Spiritual minimalism

A loose term sometimes applied to the music of Ustvolskaya, Arvo Part, Henryk Gorecki, and Sofia Gubaidulina — composers from Soviet or formerly Soviet contexts who developed a reduced, intense musical language with strong associations with spiritual experience, whether Orthodox Christian, mystical, or simply transcendent. The term 'minimalism' is imprecise for Ustvolskaya, whose music is not rhythmically repetitive in the manner of Reich or Glass, but the emphasis on extreme reduction, silence, and unornamented directness places her in a related territory of radical austerity.

In performance, the spiritual quality of this repertoire comes not from adding a reverential tone but from removing everything superfluous. Avoid vibrato (in relevant instruments), avoid expressive lingering, avoid 'shaping' that isn't specified in the score. The intensity should come from the notes as written, not from interpretive addition.