Cantus

In listening to Arvo Part’s Cantus in Memorium, I am struck by the silence.

Silence is programmed into the score as part of the music. This silence was not absence, of waiting for musicians to play the next notes. It was presence. It was not waiting for something to happen. It was already happening, because we were waiting in the concert hall, and listening.

When we go into nature, we travel with the thousands of thoughts that crowd our head. We enter with the noises of the city ringing in our ears. We have learned to tune out much of what we hear going on around us in our concrete environment.

This affects what we hear in nature, because in nature there is no noise. There are sounds of life, and it takes time for the noise in our ears to calm so that we can hear nature’s melodies — the trickling of creeks, the chirping of birds, the shuffling of squirrels through dry leaves looking for nuts.

Bells have a presence in the Part’s composition. Part was a member of the Russian Orthodox Church where bells have a rich history of ringing over the mountains and calling people to come to something important, an awareness or a gathering.

In Cantus, at the end when the strings descend through dissonance to resonate together, the last bell rings, and it feels like the sky suddenly clears, and releases the tension after the turbulence of a storm.

We feel our hearts open, and rise.