An Introvert's Paradise

Artist: Max Richter
Album: The Blue Notebooks
Label: Fat Cat Records, 2004

While Max Richter released The Blue Notebooks in February of 2004, I didn’t have the pleasure of hearing the album in its entirety until just a few weeks ago. To be honest, my first listen was actually quite underwhelming. I was impatient with Richter, unable to take the time to let his genius unfold in its calm and unhurried way. Now, weeks later, I can’t stop listening to The Blue Notebooks. This is music for thinking, music for wishing, music for early mornings and quiet evenings.

Richter himself originally hails from Germany, but his immediate family moved to London when he was a young child, leaving him with a definite sense of rootlessness. If the mood of this album is any indication, the gifted composer lives a very pensive and thoughtful life.
On this, his second solo album, Richter instinctively charts a haunting and understated path through familiar musical territory as he intertwines piano, strings, poetry, and the occasional found sound together to create a rich but unassuming whole.

The Blue Notebooks munches on melancholy and dips its feet into gloom, then observes delicate beauties and examines quiet joys. Set primarily in minor keys, the album runs the risk of becoming a total downer. However, Richter skillfully turns the tone toward sunnier shores just enough to avoid this danger.

The album’s strength lies in its uncompromising simplicity. Having been influenced by such minimalist composers as Steve Reich and Philip Glass, Richter intentionally limits each song to a few short but meaningful melodies. These play themselves out repeatedly with slight but gorgeous variations.
Underneath these melodies, Richter spreads a heavy atmosphere of electronic and environmental sounds. Richter himself has spent a lot of time tinkering with old electronic equipment, and he uses these sonic textures to root his songs and give them their unique character.

In addition, Richter enlisted British actor Tilda Swinton to read short passages of literature in several of the songs. Her relaxed and well-enunciated readings manage to avoid slipping into either cheap poetic passion or its deadly cousin, deadpan emotionlessness. Richter extracted these short passages from Franz Kafka’s The Blue Octavo Notebooks as well as from several pieces of Czseslaw Milosz’s poetry. They are mostly snapshot-like in content and theme, much like the sonic texture of the album itself.

A sense of steady movement characterizes most of the songs on the album. For instance “On The Nature of Daylight” begins with slow strings, then slowly builds in speed and mood until it reaches an almost visual intensity that threatens to transcend the sonic realm altogether. Later in the album “Iconography” feels like a religious free-fall through a church organ, while “The Trees” gathers momentum like an avalanche of strings and piano arpeggios.

What really holds The Blue Notebooks together is Richter’s delicate ear for pacing. Melodies repeat themselves enough, but not too much. The tempo is relaxed and methodical, but not agonizingly so. As I listen, I imagine Richter has taken hold of my hand and is leading me through a calm land of ghostly beauty. I want to stay here forever.