The works of Latvian composer Peteris Vasks can be situated close to, if not squarely within, the tradition of "holy minimalism." His music can bear more than a passing resemblance to that of Arvo Pärt and Henryk Górecki in its essentially tonal harmonic language, frequent sense of harmonic stasis, and the aura of gentle melancholy that often suffuses it, but it is not likely to be confused with theirs because it tends to have a linearity and development that can give his work a strongly Romantic character. Vasks also uses ...
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The works of Latvian composer Peteris Vasks can be situated close to, if not squarely within, the tradition of "holy minimalism." His music can bear more than a passing resemblance to that of Arvo Pärt and Henryk Górecki in its essentially tonal harmonic language, frequent sense of harmonic stasis, and the aura of gentle melancholy that often suffuses it, but it is not likely to be confused with theirs because it tends to have a linearity and development that can give his work a strongly Romantic character. Vasks also uses folk-like material in a way that makes him sound like more of a nationalist than minimalists tend to. Musica adventus (1996), for string orchestra, an arrangement of his third string quartet, is in four movements, and while each is essentially contemplative, the third builds to a climax of concentrated angst not typical of Pärt or Górecki, and its fourth movement is distinctive in the accumulation of skittering string figures that conjures up a sense of chaos before resolving into a...
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