Arvo Pärt

Arvo Pärt (b. 1935) is an Orthodox Christian whose music proclaims his faith. He does not attempt to proselytize for Christianity, but he is an evangelist, taking seriously the church's mandate to spread the word of God. In this chapter I describe Part as the "quiet evangelist," a man whose music is promulgating Christianity through his settings of Christian texts, but in a manner that is both modest and self-effacing. I focus on his setting of the “Magnificat” (1989), one of his most popular and frequently performed works.
I establish it as a landmark piece in Part's developmental history by virtue of the mastery of technique; in which the composer exhibits more musical control over the tintinnabuli processes he invented than before. I also suggest that Pärt’s “Magnificat” exemplifies the telos for his music, a goal that is nothing short of union with God. To this end, using semiotician Umberto Eco’s notion of "expression plane" and "content-plane," I present a textual analysis of the work concentrating on the extra musical processes at work, and I offer an exegesis of the piece demonstrating that it is part of the hesychast tradition (one in which practitioners seek divine quietness through contemplation of God). Finally, I broaden the project to describe this piece as one where Pärt is clearly evangelizing Christian theology not just to the initiated, but to a much wider and more diverse audience, and suggest that the key to understanding the religious context is through several Christian concepts notably found in the Orthodox tradition.

The title of today’s programme is taken from an extraordinary collection of music by one of the leading composers of the Renaissance, Adriano Willaert. His Musica nova, published in 1559, is a fascinating and enigmatic volume that holds the attention of scholars and performers alike. To mark the 450th anniversary of its publication, the ensemble Singer Pur will perform today compositions from this monumental publication, together with some “musica nova” of our own time: works by the contemporary composers Arvo Pärt, Ivan Moody, Hans Schanderl and Gavin Bryars, which explore some of the genres in which Willaert composed, and the poet that he so widely celebrated, Petrarch. In particular, we will hear four madrigals composed for this occasion by Gavin Bryars, which were commissioned by Villa I Tatti in memory of its former director, Craig Hugh Smyth.

In conversation with Arvo Pärt Enzo Restagno rightly noted: ‘I believe that a real point of contact between Japanese musical tradition and your music is to be found in the role that silence plays in both.’ Indeed, the comparison of musical aesthetics of Pärt and Toshio Hosokawa, who represents the musical tradition of Japan, do exhibit many surprising similarities. Neither of them would see silence as absence of sound. It constitutes an important element of thinking about music and creating the pieces. For both of them silence may be connected with the sphere of the sacred, the non-linear model of time, the practice of meditation (metaphors of breath) and concentration. The last one is something they practice as composers while writing music, and something they expect from performers and listeners of their pieces. Both artists entitled their entire works or parts of some compositions making some references to silence. It is important, however, to remember the difference in perception of silence by the traditions to which the composers ascribe to (Hesychasm and Zen Buddhism).

This is the draft version of the first half of a chapter from my forthcoming monograph on minimalist aesthetics, A Theory of Minimalism, that will be published later in 2016, and that reframes a great deal of canonical minimalism from a transhistorical and philosophical perspective. This chapter re-examines the disputed phenomenon of "holy minimalism" across various media, and in particular in relation to transhistorical ascetic practice and some of its consequences for aesthetics. The second half of the chapter (not included here) examines the relation of minimalism to theurgy and ritual practice in greater detail. As is perhaps implicit in this provisional title, "The Other Austerity," I make only brief mention of austerity politics and economics. Although I expand on this elsewhere, my view here is that aesthetic austerity reveals, albeit indirectly, how contemporary conceptions of austerity disingenuously appropriate concepts and turn them to a strategic purpose radically different from their historical usage, or their horizons as revealed in aesthetics practice.

This paper argues that the aspectuality of contemporary music can by analyzed in a semiotic way. In particular, this dissertation considers the conception of time in the song Für Alina of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt. The purpose of this paper is to try to understand the aspectuality of contemporary time using the music language, in particular the alphabet of the Tintinnabuli's method created by Part, a method that doesn't include the rhythm notation (and therefore time) in score. The semiotic investigation starts from a method of analysis derived from the semiotic of music's book by Stefano Jacoviello and using that method to analyze Für Alina both on a structural and content aspect. This song becomes the starting point to analyze the non-time aspectuality and try to understand how differently musical language, different from the alphabetical language, can explain contemporary time and how has changed the way of thinking about time.

