Ockeghem, the fifteenth-century Franco-Flemish guru of spiritual counterpoint, and Arvo Pärt, the Estonian magus of mystic minimalism. Although they generally use very different methods to create their sound-worlds, yet they usually seem to arrive at the same place. Ockeghem's Missa Mi-Mi is named for its opening melodic motif, but beyond that, Ockeghem always seems to do the unexpected, and no-one has yet really explained how or why this music achieves such inevitable beauty. Pärt's music is almost easy to explain, at one level, but no-one has yet really explained why, by doing the expected, he always creates the unexpected. Our program interweaves motets by Pärt among the movements of Ockeghem's great Mass.
