words

"Silence. The ever-widening ratio of silence to sound in Petros Ovsepyan's music has led to comparisons to John Cage, pairings of Ovsepyan with late Feldman on concert programs, and the naive categorization of Ovsepyan as a "meditative" or "minimalist" composer. A closer examination of Ovsepvan's recent music reveals clear differences in intent and effect from other composers for whom silence or sparse musical material have been essential stylistic ingredients. Cagean silence opens a door to all sounds, allowing the listener to accept these as part of the performance, which is per force of an indeterminant nature. Feldman sought to achieve stasis, to create a "static sound world" in his music. Both require listening in a passive, receptive state. In contrast, Ovsepyan's music requires active or even interactive listening as performed sounds are internalized and their development imagined through the long silences. Ovsepyan himself uses the phrase "memory and anticipation" to describe the tools central to this type of listening, and has developed an increasing awareness of the relationship between "inner and outer sound" in his works. Thus the silences, which are usually notated either in seconds or as measured rests, imply a continuation or development of the "sounded" musical line. Because the musical unfolds slowly, the intensity of the horizontal line, even in extremely soft dynamics, is unrelenting, and the vertical relationship between parts, while precisely notated, requires complete listener concentration to follow."
-Geoffrey Dean, Muzikalni horizonti, Sofia, August 2001

Absences

...my response was to feel an inner quiet, a certain emptied-out feeling, a remoteness from my daily concerns. It is as if I had gone to a plateau of the mind somehow untouched by emotion. The faces in Anufriev's paintings are masks. The feeling I get is that all emotional expression has been stifled. My assumption from past experience of his works was that they spoke of the repression of the Soviet Union of his youth. What depths of passion, fear or love these placid surfaces cover, I know not. For me, Ovsepyan created a soundscape that perfectly reflects this stifled expression.
...I wonder, if the goal for this creative endeavor is to carry us outside of our concepts, structured to deal with our insecurity as animals who will die into a realm where creative energy has a purer form, where we touch the infinite, if only for a brief time?
-John Campbell, Norfolk Virginia April 11, 2005