🪞Spiegel im Spiegel

Written in 1978 for violin and piano, shortly before Pärt left Estonia. The title means mirror in the mirror. Mine is a version of a little under ten minutes; some players take longer, and none of them hurries.

Almost nothing happens, on purpose:

• The piano plays rising broken chords, three notes at a time, and does not stop.
• The other instrument plays a slow scale that gets one note longer with each phrase, first up, then down, always returning to the same pitch.
• No climax, no change of key. It is finished when the pattern is complete.

What it is for. On repeat all afternoon on the second day of the Hamburg cold, in bed, fever, assignment 3 submitted with one hand. It was the only music slow enough. Anything with a pulse felt like being asked a question. This is now written into ⚕️ What I do when I have a cold, between the soup and the instruction to do nothing heroic.

It had an earlier job that I only connected afterwards: it is what I put on, very low, for 🪷 Body scan for bad nights. One play is about the length of one pass from the feet to the head. If I am still awake at the end I start both again. The record so far is four.

Played again on the evening of 14 November, once through, and then I turned it off and wrote the day out instead, which was the better idea.