite a few biblical texts to music.  One of his more famous works his, Requiem, is a piece that looks at the whole Bible from Genesis to Revelation.  In this piece he does a very good job of capturing the Bible as a whole and allowing the music to represent the story, with the light at the beginning and in the end hope coming out of chaos.  He also does a good job of having the proper amount of sadness and mourning throughout the piece representing the Bible as a whole as showcasing the light, chaos, mourning and sadness, and hope that can be seen throughout the Bible.  He does a good job of showing the back and forth that is found in the Bible, the happiness and hopefulness in one moment, to sadness and violence in another.  Then we look at another more modern composer Arvo Part whose works have been preformed the most of living composers.  Part developed a style called “tintinnabuli”. As the other composer we looked at the Bible also played a large role in his compositions Part wants to listener to inhabit the texts and for the listener to gain some knowledge and to take something away from his compositions on the Bible.  Almost in a way to learn about the Bible through listening to music not just reading and trying to interpret what you read.  From looking at a majority of the composers we have learned and talked about so far, many of them are setting biblical texts to music because that is what they enjoy and want people to hear and learn about, not so much they are just composing those pieces solely for the purpose of making money alone.  They are working to give new perspectives and takes on biblical texts for all to listen to.