Scholarly writing on the music of Arvo Pärt is situated primarily in the fields of musicology (analyzing Pärt’s signature “tintinnabuli” method), cultural and media studies (Pärt’s audience is uncannily broad within and beyond the contemporary classical world) and, more recently, in terms of theology/spirituality (Pärt is primarily a composer of sacred music). For the most part, this work is centered around the representational dimensions of Pärt’s music (including the trope of silence), writing and listening past the fact that its storied effects and affects are carried first and foremost as vibrations through air, impressing themselves on the human body. In response, this ambitiously interdisciplinary volume asks: What of sound and materiality as embodiments of the sacred, as historically specific artifacts, and as elements of creation deeply linked to the human sensorium in Pärt studies? In taking up these questions, Arvo Pärt: Sounding the Sacred “de-Platonizes” Pärt studies by demystifying the notion of a single “Pärt sound.” It offers innovative, critical analyses of the historical contexts of Pärt’s experimentation, medievalism, and diverse creative work; it re-sounds the acoustic, theological, and representational grounds of silence in Pärt’s music; it listens with critical openness to the intersections of theology, sacred texts, and spirituality in Pärt’s music; and it positions sensing, performing bodies at the center of musical experience. Building on the conventional score-, biography-, and media-based approaches, this volume reframes Pärt studies around the materiality of sound, its sacredness, and its embodied resonances within secular spaces.

The principle question concerning the setting of any text to music is:
What does the music actually do to the text? How does it change or
transform it? The answer is twofold: first, music provides increased
expressivity, and second, it seeks to interpret the text. It is difficult to
express in words the additional depth of emotion achieved by adding
music to any text, let alone a story that concerns cruelty and death
and is directly related to religious beliefs. It is even harder to describe
how a composer might seek to contribute to our understanding
of this story by highlighting certain words, reordering the events,
or even by adding innovative elements to the traditional narrative.
Nonetheless, the developmental history of musical settings of the
passion is directly concerned with increased expressivity and is
intimately linked with developments in musical style. Study of musical settings requires reference to manuscript and source studies,
reception history, performance practice, cultural studies, and to
changing theological concerns, all of which demonstrate how
composers have sought to make the death of Jesus engaging to their
audiences.

This document contains the contents, front matter and part of the introduction to my doctoral thesis, "System, Gesture, Rhetoric: Contexts for Rethinking Tintinnabuli in the Music of Arvo Pärt, 1960-1990".

Please contact me at busker221@gmail.com if you are interested in reading more!

"Arvo Pärt is a contemporary sacred composer who is recognized for developing what he has referred to as the ‘tintinnabuli’ compositional technique. His tintinnabuli technique has led him to great success both in and outside of the Classical music world. Although a self-professed Orthodox Christian (to which he converted in 1972), he has composed choral works for Catholic, Orthodox, and Anglican services.

In the year 2000, Pärt composed the work Orient and Occident for string orchestra. The work is a wordless tintinnabuli setting of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed. Its idiosyncratic use of dissonance, string techniques, and modal vocabulary is atypical of his tintinnabuli works. Several reviews suggest that Orient and Occident shares similarities with Near-Eastern music, or the characteristics of Islamic cantillation. Throughout Pärt’s compositional career, he has declined to comment in depth on his own spirituality, and he has left it to his audience to draw their own conclusions. He has suggested letting the music “speak for itself,” as a symbol to convey his own inner spiritual thoughts. I suggest that Orient and Occident is an exposition of his own inner Orthodoxy, and a musical mediation of his Orthodox faith in relation to other faiths, Christian or otherwise.

