# Arvo Part and John Tavener neglected composers?



## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

I really love exploring new music and this morning on iTunes Radio, a piece of Arvo Part came up and I really enjoyed it with Izzy.

I just noticed that no one whether the traditionalists or postmodernists have mentioned Arvo Part or John Tavener yet. Because of their religious slant, i was wondering whether a bias exists against them because they are too radical with their proto-modernist approach or too conservative because of their anti-academic/religious stance?

I really think that they follow well with Zen Buddhism approach. Any opinions?


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## Cosmos (Jun 28, 2013)

Hm, I've never considered them to be "neglected". If anything, those two are pretty big names for today's music.

HOWEVER, there is some mixed reaction to the so called "holy minimalist" style. I have heard some people insist that Arvo Part only started writing in this style because his earlier, more atonal and wild works, weren't getting much recognition and he wanted to be popular/successful. The same has been said of Gorecki [I disagree with those people]

So, I think people may avoid those two because of the "spiritual" nature of their works, or because they're considered by some to be "sell-outs" which I think is silly.

But either way, I'd never think either of them to be neglected


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## ahammel (Oct 10, 2012)

albertfallickwang said:


> I just noticed that no one whether the traditionalists or postmodernists have mentioned Arvo Part or John Tavener yet. Because of their religious slant, i was wondering whether a bias exists against them because they are too radical with their proto-modernist approach or too conservative because of their anti-academic/religious stance?


I'm not sure what you're asking. They both get preformed pretty frequently. I'd say it's a stretch to call either of them neglected.

If you're asking why there aren't more arguments about them around here, well, perhaps they don't excite the trollish emotions for whatever reason. I doubt if their personal religiosity has much to do with it.


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## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

ahammel said:


> I'm not sure what you're asking. They both get preformed pretty frequently. I'd say it's a stretch to call either of them neglected.
> 
> If you're asking why there aren't more arguments about them around here, well, perhaps they don't excite the trollish emotions for whatever reason. I doubt if their personal religiosity has much to do with it.


Performed regularly?  Hardly since I have attended the Philadelphia Orchestra and Utah Symphony regularly and never have seen their works on the programme.

I gather that they may be best-sellers but I was thinking that they would get discussed more frequently than they do have already been here.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

A recent survey actually found Part was the most performed contemporary composer: http://bachtrack.com/top-ten-statistics-classical-music-2014

So I'd say he's not neglected at all. I don't think he's written much (any?) orchestral music, though.


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## ahammel (Oct 10, 2012)

Cosmos said:


> HOWEVER, there is some mixed reaction to the so called "holy minimalist" style.


I have a pronounced negative reaction to the phrase "holy minimalist style".

Partly because the composers themselves don't use it, partly because it sounds like it's describing meditation noises CD's, and partly because Pärt (tintinabuli) doesn't sound very much like Górecki (homophony), and I bet neither sounds much like Taverner (I don't think I can call any Taverner works to mind, TBH).

EDIT: and of course none of them sound even the slightest bit like the New York minimalists (Glass, Reich, et al.)


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## ahammel (Oct 10, 2012)

isorhythm said:


> So I'd say he's not neglected at all. I don't think he's written much (any?) orchestral music, though.


Three symphonies, I believe, although the first two are serialist.


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

I haven't neglected them. I plan to get around to them as soon as I feel like it.


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## Skilmarilion (Apr 6, 2013)

isorhythm said:


> Part ... I don't think he's written much (any?) orchestral music, though.


With this alone, he wrote more than "much" orchestral music.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Shows what I know...I've mostly heard vocal and chamber stuff from him. Though now I remember, I did hear that Cantus once.

I have mixed feelings about his music.


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## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

isorhythm said:


> Shows what I know...I've mostly heard vocal and chamber stuff from him. Though now I remember, I did hear that Cantus once.
> 
> I have mixed feelings about his music.


