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9. ARVO PART: ‘DE PROFUNDIS’ (1980)
Arvo Pärt is an Estonian-born, classical composer, best known for his minimalist style and tintinnabular music much influenced by Gergorian chant. Pärt is currently the world’s most performed contemporary classical composer.
EWAN MORRISON
: “I find it good to love things without any justification. ‘I love you, I don’t know why’. This is better than loving things (and people) for a reason, which is crass and calculating.
“So Arvo Part is a Russian Orthodox man-of-god demigod composer who fuses medieval religious music with modernist austerity and composes with silences and I am a hardcore atheist. But yet I love his work. De Profundis is possibly the most on-the-nose of his religious works and it strikes fear and trembling into the heart of this godless soul. Bjork is also a fan of ole Arvo. She said that his music is like a conversation between Pinocchio and Jiminy Cricket. I get what she means.”
Track: ‘De Profundis’
for number 10 in Ewan’s list please go here
