01	Симфония № 1 (Полифоническая) - Каноны						09:18
	02	Симфония № 1 (Полифоническая) - Прелюдия и фуга						07:30
	03	Коллаж на тему B-A-C-H - Токката						02:59
	04	Коллаж на тему B-A-C-H - Сарабанда						03:33
	05	Коллаж на тему B-A-C-H - Ричеркар						01:34
	06	PRO ET CONTRA, концерт для виолончели с оркестром						08:34
	07	TABULA RASA - Игра						10:14
	08	TABULA RASA - Молчание						18:18

Arvo Part
Country Estonia
Birth Sep 11, 1935 in Paide, Estonia
Period Modern

Biography
Arvo Part is one of the most important living composers of serious music. His first works, dating from the 1950s, showed the influence of Prokofiev and Shostakovich, as heard in his two Sonatinas for piano (1958). But as his musical studies under Heino Eller continued, he was drawn toward serial techniques and turned out a number of works in the 1960s in this vein. His First Symphony (1961), for instance, displays this method and is dedicated to Eller. By the end of that decade, Part had become disenchanted by the twelve-tone technique and began writing music in varying styles. In 1976, however, Part started composing in what he called his tintinnabulation (or tintinnabuli) method, which involves the constant presence throughout the work of a lone unchanging triad. This new style resulted in music so radically different from that which had preceded it, that many observed that it seemed to have come from a different hand altogether.
Unlike most composers of major rank, Part did not show remarkable talent in his childhood or even in his early adolescence. His first serious study came in 1954 at the Tallinn Music Middle School, but less than a year later he temporarily abandoned it to fulfill military service, playing oboe and percussion in the army band.

In 1957, Part enrolled at the Tallinn Conservatory where he studied under Eller. He graduated in 1963, having worked throughout his student years and afterward as a recording engineer for Estonian Radio. He wrote several film scores and other works during this period, among them his two Sonatinas for piano, from 1958, and Nekrolog, a serial work for orchestra, from 1960. He also wrote a number of choral pieces at this time, among which was the ethereal a cappella effort, Solfeggio (1964). Part continued to compose music mainly in the serial vein throughout the 1960s, but received little recognition, since that method of composition was generally anathema throughout the Soviet Union. In the late 1960s and early '70s Part studied the music of Renaissance era composers, particularly that of Machaut, Josquin Desprez, and Obrecht. His Symphony No. 3 reflected these influences in its austere, Medieval sound world.

By the mid-1970s, Part was working on an altogether new style of composition. In 1976 he unveiled this method, the aforementioned tintinnabulation, with the piano work, Fur Alina. A trio of more popular works followed in 1977, Fratres, for string quintet and wind quintet (later given additional arrangements by the composer), Cantus In Memoriam Benjamin Britten (revised 1980) and Tabula Rasa, for two violins, prepared piano, and string orchestra. Owing to the continued political oppression he found in Estonia, Part and his wife and two sons emigrated to the West in 1980, settling first in Vienna, then in West Berlin.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Part, a devout member of the Eastern Orthodox Church, wrote a number of large-scale choral religious works, including the St. John Passion (1982), Magnificat (1989), The Beatitudes (1990), and Litany (1994). He has declared a preference for vocal music in his later years, and continues, like the English composer John Tavener, also an adherent of the Eastern Orthodox religion, to write much religious music.

In 1995, Part was recognized for his many artistic achievements by being elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He remains among the most popular serious composers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. -- Robert Cummings





Tabula rasa, concerto for 2 violins (or violin & viola), prepared piano & string orchestra
Composer Arvo Part
Genre Concerto for Two String Instruments
Composition Date 1977

Description
Arvo Part composed Tabula Rasa in 1977, shortly after emerging from his self-imposed period of intense study and reflection to demonstrate what would become his characteristic musical technique: the so-called tintinnabuli method. The work is thus a prime example of the technique and demonstrates how, even in its early stages, Part's new and innovative musical language was connected indelibly with his sense of musical process and form. One not only hears the tintinnabula system working itself out in this piece, but also gets a clear sense of the aesthetic and spiritual underpinnings of the method and its implications for large-scale musical structure.
The work calls for two violin soloists supported by an ensemble of orchestral strings and an obbligato prepared piano. These three textural layers -- soloists, prepared piano, and orchestra -- assume distinct roles within the musical process at the heart of the piece. Stated simply, the tintinnabuli method as practiced by Part in this and numerous other works combines simple, usually stepwise diatonic melodies with ever-present interactions of tones from the tonic, or home, chord. There is thus both a strong sense of harmonic stability as well as a continually shifting surface of consonances and dissonances: as the melodic lines develop, the individual notes alternately concord and clash with the "tintinnabulating" tonic chord tones. In Tabula Rasa, the interaction of the two kinds of lines, as dispersed among the three textural layers, serves not only to provide the moment-to-moment interest of the piece, but to delineate the shape that the piece eventually comes to assume.

