Arvo Pärt’s beautiful meditative musical triads

We stumbled across Spiegel im Spiegel a few days ago… we were listening to KDFC, our local classical music station, when this beautiful, repetitive, hypnotic piano-and-violin piece came on.

We were entranced.

It was like listening to the Pachelbel Canon for the first time, only even more relaxing.

That’s where KDFC’s “What Was That Piece” music search feature is great… knowing the date and time, we could learn that it was Spiegel im Spiegel by Arvo Pärt, as performed by Malter and Spivakov on the album “Alina.”

Pärt is an Estonian composer, who according to Wikipedia is associated with the school of minimalism. This piece certainly fits that description. Wikipedia describes the 1978 composition as:

The piece is in F major in 6/4 time, with the piano playing rising crotchet triads and the second instrument playing slow scales, alternately rising and falling, of increasing length, which all end on the note A (the mediant of F). The piano’s left hand also plays notes, syncopated with the violin (or other instrument).

“Spiegel im Spiegel” in German literally can mean both “mirror in the mirror” as well as “mirrors in the mirror,” referring to the infinity of images produced by parallel plane mirrors: the tonic triads are endlessly repeated with small variations as if reflected back and forth. Perhaps the best translation of the title is “Parallel mirrors.”

Needless to say, an Amazon purchase followed immediately thereafter, and we’ve been enjoying it ever since.

If you like meditative music to play in the background, or to fall asleep to on an airplane, you’ll love this. It’s sooooo relaxing.