The Blue Notebooks

The Blue Notebooks
Studio album by Max Richter
Released	26 February 2004
Studio	Eastcote Studios (London, England) Hear No Evil Studios (London, England)
Genre	Contemporary classical ambient
Length	40:29
Label	130701
Producer	Max Richter
Max Richter chronology
Memoryhouse (2002) The Blue Notebooks (2004) Songs from Before (2006)
Alternative cover
2014 reissue cover

The Blue Notebooks is the second album by British producer/composer Max Richter, released on 26 February 2004 on 130701, an imprint of FatCat Records.

Background

Richter composed The Blue Notebooks in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He has described it as 'a protest album about Iraq, a mediation on violence – both the violence that I had personally experienced around me as a child and the violence of war, at the utter futility of so much armed conflict.' The album was recorded about a week after mass protests against the war.^[1]

The album features readings from Franz Kafka's The Blue Octavo Notebooks and Czesław Miłosz's Hymn of the Pearl and Unattainable Earth. Both readings are by the British actress Tilda Swinton. The track "On the Nature of Daylight" was used in the 2006 Will Ferrell film Stranger than Fiction as well as the 2012 film Disconnect directed by Henry Alex Rubin and starring Jason Bateman and Hope Davis, and in the movie The Face of an Angel (2014) directed by Michael Winterbottom. It also appears on the soundtrack of Martin Scorsese's 2010 film, Shutter Island. It was also mixed with Dinah Washington's vocal from her 1960 hit This Bitter Earth for the same movie and soundtrack.^[2] The song is also used as bookends at the beginning and end of the 2016 film, Arrival.

In addition, "Shadow Journal" and "Organum" were both included in the soundtrack of the Ari Folman film "Waltz with Bashir." The film's original score was composed by Richter.

Critical reception

Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[3]
Pitchfork	8.7/10[4]
PopMatters	(Favorable)[5]
Stylus	B−[6]

The Blue Notebooks received widespread critical acclaim from contemporary music critics.

Mark Pytlik of Pitchfork Media gave the album a very positive review, explaining, "The Blue Notebooks is a case study in direct, minor-key melody. Each of the piano pieces "Horizon Variations", "Vladimir's Blues" and "Written in the Sky" establish strong melodic motifs in under two minutes, all the while resisting additional orchestration. Elsewhere, Richter's string suites are similarly striking; "On the Nature of Daylight" coaxes a stunning rise out of gently provincial arrangements while the comparatively epic penultimate track "The Trees" boasts an extended introductory sequence for what is probably the album's closest brush with grandiosity. Richter's slightly less traditional pieces also resound; both the underwater choral hymnal "Iconography" and the stately organ piece "Organum" echo the spiritual ambience that characterized his work for Future Sound of London." Pytlik continued, stating, "There is absolutely nothing exclusive or contrived-feeling about it. In fact, not only is Richter's second album one of the finest of the last six months, it is also one of the most affecting and universal contemporary classical records in recent memory."^[4]

Track listing

All tracks written by Max Richter.

• Track 1 reading from "The First Notebook" in Franz Kafka's The Blue Octavo Notebooks
• Track 4 reading from "At Dawn" in Czesław Miłosz's Unattainable Earth
• Track 7 reading from "The Third Notebook" in Franz Kafka's The Blue Octavo Notebooks
• Track 8 reading from "The Fourth Notebook" in Franz Kafka's The Blue Octavo Notebooks
• Track 10 reading from "The Wormwood Star" movement of "The Separate Notebooks" in Czesław Miłosz's Hymn Of The Pearl

Release history

References

External links

• The Blue Notebooks at Fat Cat
• "Essential Listening: The Blue Notebooks“ at artistxite
• Track by track guide to The Blue Notebooks at Drowned In Sound