Why mixed feelings?


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

albertfallickwang said:


> Why mixed feelings?


It's very beautiful, but sometimes it feels to me like an easy way out, expressing an unchallenging kind of spirituality. My conviction about this is not very strong, though.


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## Guest (Jan 31, 2015)

I listen to Part occasionally and I find it quite enjoyable. Not sure how his music relates to Zen Buddhism though?


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## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

isorhythm said:


> It's very beautiful, but sometimes it feels to me like an easy way out, expressing an unchallenging kind of spirituality. My conviction about this is not very strong, though.


Not challenging version of spirituality? Not sure what that means. I presume that this would mean cliched?


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

ahammel said:


> Three symphonies, I believe, although the first two are serialist.


Four of them now. First two were serialist (#2 makes use of rubber ducks). #3 was early in his minimalistic period. #4 was commissioned by the LA Philharmonic and debuted in 2009.


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## ptr (Jan 22, 2013)

Have listened to both, don't find either neglected. Can't say that care that much for their music, and when I listen to any of it, it is music from their Younger years!

/ptr


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

brotagonist said:


> I haven't neglected them. I plan to get around to them as soon as I feel like it.


Thank you, Oscar Wilde.

I haven't neglected them either. I've already gotten around to them and am unlikely to again. Unless I feel like it. Which is unlikely.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

isorhythm said:


> It's very beautiful, but sometimes it feels to me like an easy way out, expressing an unchallenging kind of spirituality. My conviction about this is not very strong, though.


Enough of that kind of talk, a bit more specific, and the thread will be tossed into the Religion and Music bin, where the slant goes very much toward the religious context and meaning and the music end of it gets pretty quickly lost... just so ya know.

I find Part well crafted, clever, and I think that Ahammel's comment on the dislike of the _Spiritual Minimalism_ tag, his, mine, and the composer's themselves, is that it is horribly simultaneously smug while also sounding way too 'precious.'

You want a more eastern mentality straight ahead sound which gets that feeling of stasis more inducive or simpatico to meditation, I'd turn more to the mid to later works of Morton Feldman, (_Piano and String Quartet / For Philip Guston / Why Patterns / Triadic Memories_, etc, or those few western pieces in a somewhat similar vein like Jonathan Harvey's _Tranquil Abiding_ (a two chord oscillation with some then additional comments by instruments.)

The little Tavener I've heard I recognize for some as "effective," while it was completely 'not for me,' and did nothing more than vaguely bore and irritate, finding it excessively 'postured,' ergo more affected than effective, no matter how well constructed.

Of that school of east European, ex Soviet satellite and émigré Russians who went to that more neo-medieval simplicity (a far better appelation, imo), I highly recommend *Nikolai Korndorff; Hymn III, hommage to Gustav Mahler*, for orchestra and wordless soprano. The piece is referential to Mahler in a very intelligent way, its dynamic overall very quiet. The ca. thirty minute long piece all proceeds quite slowly, the wordless soprano is lovely, and she utters near the end a phrase from the bible in Greek: the whole of this, for me, is that much more wildly successful in conveying 'anything deep and / or placidly spiritual' than any of the other -- ahem, 'spiritual minimalists' (sorry, I find the designation actually smarmy - offensive) I've yet heard have gotten anywhere near.
There is only one recording, and I doubt if it is available through any streaming service:
http://www.amazon.com/New-Heaven-Hymn-02-03/dp/B000002AXS


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## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

dogen said:


> I listen to Part occasionally and I find it quite enjoyable. Not sure how his music relates to Zen Buddhism though?


http://www.theguardian.com/music/tomserviceblog/2012/jun/18/arvo-part-contemporary-music-guide

It relates because of the feel. I know that Part is specifically Christian in nature but I can relate to that sparseness that his works offer to me and I relate to it from a religious and intellectual standpoint.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

I don't know much about Taverner, but his popularity gives me paws.

