I am a latecomer to the music of the German-British composer Max Richter, having only stumbled upon it recently while searching for a different style of music. Somehow, Richter’s music from Sleep popped up while searching for possible selections of yoga music. This is somewhat odd, because I don’t think yoga accompaniment was part of the composer’s intention. Richter is considered a composer working in the minimalist genre, but I feel that his work transcends that label. The music is minimalist, but it includes stunning ethereal vocal melodies along with the standard repetition of simple motifs—slightly varied as the piece progresses—that marks the minimalist genre. Sleep makes for surprisingly good morning yoga music because it is not only listenable but inspiring.
This morning I was tempted by Richter’s earlier composition The Blue Notebooks. This was similar in character to Sleep. We have been having March weather in April this spring. True to form, the skies were overcast as I listened to the music while stretching, but the minor-key moods of The Blue Notebooks perfectly complemented the heavily clouded skies. Again, as with Sleep, the music contains passages of ethereality, even though the composer takes us to a place of somber interiority. I found The Blue Notebooks to have an elegiac quality, a classical blues for some unknown loss.
So, I looked it up. Much to my surprise, the compositions came about as a response to war and violence, specifically the invasion of Iraq in 2003. That heavily protested event, along with Richter’s experiences of violence during his youth, led him to compose this musical meditation on the nature of violence. As a response to war, the music itself is not bombastic or dramatic; it is not warlike. Instead, it is contemplative, aware, filled with a knowing sadness: it is a graceful lament that war remains a feature of our human experience. Unknown to me at first listening, the music is timely.
Because it was written in response to the invasion of Iraq, the composition reminds us not only of the general problem of violence, but of the problems of lying and questionable claims as a forerunner to war. The 2003 invasion was launched on several premises 1) that Iraq had developed weapons of mass destruction, 2) that Iraq had somehow secretly been involved in a collaboration with Al Qaeda or other radical organizations and 3) that Iraq had stockpiled chemical weapons. Only of the last of these was true, but Iraq had developed the chemical weapons much earlier so their existence was not a justification for an invasion at that specific time. Public remarks by US officials prior to the invasion made it clear that the real goal of the Western invaders—mostly American and British—was regime change.
Now, twenty years later, we find another unprovoked invasion, this time of Ukraine by Russia. In the present, the US and the West play the roles of “defender of democracy” and upholders of the principle of territorial sovereignty. Fine, I agree with these goals. After all, Russia’s justification for this war is just as paranoid and inflated as the rationale that led to the Iraq invasion. But, the Western desire to play the part of defender, even if justifiable in this case, is undercut by the memory of an earlier invasion under false pretext. You can’t have it both ways: violating a nation’s sovereignty, then a bit later claiming to defend another’s.
If anything remains consistent between these two big invasions—both colossal mistakes—it is that the innocent suffer. Richter’s The Blue Notebooks deserves a new, or first, listen. Through it, we are drawn into the plaintive suffering of those caught in the crossfire of the antagonists. If there is anything more universal than the lies and hypocrisy that lead to war, it is the enormous emotional cost endured by its victims. Listen to The Blue Notebooks with empathy for them.
