Anna Vilenskaya in Helsinki 13 October 2024

Anna Vilenskaya is a musicologist, lecturer and researcher of contemporary music. She has changed the approach of storytelling about music towards visualization, simplicity, emotionality and practical benefits for the listener.

The topic of the lecture: Minimalism: perfect music or not quite

At the end of the last century, people finally invented the recipe for perfect music: piano, a few chords, gentle strumming, repetition. This is how Ludovico Einaudi, Fabrizio Paterlini, Jan Thiersen and other composers write music. Their music often illustrates movies (for example, "Amelie" and "1+1"), commercials, social videos. Musicians have given this style a name: "sentimental minimalism", but this genre is still far from being widely explored. In this lecture, let's try to remedy that. Talk about how such compositions work, what in them takes us "by the soul" and what a composer should not do to turn his sentimental statement into a musical stamp. It is not necessary to know any music beforehand.