Film
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Quotes
I thought no more. I was woken from a deep, dark sleep by a thunderous applause. Ripping off my eye mask, I saw Max Richter take his bow. I would have happily slept through an encore had he offered.
BBC
BBC
- I thought no more. I was woken from a deep, dark sleep by a thunderous applause. Ripping off my eye mask, I saw Max Richter take his bow. I would have happily slept through an encore had he offered.
BBC - So achingly beautiful. A brilliantly executed concept.
The Washington Post - As people awoke, they grabbed their phones to capture the sunrise. A couple kissed and said good morning, as if at home and not surrounded by 100 strangers.
The New York Times - You sleep, you wake – and if you are lucky, as we are today, it is an awakening.
The Guardian
About
Sleep is an eight-hour lullaby.
This whirlwind of a life – so fast, so little time. When I look at my children I wonder where they will find rest. Those moments of being that they used to have as tiny babies, arms outstretched, trusting of the world.
I’ve long wanted to write something that might soothe them, so this is my personal lullaby for a frenetic world – a manifesto for a slower pace of existence.
It’s a piece that is meant to be listened to at night. I hope that people will fall asleep listening to it, because the project is also a personal exploration into how music interacts with consciousness – another fascination for me. We spend more time sleeping than we do anything else – in the average life it amounts to several decades. What a miraculous part of our lives, this state of suspended animation existing between being and non-being (and for me personally, where all my work is actually done).
What happens to music here?
Are there ways in which music and consciousness can interact other than in a wakeful state?
Can music function as a truly shared creative space?
I’m perpetually curious and questioning about performance conventions in classical music, our rigid rules that dictate what music we can appreciate, and how. Somehow in Europe, over the last century, as complexity and inaccessibility in music became equated with intelligence and the avant-garde, we lost something along the way. Modernism gave us so many stunning works, but we also lost our lullabies. We lost a shared communion in sound. Audiences have dwindled. All my pieces over the last few years have been exploring this, as does SLEEP. It’s a very deliberate political statement from me.
Max Richter
I’ve long wanted to write something that might soothe them, so this is my personal lullaby for a frenetic world – a manifesto for a slower pace of existence.
It’s a piece that is meant to be listened to at night. I hope that people will fall asleep listening to it, because the project is also a personal exploration into how music interacts with consciousness – another fascination for me. We spend more time sleeping than we do anything else – in the average life it amounts to several decades. What a miraculous part of our lives, this state of suspended animation existing between being and non-being (and for me personally, where all my work is actually done).
What happens to music here?
Are there ways in which music and consciousness can interact other than in a wakeful state?
Can music function as a truly shared creative space?
I’m perpetually curious and questioning about performance conventions in classical music, our rigid rules that dictate what music we can appreciate, and how. Somehow in Europe, over the last century, as complexity and inaccessibility in music became equated with intelligence and the avant-garde, we lost something along the way. Modernism gave us so many stunning works, but we also lost our lullabies. We lost a shared communion in sound. Audiences have dwindled. All my pieces over the last few years have been exploring this, as does SLEEP. It’s a very deliberate political statement from me.
Max Richter