The work, which runs about half an hour in performance, is divided into two movements contrasting in their tempi and meter. The first movement, titled "Ludus," or "to play," is the more nimble of the two, and proceeds with delicate but consistent momentum. It begins with stark, loud A's in the violins, separated by four octaves and followed by a gaping, bar-long rest; these two gestures set the parameters of the rest of the movement. Over the course of several variations, which are separated by rests of decreasing length, the soloists move gradually, with arpeggiated figurations on the tonic chord, from the middle of their ranges outward to the extremes articulated in the first bar; at the same time, the orchestra slowly unveils an ever-expanding melodic line that gradually adds new hues to the harmonic color of the movement. The second movement, "Silentium," seems at first to deal much less with silence than the previous movement's conspicuously shrinking rests. In a slower tempo, a new key, and triple meter, this movement recasts much of the musical materials of the previous movement, and creates audible processes of ever-widening melodic arcs. The meaning of the movement's title becomes clear at the end: as the melody approaches its final tonic note it gradually grows quieter until, at what should be the piece's conclusion, the ensemble fades to silence and the final note is only implied. -- Jeremy Grimshaw






Work(s) Overview
Composer Arvo Part
Genre Miscellaneous Music

Description
The works of Arvo Part are often considered in company with those of other "mystical minimalists" such as John Tavener and Henryk Gorecki, and he shares their emphasis on slowly developing harmonic fields, symmetrical harmonic and structural designs, and spiritual subject matter. His unique compositional method, however, gives all of his later works an easily discernible sound that sets him apart, whether scored for orchestra, string ensemble, or vocal forces. This signature "tintinnabula" style, as it is known, was arrived at only after considerable musical experimentation, and so his earlier output reflects a variety of compositional styles.
His earliest pieces demonstrate his training in the serialist method. His Symphony No. 1 ("Polyphonic") from 1964 threads densely woven melodic lines through a carefully constructed twelve-tone system. Another orchestral work, Perpetuum Mobile (1963), likewise observes dodecaphonic practice, while articulating other tightly structured compositional schemes: virtually every compositional parameter, including harmony, rhythm, and dynamics, features replicating, fractally nested arc shapes. Other works from the 1960s adopted techniques of collage and pastiche. As suggested by the title, his chamber work Collage on B-A-C-H (1964) assembles all manner of styles and textures in a historically lively homage to the Baroque master. Part's Concerto for Cello and Orchestra ("Pro et Contra") uses stylistic allusion to highlight and comment upon the sense of confrontation often associated with the concerto genre.

Part eventually became unsatisfied with the methods at his disposal, and in the late '60s and early '70s underwent a period of deep reflection and extensive study. Much of his research during this time was devoted to sacred polyphonic vocal music from the Renaissance, which repertory would exercise considerable influence upon his later output. Finally in the late '70s Part emerged from his extended musical retreat, prepared to demonstrate a new approach to tonality and dissonance, which he called the "tintinnabula" method. Taking its name from word describing the sound of a bell, this approach to composition combines stepwise moving melodic lines with omnipresent tonic chord tones, creating both a steady harmonic center and shimmering alternations of consonance and dissonance. A devout subscriber to the Orthodox faith, Part infused this compositional method with spiritual meaning, mapping dichotomies such as good/evil, spirit/matter, and sin/redemption onto the musical interaction of the consonant and dissonant tones. Likewise, from this period on the majority of his numerous works deal with sacred, scriptural, or otherwise spiritual topics. He continued to write for various instrumental configurations including organ (Pari Intervallo, 1976), string ensemble (Fratres, 1985; Summa, 1991), chamber orchestra (Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten, 1977), and strings with two violins and piano (Tabula Rasa, 1977). His new method placed particular emphasis on vocal music, however, and in fact included language as one of its parameters. In works such as Missa Sillabica (1977), Miserere (1989), and the Berliner Messe (1990), the lengths of words, phrases, or poetic lines directly affect the distances which the melodic lines are allowed to wander from certain gravitational "home" tones. His mature works are thus both carefully structured and very accessible. -- Jeremy Grimshaw