IBA Music

The Editrix wrote me today asking what is the name of the piece of music which plays along with the Flash sequence at the top of our blog.

It is called In Memory of Benjamin Britten by the Estonian Modern-Traditionalist Classical Composer, Arvo Part.

From Wikipedia:

Pärt is often identified with the school of minimalism and, more specifically, that of mystic minimalism or sacred minimalism.^[4] He is considered a pioneer of this style, along with contemporaries Henryk Górecki and John Tavener. Although his fame initially rested on instrumental works such as Tabula Rasa and Spiegel im Spiegel, his choral works have also come to be widely appreciated.

Wiki calls Part a Mystic Minimalist. I call him a Modern-Traditionalist. I call him this because his music carries the weight of Modern Classical with it's emphasis on tragedy and decay, and it's untethered sensibility, and yet it is grounded in Traditional themes, melody, harmony, counter-point, and subject matter. It is also interesting to note that Part's Choral music is heavily influenced by Gregorian Chant.

Part has composed a Passion of St. John piece (like Bach and others before him) called Passio. He has also composed a piece entitled Litany which consists of Prayers from his Church Prayer Book.

Part is part of a larger movement within Modern Classical Music in which several composers, most notably John Tavener, Henryk Gorecki, and to a lesser extent, Olivier Messiaen, have returned to such Traditional themes, finding renewed inspiration in our the Judeo-Christian narrative.

Here is a video which includes the Part piece in it's entirety. I hope you enjoy it.

By the way, just so you know, we'll be taking the music down in a few days, because it increases the load time for our site, which makes it difficult for readers who are stuck on a dialup connection.

We will repost the music once in awhile, just to re-establish the appropriate atmosphere around here.

:)

Oh yeah, and we'll continue to post pics of babes as well.