Tabula rasa

Arvo Pärt

album cover

The Triad-Twirling Mystic of Estonia Confronts the Blank Slate

Arvo Pärt took a long, winding, and noisy path to discover his singularly quiet "voice" as a composer. Born in Estonia in 1935, Pärt began by imitating Prokofiev and other neoclassicists. Then he embraced dissonant serialism on a cluster of pieces that brought little success. In 1968, Pärt said good-bye to all that and withdrew into a study of medieval music. That lasted a decade. When he returned, his compositions were completely different—he'd pared his ideas down to a cellular level, devoting himself to kernels of ancient-sounding melody set into steadily pulsating rhythms.

The result is often termed minimalism, but where Steve Reich and others strive for an ultramodern rhythm-based grid, Pärt burrows into extended repetitions of simple tones, seeking a mystical calm. Pärt termed this operating idea "tintinnabulation," which is fancy talk for "the ringing sound of bells." This is literally a fixture of his pieces (listen for the tolling bells of "Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten"), and also a description of his approach to the humble triad—hit the chord repeatedly and hang in long enough, goes his thinking, and that sound will whisk you into an enveloping trance.

Elsewhere Pärt uses triads differently—on the title track, featuring violinist Gidon Kremer, he fractures them into fantastic arpeggios that swirl around like planets in a tight orbit. Each piece utilizes different instrumentation, and one, "Fratres," is heard two ways—first with just piano and violin, then as played by twelve cellos, a truly magnificent sound. The chord sequence is the same for both, but the music moves in strikingly different ways. In the duo setting, the repeated triads inspire extended mystical variations that register as silvery shimmers. In the larger group, those same chords unleash darker and more foreboding tones, a primal, slow-motion groan emanating from oceanic depths.

Genre:
Released: 1984, ECM New Series
Key Tracks: "Tabula rasa," "Fratres," "Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten"
Catalog Choice: Passio; Miserie
Next Stop: Henryk Górecki: Symphony No. 3
After That: John Tavener: Darkness into Light, Chilingirian Quartet and Anonymous 4
Book Page: 582

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#1 from Samuel Rothermel, Arizona - 09/23/2009 10:21

You have listed Pärt, Arvo Tabula Rasa, but you have not listed Estonia under the list of countries reperesented.  Arvo is a native Estonian, so please add Estonia to the list of countries under World. Thank you.

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