This thesis considers the ways in which we view Pärt as mediator for sacred music in a secular, postmodern environment, through Orient and Occident and historical perspectives of the icon in Byzantine Orthodox traditions. It examines the broader connotations of Pärt, the icon, and spirituality; providing insights into his 2010 performance in Istanbul. It examines the ‘aural architecturality’ of tintinnabulation, through hermeneutic and phenomenological theories surrounding iconography and light mysticism. It tackles the notions of ‘catholicity’ and ecumenicity with which the world has come to know Pärt; from the lens of his Orthodox faith, and extending outwards across geographical, cultural, political, and spiritual borders."

Fundamental history of Arvo Pärt and his musical background; Discussion of the development of his tintinnabuli period, analysis of Berliner Messe (text setting, iconography, use of silence and space, phrasing, dynamics, range, coloristic changes, melodic contour and motivic material.)

Within a cultural semiotic scenario, the scenario in which we have chosen to move, the encounter with the other becomes fundamental. Another one who relates to us, speaks, communicates.
Here music is the other of semiotics. The semiotic studies on musical language made up to now have always taken into consideration either aesthetic or morpho-syntactic parameters, leaving out the concept of physicality and spatialization of sound. For this reason, the dissertation focuses on the concept of spatialization of sound. It allows you to perceive the way in which the performer intends the musical writing but also the way in which the listener intends the performance, linked to the score which becomes both the main source of analysis / writing of languages, but also the only means of literal form capable of being able to communicate emotionally and sentimentally in a universal way, allowing to visualize music and its interpretation. Starting from the assumption that the sound is already spatialized in the performance itself and makes use of existing thematic connections in our fundamental emotional tonality, an interpretative model that also takes into consideration the spatiality of the sound and that tries to perceive the visualization of the performance, it would allow to spatialize, temporalize and personify the sound.

This comprehensive volume offers a wide-ranging perspective on the stories that art music has told since the start of the 20th century. Contributors challenge the broadly held opinion that the loss of tonality in some music after 1900 also meant the loss of narrative in that music. To the contrary, the editors and essayists in this book demonstrate how experiments in approaching narrative in other media, such as fiction and cinema, suggested fresh possibilities for musical narrative, which composers were quick to exploit. The new conceptions of time, narrative voice, plot, and character that accompanied these experiments also had a significant impact on contemporary music. The repertoire explored in the collection ranges across a wide variety of genres and includes composers from Charles Ives and the Pet Shop Boys to Thomas Adès and Dmitri Shostakovich.

[Table of contents etc: http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/product_info.php?cPath=1037_5718_5753&products_id=806644 ]
[Sample chapter: http://www.academia.edu/749803/Agency_Determinism_Focal_Time_Frames_and_Narrative_in_Processive_Minimalist_Music ]

This essay is an analysis of the music and theology of the organ piece 'Annum per annum' by Arvo Pärt. 'Annum' (1980) is not a piece that utilizes Pärt's newly developed 'tintinnabuli' technique, instead it updates the medieval techniques of free organum. The piece is a mass for organ and each movement represents one of the movements of the mass, composed in a specific, and mathematical form based on Pärt’s Neo-medieval aesthetic. The essay demonstrates the historical importance of this piece as a significant step in the development of Pärt’s mature style.

L’elaborato che segue è il risultato di un’attenta ricerca, non solo stilistica ma anche biografica, che ha come obiettivo quello di presentare al meglio l’analisi di Fratres, nella sua visione specifica e globale. Per comprendere il brano e l’analisi fatta su di esso è necessario approfondire gli aspetti principali dello stile Tintinnabuli e il contesto generale in cui lo stesso nasce. Prima di entrare nell’analisi vera e propria vedremo quindi il potere che aveva l’Unione Sovietica in Estonia nel periodo centrale della produzione pärtiana e come lo stesso compositore ha vissuto la dominazione e le censure ai suoi lavori. Infine, dopo aver compreso a pieno la tecnica del Tintinnabuli e i suoi principi, ci soffermeremo sull’analisi della versione per violino e pianoforte del 1980, cercando di coglierne gli aspetti e le influenze precedentemente trattati.

