The light of the voice, the beauty of the music, the inner peace.
When you listen to a piece of music, you hear the movements of the notes and the sound of the harmonies. And the special colors that the sound of the individual voices or instruments give the music. Hidden in the movements, sounds and colors we also find the absence of sound. Not silence, but an absence of sound that shapes the music. The choice of the specific tones and pauses in the music means that we as listeners do not just experience a blanket of noise. It is part of the beauty of music that the sound is formed out of noise. A beauty that can also create a calm in the listener where there was noise before.
The concert "Nordic Light and Darkness" tries precisely to capture the field between noise and silence. Loosely shaped around a day's passage from the early hours of the morning to the dusk of the night, Ars Nova presents both music that in its complexity and expression can seem violent, which can dazzle and seem overwhelming, and music that in its simplicity and clarity redeems and soothes. Perhaps the music should even be experienced with closed eyes, so that both light and darkness can find their place for the inner gaze.
Music by Karin Rehnqvist, Philip Faber, Hugo Alfvén, Gregorio Allegri, Bent Sørensen, Arvo Pärt, Arthur Sullivan og James MacMillan.
