The Hammock Papers: Pärt

Showing posts with label Pärt. Show all posts

09 August 2026

Pärt, Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten

Conductor Kent Nagano leads the Radio France Philharmonic Orchestra

15 February 2026

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

The title track ...

05 October 2025

Pärt, "The Woman with the Alabaster Box"

The Elora Singers perform ...

04 October 2025

Pärt, "Spiegel im Spiegel"

Pianist Jeewon Park and cellist Edward Arro ...

14 September 2025

Pärt, "Für Jan Van Eyck"

Philippe Herreweghe directs Collegium Vocale Gent ...

16 August 2025

God knits man in his mother’s womb, slowly and wisely. Art should be born in a similar way. To be like a beggar when it comes to writing music, whatever, however, and whenever God gives. We shouldn’t’ grieve because of writing little and poorly, but because we pray little and poorly, and lukewarmly, and live in the wrong way. The criterion must be everywhere and only humility.

Arvo Pärt, from his commencement speech at St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary, May 31, 2014

Have you thanked God for this failure already?

05 July 2025

Pärt, Spiegel im Spiegel

Machester Collective's Rakhi Singh and James Cheung perform ...

27 October 2024

Enough.

It is enough when a single note is beautifully played.

Arvo Pärt

11 March 2023

An excellent album ...

07 August 2021

Pärt, Vater Unser

Floris Willem, fiddle ...

11 April 2021

Pärt, "The Deer's Cry"

The once-yearly standardized madness that is the Ohio State Test begins this week for our district.

From the Ohio Department of Education ...

State achievement tests tell us how well our students are growing in the knowledge and skills outlined in Ohio’s Learning Standards. These tests help guide and strengthen future teaching so we can be sure that we are preparing our students for long-term success in school, college, careers and life. Test results also allow citizens to know how their local schools are performing compared to others around the state.

Accordingly, I thought it appropriate that prayers for battle were in order.

From the Arvo Pärt Center ...

There is a legend about The Deer’s Cry, the holy lorica or the breastplate prayer, telling the story of Saint Patrick who, knowing that he and his accompanying monks were being ambushed and likely killed, led his men through the woods reciting that prayer. The enemies saw them in the woods as a mother deer with calves, and Saint Patrick and his men were thus saved.

Voces8 perform ...

21 April 2020

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

01 March 2020

Pärt, "Für Alina"

Joana Gama performs ...

20 January 2020

Pärt, Spiegel im Spiegel

Leonhard Roczek, cello, and Herbert Schuch, piano, perform ...

07 October 2018

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

10 September 2018

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

30 May 2018

Sound.

The most sensitive musical instrument is the human soul. The next is the human voice. One must purify the soul until it begins to sound.

Arvo Pärt

24 October 2017

Pärt, Nunc Dimitis

The Latvian Radio Choir performs, under the direction of Kaspars Putniņš ...

12 August 2017

Pärt, Fratres for Violin, String Orchestra and Percussion

Neeme Järvi conducts the Gothenburg Symphony ...

19 March 2017

Pärt, "Summa"

The Dublin Guitar Quartet performs ...

BARRY HINES

"That's why it makes me mad when I take her out and I'll hear somebody say, 'Look, there's Billy Casper there wi' his pet hawk. I could shout at 'em; it's not a pet, Sir, hawks are not pets. Or when folks stop me and say, 'Is it tame?' Is it heck tame, it's trained that's all. It's fierce, and it's wild, an' it's not bothered about anybody, not even about me, right. And that's why it's great.Look, there's Billy Casper there wi' his pet hawk.' I could shout at 'em. It's not a pet, Sir. Hawks are not pets. Or when folks stop me and say, 'Is it tame?' Is it heck tame, it's trained, that's all. It's fierce, and it's wild, an' it's not bothered about anybody, not even about me right. And that's why it's great." (A Kestrel for a Knave)

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

WALT WHITMAN

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering. I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. The last scud of day holds back for me, It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d wilds, It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk. I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun, I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags. I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, And filter and fibre your blood. Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you.

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."