Statistically the most performed and listened to contemporary composer
in the world, Arvo Pärt is a musical and cultural phenomenon. This book is an essential resource for anyone interested in his extraordinarily innovative and uniquely appealing music. Andrew Shenton surveys the full scope of Pärt’s oeuvre, providing context and chronological continuity while concentrating in particular on his text-based music, as well as analyzing and describing individual pieces and techniques, including tintinnabulation. The book also explores the spiritual and theological contexts of Pärt’s creativity and the challenges of performing his work. This volume is the definitive guide for readers looking to engage with the form, content, and context of Pärt’s compositions, as Shenton situates Pärt in the narrative of metamodernism and suggests new ways of understanding this unique and
beautiful music.

Around 1976, the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt developed a new compositional process reminiscent in some ways of sounding bells; hence its appellation 'tintinnabulation'. The technique is seemingly simple, comprising just two musical lines: one moves in largely stepwise motion, the other utilizes the notes of a principal triad. In this chapter, I explore how Pärt uses this new technique in “Passio Domini nostri Jesu Christi secundum Joannem,” his innovative setting of the St. John Passion, completed in 1982. I note that far from being simple, tintinnabulation is a process that affords a large and subtle range of consonance and dissonance, and that Pärt has used the technique to extraordinary effect in a wide range of compositions, both sacred and secular. In the first section of the chapter, musical settings of the Passion are contextualized within a broad framework that examines the historical continuum since 1965, noting some of the theological interpretations expounded in different examples. In the second part, tintinnabulation in Pärt’s “Passio” is described, noting distinguishing features of the music and some of the compositional procedures Pärt employs. In the third part, I situate tintinnabulation in the narrative of metamodernism (a term that has become a viable substitute for the more clumsy 'post-postmodernism'). My own framework is based on the definitions of this term by Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker, who situate metamodernism “epistemologically with (post) modernism, ontologically between (post) modernism, and historically beyond (post) modernism.” Finally, I propose three ways in which the discourse for Pärt and his music should be reoriented in a way that coincides with notions of the metamodern,
since it more accurately describes the essence of the man and his music.

1964. Terry Riley composed his masterpiece, In C, that soon will become one of the most important work of all the musical avantgarde of the Sixties. Riley, fascinated by the post-Fluxus compositions of La Monte Young, explores an aspect  that seemed still at stage of gestation: repetition.


For the full work, contact me: stefano.varotto.8@studenti.unipd.it

The tintinnabuli technique is a compositional process, but also defining the individual style of the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, whose works have already established status in world postmodern music for several decades. This technique, which the composer himself invented and conceived in the contemporary unique and unrepeatable compositional concept, is the result of Pärt’s long-time exploration of early music (Gregorian Coral and Notre Dame School), and Orthodox spiritual music. On the other hand, his extraordinary productivity with this minimalist reduced technique is pervaded by the motive of faith, filled with deep spiritual content. Seeking the inspiration behind this music, control, silence, and staticism, Pärt’s music gains a new ritual dimension that puts the listener into a state of bliss/transcendence, bringing it closer to New Spirituality.

Tintinnabuli tehnika predstavlja kompozicioni prosede, ali i definirajući individualni stil estonskog kompozitora Arva Perta (Arvo Pärt), čija djela već nekoliko decenija imaju etablirani status u svjetskoj postmodernoj muzici. Ova tehnika, koju je sam kompozitor izmislio i osmislio u savremeni jedinstven i neponovljivi kompozicijski koncept, rezultat je
Pertovog dugogodišnjeg istraživanja rane muzike (gregorijanskog korala i Notre Dame škole), te pravoslavne duhovne muzike. S druge strane, njegova izvanredna produktivnost ovom minimalistički reduciranom tehnikom, prožeta je motivom vjere, ispunjene dubokim duhovnim sadržajem. Tražeći inspiraciju u okrilju ove muzike, kontrola, tišina i statičnost Pertove muzike dobijaju novu ritualnu dimenziju koja slušaoca stavlja u stanje blaženosti/transcedentalnosti, približavajući ga Novoj duhovnosti.