Pärt, Górecki, Hovhaness and a few others were sometimes played on the _Music From the Hearts of Space_ public radio show back in the 1980s, the show that put "New Age" music on the map. Now, I had my little binges with new age as great music for art gallery shows, and I can listen to some ambient today (which is virtually the same thing trying to loose the Muzak connotations of new age), but I don't take it very seriously.

So Pärt and others unfortunately have that early association for me. It is hard to separate them from the Yannis and John Teshes of the world. I have even more trouble with this John Luther Adams fellow some people seem to be raving about for reasons that completely escape me. The "let's fade some triads in and out for 40 minutes" school of composition makes minimalism seem exciting in comparison.

Having thrown those wet blankets over all the fun, I confess to liking earlier Pärt works as others have, especially his Symphony No. 3 which I find profound.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Weston said:


> I don't know much about Taverner, but his popularity gives me paws.
> 
> Pärt, Górecki, Hovhaness and a few others were sometimes played on the _Music From the Hearts of Space_ public radio show back in the 1980s, the show that put "New Age" music on the map. Now, I had my little binges with new age as great music for art gallery shows, and I can listen to some ambient today (which is virtually the same thing trying to loose the Muzak connotations of new age), but I don't take it very seriously.
> 
> ...


I could never understand why that "Hovhaness sound" -- which to me is like a musical pseudo exoticism of 'what is eastern and spiritual' like the film scores of many a mid-1950's Hollywood Bible epic -- ever got lumped in with those later neo-modal / medieval 'spiritual minimlaists.' I wonder if he is referenced that way only in Wikipedia....


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

PetrB said:


> I could never understand why that "Hovhaness sound" -- which to me is like a musical pseudo exoticism of 'what is eastern and spiritual' like the film scores of many a mid-1950's Hollywood Bible epic -- ever got lumped in with those later neo-modal / medieval 'spiritual minimlaists.' I wonder if he is referenced that way only in Wikipedia....


From a Music from the Hearts of Space perspective, it is because he is (generally) slower, less changing, less dissonant. If you want mellow ambient music, I can see Hovhaness working for you as well as Part. The fact that Hovhaneess has titles that include the words "celestial," "spirit" and "St. Gregory" doesn't hurt.


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## schigolch (Jun 26, 2011)

To me, Part is just not my cup of tea.

I'm however somewhat warmer to Tavener's music. I liked especially his opera "Mary of Egypt", that is not a piece likely to enthuse people wanting to hear "Il Trovatore", of course, but I did find intriguing, and very challenging in its peculiar way.


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## ahammel (Oct 10, 2012)

Weston said:


> I don't know much about Taverner, but his popularity gives me paws.


That explains the beagle avatar.


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## MagneticGhost (Apr 7, 2013)

Taverner has written some great stuff. This is one of my personal faves.
Check out The Protecting Veil as well.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

albertfallickwang said:


> Not challenging version of spirituality? Not sure what that means. I presume that this would mean cliched?


Cliched doesn't apply here. A couple of popular works of Pärt I know pretty well are the Cantus in Memory of Britten and Tabula Rasa.

The Cantus I too have heard in performance, by the New York Philharmonic. The materials are extremely simple: A bell and strings playing descending minor scales (A minor I think). The strings parts are in the form of simultaneous canons at various levels of augmentation or diminution - in lay terms, they play the same thing, more or less, but some descend rapidly, while others do so more slowly or even glacially. The overall sound gets deeper and bigger as it progresses. I think it is tremendously effective as a memorial piece - elemental, austere, crushing, although I heard one string player (off stage) hold his part up, roll his eyes, and say "A minor scales."

