"It's a question of lust, it's a question of trust..."

Actually, it's not a question of lust at all. I just wanted to use that lyric as a title. Here's a more accurate title for you: "Trusting Arvo Part." The a in Part should have an umlaut (those double dots, like in Motley Crue) over it, but I don't know offhand how to insert that kind of character into a blog post. I'm no expert in Estonian (heck, I'm no novice), but if it's at all like German, Part with an umlaut would be pronounced kind of like Pehrt.

Anyway, Arvo Part is an Estonian contemporary classical composer. I love this guy. Hard to explain why I love his music so much, but I think it's because it combines what I love best about ancient and modern classical music. And there truly is something ancient about his sounds. I hear his work and I'm in a great stone church, where the light comes in from windows high overhead, and you get dizzy from looking up and turning around to take it all in. Yet he's not afraid of dissonance, and leans into it and lets it sit, like modern composers do. Love it, love it. It's probably not for everybody, but if you're at all curious, I recommend his work wholeheartedly.

And did I mention that that I find it hauntingly, achingly, dumbfoundingly beautiful?

I first heard his music my second year in England, when the family I lived with had some of his CDs. Maybe I trusted their judgment. But somehow, that trust transferred to the composer himself. While my taste in classical music is more developed than my taste in pretty much everything else, I still reach a point every once in a while where I'll ask, "Was that good or was it cheesy?" I don't know when or how quickly it happened, but I came to the point where I trusted that if Arvo did it, Arvo meant it, and Arvo knows what's what. I might be suspicious of some of these sounds if I thought they were written by another, but I trust Arvo. This positive judgment about the composer fills in a gap left by my judgment about music.

Realizing this gives me some empathy for people who appear to blindly follow a popular artist or performer. Maybe they're not mindless; maybe they simply trust the person. Maybe that's how we all learn and grow: by choosing to trust and follow the expamles of other people, using what little judgment we have to choose whom to trust. Then, as we gain experience, we learn to make artistic and creative judgments for ourselves. But hitching your critical wagon to someone else's brain, while it can go too far, is a natural part of the process.

If I'm going to be hitched to a musical brain, I'm quite happy for it to be Arvo Part's.