Arvo Pärt’s Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten was written to convey the composer’s intense emotions upon learning of the death of musical icon Benjamin Britten. Pärt utilizes several key compositional techniques in Cantus. Written in 1980, it incorporates his newly discovered tintinnabuli style of composition alongside the use of proportion canon, which occurs when more than one voice enters simultaneously, each presenting the same melodic material, however with note values that are augmented or diminished according to a fixed ratio. Additionally, the composer marks a significant point in the composition at the Golden Mean, the point at which the ratio of a smaller section (x) to its larger counterpart (y) is equal to the ratio of the larger section to the whole (x:y = y:x+y).

The creative method of the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt is based on a rigorous and strict calculation at all levels of composition. Such a calculative approach of creation is a reflection of the informational society and more specifically – of the logic used in modern programming languages, such as Java, C++, Python, Processing etc. The existing approaches of computational musicology or basically mathematical approaches partly allow to discover and to represent the algorithms under which the compositions were created. However in particular cases it is not sufficient to correctly display these algorithms. Thus, a new method of music representation formalization will be presented. This method is based on the use of statements originating from programming languages to logically represent the occurring processes, including form building, in Pärt’s compositions. The described methodological approaches will be applied to the instrumental compositions such as Cantus in memory of Benjamin Britten, Arbos, Tabula Rasa, Mein Weg, Fratres and Spiegel im Spiegel.

Arvo Pärt (1935), compositeur es-tonien − un des noms les plus importants du paysage culturel actuel − a acquis une notoriété considérable parmi les compositeurs de musique classique contemporaine. Ses oeuvres font une impression par-ticulière du fait de leur lien étroit avec la musique sacrée de la tradition li-turgique. L'univers artistique de Pärt, enraciné dans l'écho de chants grégo-riens et de monodies archaïques ortho-doxes, exalte un style liturgique, voire mystique. Toutefois, Pärt ne se coupe jamais du présent et de ses complexi-tés dissonantes ; il est un compositeur contemporain à tous égards, et en même temps un compositeur de l'Orient et de l'Occident, de leur riche tradition litur-gique et spirituelle. Les caractéristiques esthétiques de sa musique, si univer-selle, classique et contemporaine, sobre et éloquente, simple et en même temps complexe, naissent de l' expérience spi-rituelle qui s'y dénoue à travers des sen-tiers multiples pour parvenir à la substance de l' oeuvre. Le thème de la prière dans la musique liturgique n' est pas nouveau. Cependant, dans la musique de Pärt cette implication réciproque se réalise d' une manière nou-velle. Il reflète sous un nouveau jour une modulation circulaire par laquelle la mu-sique devient un geste de prière, rejoint la profondeur du sacré, mais en même temps la prière conduit la musique vers un horizon spirituel qui se trouve au-de-là du seuil du visible et de l' audible. Ain-si, la musique de Pärt ouvre un champ de créativité artistique où les déclinaisons et les stimulations réciproques entre prière et musique créent des significa-tions et des orientations nouvelles. Cette contribution met en lumière la nature esthétique de la prière dans la musique de Pärt et propose quelques considéra-tions sur le profil d' une oeuvre qui inter-roge significativement le sens originaire de la prière rituelle et ses nombreuses résonances anthropologiques.

This document contains the opening pages of chapter 4 of my doctoral thesis, "System, Gesture, Rhetoric: Contexts for Rethinking Tintinnabuli in the Music of Arvo Pärt, 1960-1990."

Please contact me at busker221@gmail.com if you are interested in reading more!

Could the rustling of a voice be also the place of a language?  And does it happen all the same, when the voice at issue is that of an instrumental body? Such questions are the basic ones for any inquiry into Arvo Pärt’s tintinnabuli—the technique invented and experienced by the famous Esthonian composer ( born in Paide, the 1935). It consists of  two seemingly conflicting elements: the doughy resonance of the zvot (i.e. the Russian liturgical set of bells); and the harmony of the perfect triad. The present paper moves from the personal memory of listening Pärt’s elegy Silouans Song. The delicate instrumental piece is said to conceal a prosodical calque of the voice of the famous staretz Silouan the Athonite (1866-1938). Silouan’s song —to use Barthes’ words—is the very place where “a language does meet a voice”.  Some interpretive consequences lead off such a meeting: from a misunderstanding of a Pauline passage  (Rom 14:5-10) to the art of sacred Icons; and from the Trinitarian controversies of Byzantine church fathers to the medieval painter St.Andrej Rublëv and his most famous icon: “The Holy Trinity”. A work where—as Andrej Tarkovski has shewed in his celebrated movie of 1966—Abraham’s oak is a like a bell concealing the threefold person of God.