Tabula Rasa has a remarkable and original structure. In the first bit two ideas - well processes, really - alternate: a solo violin with prepared piano accompaniment plays a simple scalar idea and expands its range by one degree in either direction in successive iterations. The other process uses mostly arpeggiated figures for the string tutti, and it too expands and grows with each appearance. Eventually a crisis occurs, things fall apart, and there is a stormy interlude. Afterwards, a rocking, fairly static consolatory wash of string sound is punctuated by a chilling, lovely ascending figure on prepared piano. The figure sounds at ever more distant intervals over ten or more minutes - getting really subjective here, but it makes me think of an ever expanding universe attenuating and growing cold over eons.

I don't like the spiritual minimalism label either. The two works above are more like "process (post)-minimalism," if that were a thing.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

albertfallickwang said:


> Not challenging version of spirituality? Not sure what that means. I presume that this would mean cliched?


I can't really defend this, it's a gut feeling. Not just about Part's music but about things like pop/lite Buddhism and psychedelic drugs...I suspect they may be temporary "spiritual" escapes that do not really challenge anything in the end. However I may be wrong, or this may be my fault as a listener and not Part's.

I basically like his music, I didn't want it to sound otherwise


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## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

Okay: another question?

What makes the minimalism of Tavener and Part different than that of the American minimalists: Reich, Glass, or Adams?

Apart from the religious slant.


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## ahammel (Oct 10, 2012)

albertfallickwang said:


> Okay: another question?
> 
> What makes the minimalism of Tavener and Part different than that of the American minimalists: Reich, Glass, or Adams?
> 
> Apart from the religious slant.


What makes them similar? They sound nothing like one another to me, aside from Glass and Pärt both fancying arpeggios.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Yeah, I don't hear many similarities either, and I would say they're motivated by very different impulses. Reich is basically a Modernist, Glass a Romantic, and Part a mystic (hugely oversimplified, I realize). I don't know Adams' music well.

Reich is by far my favorite of those three. I just find his music far more varied and interesting.


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## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

About the popularity of Part and Tavener that does not lessen my interest in listening to those guys. beethoven is popular but he is still important.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

For those that don't like the label of "Holy Minimalism" or "Spiritual Minimalism", I've also heard this style called "Eastern Minimalism" and "European Minimalism" (as opposed to American Minimalism). Not sure that those titles are any better, but they are less presumptuous maybe, referring to the place the style originated rather than what you are supposed to feel while listening to it.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

albertfallickwang said:


> Okay: another question?
> 
> What makes the minimalism of Tavener and Part different than that of the American minimalists: Reich, Glass, or Adams?
> 
> Apart from the religious slant.


Not an expert here, but: Pärt and Adams I would call post-minimalist because of the more obvious contrasts of texture, as compared to Reich and Glass, and maybe a greater overall sense of direction or even drama? Don't know Taverner, but if the example posted above is typical, he is way post-minimalist.


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## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

isorhythm said:


> Yeah, I don't hear many similarities either, and I would say they're motivated by very different impulses. Reich is basically a Modernist, Glass a Romantic, and Part a mystic (hugely oversimplified, I realize). I don't know Adams' music well.
> 
> Reich is by far my favorite of those three. I just find his music far more varied and interesting.


Yes but I was looking for a hardcore musical analysis of their compositional styles. Just get lumped into minimalism together but not sound the same.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

albertfallickwang said:


> Yes but I was looking for a hardcore musical analysis of their compositional styles. Just get lumped into minimalism together but not sound the same.


As I understand it, Part's main schtick is tintinnabuli - one voice moves up and down a diatonic arpeggio, another moves up and down the corresponding diatonic scale, and the harmony results from that.

Reich has used many techniques but his favorites seem to be phasing (early), canon, building up motives by adding one note at a time, and variation over drawn-out chord progressions.

There's not a lot of overlap, I don't think, and the results sound very different.


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## Guest (Jan 31, 2015)

Arvo Part is certainly not neglected. I like a lot of his stuff from all eras, although his early side was often a bit sloppy sounding and his late side sorta stopped churning out anything new a few years ago...

