Musings on my "style"

Arvo Part, the Estonian composer, writes some of the most amazing and seemingly simple choral music I can think of. When I was afreshman in college, I sang his Solfeggio and was very interested in this almost elementary style of musical composition. The music flows freely, as a melodic line passes through different voices, overlapping at points, reaching areas of beautiful harmony and extreme dissonance. Tintinnabulation , Part's compositional style based on the mysticism of chant, is a big influence on my musical style, both directly and indirectly. Directly, it has effected some of my pieces, where I overlay voices, each singing one at a time, so that the difference in voice type is more extreme than the shift of melody. The melodic line remains very similar while the voicing becomes extremely different. The opening lines of my "Nunc Dimittis" is a great example of the overlapping of musical phrases. But even when the musical lines are more tradtional, I still think of music in this overlapping harmonic style. While I don't stick to the strict rules that sometimes follows this style, I use it as a starting point for many of my pieces. I overlap my melody between more than one voice, often letting the melody drift between all four (or more) voices. Perhaps in one phrase I'll start with the altos on the melody, only to have it descend down into the tenor part, only to have it rise up over to the sopranos, to be finally grounded by the basses. Other times I try to create 4 melodies all at once, each one just as important as the others, to create a truly intertwined feeling of the voices. In my mind, no singular voice should be more important than the others. Even if other voices are acting as harmony for a line, I try to make the harmony an interesting one for the ears. It was after discovering Part that I began to realize how voices could sing all at once, four different things, yet at the same time convey the same idea (actually, this applies to Bach as well, but in a different way). By making the power of each voice equal, I try to make music that can be approached from many different directions, while all reaching the same conclusion.