Arvo Pärt es posiblemente el compositor más interesante del último cuarto de siglo XX y de la actualidad y, desde luego, uno de los autores que mejor han sabido reorientar la escucha después del retroceso de las vanguardias.
Este ensayo trata de abrir una pequeña puerta de acceso a su importancia como creador en el cambio del siglo XX al XXI.

The story of Estonian Orthodoxy, as often told through the narrative of collective trauma, is not homogeneous and uncontested. The coexistence of two Orthodox communities in present day Estonia, each insisting on exclusive canonical legitimacy and holding different views of the past, the incomplete work of transitional justice and the untold story of political collaboration appear as irreconcilable differences that challenge the ideals of Christian unity. In order to address these unresolved problems of a traumatic past, the paper will turn to the ascetic theology of the Orthodox saints of the 20th century St Silouan (1866-1938) and St Sophrony Sakharov (1896-1993) and to the musical oeuvres of the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt (b. 1935). The approach of these Orthodox ascetics, the article argues, provides an important perspective on Christian mission in a wounded world.

Arvo Pärt's figure and music continue relentlessly to be widely followed by the contemporary musicological analysis. The need for a contribution by the humanities and, in particular, by the philosophical and theological disciplines, toward a deeper understanding of the phenomenon that Pärt represents, becomes ever more present: to this end, time is a privileged point for such a study. Trying to broaden the look of the concept of a time that in Pärt's music is mostly traced back to the ambit of the suspension of χρόνος taken over in αἰών, a reading of the music and the thought of Pärt through the theological and aesthetic canons of the Icon can lead instead to give fundamental importance to the vision of time as καιρός and to the fundamental role of Event One to whose real presence Pärt chooses to devote its own compositional efforts.

La figura e la musica di Arvo Pärt continuano incessantemente ad avere largo seguito nell'analisi musicologica contemporanea. Si rende sempre più presente la necessità di un apporto delle discipline umanistiche e, in special modo, filosofico-teologiche, per una comprensione più profonda del fenomeno che Pärt rappresenta: il tempo si rivela punto d'osservazione privilegiato per un'analisi di questo tipo. Nel tentativo di ampliare lo sguardo della concezione della musica di Pärt che vede il tempo per lo più ricondotto all'ambito della sospensione del χρόνος nell'alveo di αἰών, una lettura della musica e del pensiero di Pärt attraverso i canoni teologico-estetici dell'icona può condurre a conferire importanza fondamentale alla visione del tempo come καιρός e al ruolo fondamentale 'dell'Evento Uno' alla cui presenza reale Pärt sceglie di dedicare i propri sforzi compositivi.

The music of Estonian minimalist, Arvo Pärt, is influenced by the style and form of medieval polyphony. This influence permeates both his compositional method, and the resulting musical affect. This paper focuses on rhythm as a point of comparison, most significantly the appearance of rhythmic modes in his vocal works, and the declamation of text. Also significant is his biography, which includes a period of monasticism which the author postulates may have led to the "tranquil" mood of much of his music.

One of today's most widely acclaimed composers, Arvo Pärt transformed the soundscape of the Cold War West with Tabula Rasa in 1977. This book traces the story of Tabula Rasa from Pärt's discovery of his signature tintinnabuli souind amidst his experiments with the music of the Western and Soviet avant-gardes, through a quarter-century that saw momentous transitions in European culture, politics, history, and memory. It examines the work in relation to modernist conceptions of musical structure, the ascetic practice of Orthodox Christianity, postwar experiences of electronic music, and the polystylistic approaches to composition that became emblematic of the Soviet 1970s. Revealing the intersections of critical commentary with visitons of the "end of history" that attended the collapse of European communism, Karnes suggests that it was in the confluence of listening, discovery and geopolitical reordering that enduring lines of conversation about Pärt and his music took shape.