I found that the ECM discs "Adam's Lament" and "In Principio" in particular weren't exactly doing anything that the works on "Litany" or "Miserere" didn't. But hey, that still leaves us the "Litany" and "Miserere" discs along with the "Alina", "Tabula Rasa", and "Te Deum" discs being awesome good fun, along with discs like the Chandos "Collage" or the Harmonia Mundi "De Profundis". I like him a lot. He's not perfect, but he has enough pleasant works for my listening purposes, easily.

Tavener on the other hand... well, I'd say he's neglected, I think. For that Russian Orthodox kinda stuff, I like Sylvestrov and Kancheli better, but Tavener still has a good few works that are never really talked about. I'm not talking about the little a cappella disc or "The Protecting Veil". More along the lines of "Ikon Of Eros". Check it out. I liked it, as I recall.


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

I once turned off the radio when they played Arvo Pärt this is what I think of his music.
Could it be so that he is neglected in America while he is played more often in Europe?


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Sloe said:


> I once turned off the radio when they played Arvo Pärt this is what I think of his music.
> Could it be so that he is neglected in America while he is played more often in Europe?


Bachtrack (not an exact measurement) lists 53 upcoming concerts including Pärt's music. Of those, only 3 are in the US. Seems like he's not played nearly as much here as elsewhere.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

I don't think they are neglected. I think they have as much attention as any other contemporary musicians from the listening world today.


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

Mahlerian said:


> Bachtrack (not an exact measurement) lists 53 upcoming concerts including Pärt's music. Of those, only 3 are in the US. Seems like he's not played nearly as much here as elsewhere.


As I expected and therefore it is not really right to dismiss Albertfallickwangs claim of Arvo Pärt as neglected.


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## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

Sloe said:


> As I expected and therefore it is not really right to dismiss Albertfallickwangs claim of Arvo Pärt as neglected.


Seems like Part is neglected by most American orchestras to me.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

In the current US orchestral season, Arvo Part has been programmed three times for a total of 8 performances by major orchestras. All but one performance is of his Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten. John Tavener doesn't appear on the listing for orchestral concerts at all, perhaps not too surprising.


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## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

KenOC said:


> In the current US orchestral season, Arvo Part has been programmed three times for a total of 8 performances by major orchestras. All but one performance is of his Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten. John Tavener doesn't appear on the listing for orchestral concerts at all, perhaps not too surprising.


Tavener is not programmed with orchestra because his music is too focused on vocals?


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Sloe said:


> As I expected and therefore it is not really right to dismiss Albertfallickwangs claim of Arvo Pärt as neglected.


Fifty three performances of your work in one year, whatever the spread of where those are, is doing really well.

Some music is more to one local (cultural) taste than others, and often will stay that way. Clearly, whatever his music is, Europeans respond to it far more than Americans.

Fifty three scheduled performances in one season does not in any way justify _any_ claim of neglect.


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

PetrB said:


> Fifty three scheduled performances in one season does not in any way justify _any_ claim of neglect.


It does if you have to travel several thousands of kilometres to attend them.
If one loves Arvo Pärts music one have the right to say I want to go to a concert were his music is played in my home town in my lifetime and if I can´t expect that I have all the right to say he is neglected at least were I live.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

albertfallickwang said:


> Tavener is not programmed with orchestra because his music is too focused on vocals?


I'm sure his works are performed by choral societies, etc. But those are probably not on the map for culling this track record of performances for major performing orchestras.

This is winging it, so if anyone has researched stats to confirm or controvert the following, do bring them to bear:

There is this lesser known, perhaps, fact. America has a far greater percentage of its populace who are regularly church-going Christian believers than almost any country in Europe or Scandinavia.

I think English church ensembles and a smattering of other groups of similar origin around Europe perform works of Tavener, his works so near or exclusively religious ones. Until a religious work is of the 'magnitude,' and choral / orchestral dimensions and with the relative popular appeal of, say Verdi's Requiem, the Mozart Requiem, Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms, etc. (this would include newer works estimated to have similar appeal) there is less call and some hesitation about programming those works in concert.

