Happy birthday, Arvo Pärt!

September 11th marks the birthday of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, born in Paide, Estonia in 1935.  To mark the occasion here's a small tribute to the composer, including a review of a study of his "Tabula Rasa" and my recollections of meeting him at the European premiere of  "Greater Antiphons".  But first, a happy birthday song in his style:

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Book review  "Arvo Pärt's Tabula Rasa"  

Each of the volumes in the Oxford Keynotes series is dedicated to a particular musical work or album from the fields of classical, jazz or popular music and is accompanied by a dedicated website which provides multimedia materials, including audio clips. In this particular book, Kevin C. Karnes explores Tabula Rasa, one of Arvo Pärt’s iconic works. A double concerto for two violins, prepared piano and strings, this was amongst the first compositions which Pärt wrote in his distinctive tintinnabuli style or ‘method’. Karnes’s explanation of how tintinnabuli works is admirably lucid, and I will not even attempt to put it into my own words. To get a feel of its sound (short of reading the book) I suggest listening to Für Alina (amongst the earliest of his tintinnabuli pieces) or to Tabula Rasa itself. Here's a live performance:

and here's a link to the cult 1984 ECM album which launched the label’s “New Series” and brought the piece (and its composer) to the attention of a wider public. 

Concise as it is, this monograph casts its web wide. Indeed, only one of the book’s five chapters is dedicated specifically to a “theoretical” analysis of Tabula Rasa. Before tackling the work head on, Karnes delves into the cultural context in which this concerto, and by extension, Pärt’s tintinnabuli approach, were first conceived. This involves an examination both of Pärt’s earlier compositions and of the Soviet musical world in which he worked. The volume ends with a chapter on the reception of Tabula Rasa outside the “Soviet” bloc and Pärt’s own emigration to the West. 

Along the way, Karnes provides several insights which will likely challenge lazy assumptions about Pärt and his music. Pärt’s development of tintinnabuli or, as he prefers to describe it, his ‘discovery’ of it, is often portrayed as a sort of Damascene conversion which led the composer to abandon his serialist, avant-garde past. Karnes however presents us with a “hermeneutic of continuity” (to borrow a theological term), teasing out several parallels between Pärt’s earlier and later pieces. Thus, whilst it might not be immediately evident to the listener, the composer’s tintinnabuli pieces often follow a strict mathematical process, making them not unlike the serialist works of his youth. Moreover, an interest in early music and forms, and a penchant for ‘polystylism’ could be felt even in pieces pre-dating Pärt’s tintinnabuli phase.

Karnes also convincingly shows that despite his distinctive mode of expression, Pärt is very much one of a piece with the post-war avant-garde: the mathematical formulae remind one of serialism, the “process” aspect of tintinnabuli is not far removed from the experiments of Steve Reich (although both composers were working independently) and the importance Pärt gives to silence is reminiscent of the musical philosophy of John Cage, whom Pärt often references in interviews.

There are other surprising discoveries in store. Influenced by the “marketing” people, many listeners tend to classify Pärt as a “holy minimalist”, lumping him with other (very different) composers such as John Tavener and Henryk Gorecki. So it might be surprising to discover that the earliest “Western” listeners, as yet lacking such preconceived references and easy categorizations, found in Tabula Rasa echoes of “Far Eastern music” and compared this strange, new, static music to “the effects of highly skilled pop groups such as Pink Floyd”.

Karnes does not eschew technical analysis and yet his style remains remarkably accessible throughout, making this an absorbing book for general readers as well. The text is enriched not only by the multimedia element, but also by illustrations and references (some of them difficult to find) and copious footnotes. In other words, this volume is a must-read for anyone interested in Arvo Pärt and tintinnabuli.

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Postscript : The day I met Arvo Pärt

Pärt has been a musical idol for me ever since a hazy summer afternoon in the early nineties when I caught a recorded broadcast of “Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten” on Rai Radio 3 (played, incidentally, at half the speed and lower pitch because of a technical mishap). In July 2016, the composer was invited to Malta to attend a concert of his music presented by the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra as part of the Malta Arts Festival. The highlight was to be the European premiere of Greater Antiphons, the orchestral arrangement of his choral piece Sieben Magnificat Antiphonen. It had only been performed once before – by Gustavo Dudamel at the helm of the LA Phil. It was, to a Pärt fan, a historic occasion which I couldn’t let pass. I dragged along my good friend Nick. To be honest, he is more into jazz and rock but is, like me, an ECM groupie. And a good sport. Concealed in an inner pocket of my jacket was a Naxos recording of Pärt’s Passio, held close as a talisman, in the vague hope that I could get the composer to sign it.

Aesthetically, the golden Baroque splendour of a packed St John’s Co-Cathedral seemed miles away from Pärt’s pared-down style, just as the heat of the Mediterranean summer was hardly redolent of ‘Estonian cool’. Yet, when the descending scales and tolling bell of Cantus cascaded like a sigh over the audience, it seemed as if we were being propelled beyond time and space. I had listened to recordings of the piece tens of times, but hearing it live in those sacred surroundings felt like discovering it anew. The hushed atmosphere was temporarily torn asunder by the sound of a "festa" band marching outside, to the consternation of musicians and organisers. It was a facepalm moment. What must the composer be thinking? I later heard through the grapevine that Pärt was quite amused by it all. A touch of Ives?

When the concert ended, I lagged behind hopefully. Would Pärt be spirited away for after-concert canapés? Would I get a glimpse of him? Yes, as it turned out. There was the Great Composer, in the middle of the aisle, smilingly signing programme after proferred programme. I smugly pulled out my Passio CD, handed my camera-smartphone to my long-suffering concert buddy (who promptly placed himself in a strategic position), and joined the queue.

As I got nearer to Pärt, I couldn’t help feeling that the image of the benign man who stood before me seemed quite incongruous with that of the ‘prophet’ propagated by magazines and CD adverts. He was wearing a rather flamboyant, open-necked shirt with a surreal print (little blue birds, if my memory serves me right). “What’s your name?” Pärt asked a little boy who was being egged on by his mother. “Saviour”, the boy replied. “Ah, Saviour...”, the composer sagely nodded, “Saviour, like Our Lord Jesus Christ...” I couldn't tell whether he was in earnest or whether this was his idea of humour. Or both. 

It was my turn then. My recollection becomes hazy, but Nick’s photos show me grinning sheepishly as Pärt scrawls his signature on the CD cover. It’s on the shelf in front of me right now.

Arvo Pärt in bird-patterned shirt