Ironically, in the more religious United States of America -- political correctness very much in play on this -- it is now such that many stores with piped in music have a set policy where they avoid playing the seasonal Christmas songs with the more explicit religious lyrics, and whether a policy or not, I'm sure that is also a consideration of symphony boards in programming what gets performed.

Too, orchestras and FM radio stations often shy away from vocal works, apart from the additional cost of soloists. Many classical FM Radio stations which are commercially sponsored have the sponsor's dictated policy of no vocal works, that much less popular are they with the average classical music listener.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

violadude said:


> For those that don't like the label of "Holy Minimalism" or "Spiritual Minimalism", I've also heard this style called "Eastern Minimalism" and "European Minimalism" (as opposed to American Minimalism). Not sure that those titles are any better, but they are less presumptuous maybe, referring to the place the style originated rather than what you are supposed to feel while listening to it.


I'll take "European" and "American" minimalism, thank you, though even minimalism, coined by Michael Nyman, is somewhat resented by the composers who are called minimalists


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

Mahlerian said:


> Bachtrack (not an exact measurement) lists 53 upcoming concerts including Pärt's music. Of those, only 3 are in the US. Seems like he's not played nearly as much here as elsewhere.


In comparison, I get 10 concerts of Steve Reich. 16 of Dutilleux. 42 of Schoenberg. Messaien 46.

So I don't see Arvo Part being specifically neglected.

Aside from everything else mentioned, one problem with contemporary composers is the orchestras have to learn the works. They could probably play all the Brahms symphonies in their sleep.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Sloe said:


> It does if you have to travel several thousands of kilometres to attend them.
> If one loves Arvo Pärts music one have the right to say I want to go to a concert were his music is played in my home town in my lifetime and if I can´t expect that I have all the right to say he is neglected at least were I live.


People have the right to wish for and ask for what they want.

I've yet to have most of the even older repertoire like many Stravinsky works show up on regular concert programming, which I have been longing to hear live, and that with my having lived in three major metropolitan areas, each with excellent and full length symphony seasons, those organizations programming a fairly regular amount of modern and contemporary works. I've been more fortunate than most, by location and a blessedly less conservative number of symphony organizations where I have lived. Even then, many of my wishes have not come true.

Every one has the right to wish for and hope for what they want. They have no right to demand a right which does not exist. That strikes me as more a childish and petulant kind of complaint. What you _can_ do is write your local symphony board, choral societies, etc. and express a strong interest in hearing those works you want heard, and be ready and willing to pay and attend. Many of these organizations will have to pay royalties to perform such a work, and the choral societies, even if working non-for-profit as a church event, will have to pay the same for copies of that work, and those will be more costly than older repertoire. This is a very real reason we hear mostly works out of copyright and in the public domain.

Sometimes, performing the new and newest works is just not within the budget.

There are always records. Some people save up and plan a European vacation specifically around scheduled music performances of specific works, and also schedule their trips to coincide with which weeks of which months a particular gallery within a museum will have its doors open to the public, those too, not open all year because keeping all the galleries open in some of those vast collections is also too prohibitive.


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## Fagotterdammerung (Jan 15, 2015)

I see Part performed once a month or more locally ( Vancouver, Canada ). Along with the three big American minimalists ( Reich, Glass, Adams ), very popular here. Tavener is not big locally, I'll admit - I've mostly seen him in choral concerts.


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## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

Fagotterdammerung said:


> I see Part performed once a month or more locally ( Vancouver, Canada ). Along with the three big American minimalists ( Reich, Glass, Adams ), very popular here. Tavener is not big locally, I'll admit - I've mostly seen him in choral concerts.


Dang it... I wish that I could see those composers live like you did.


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