Arvo Pärt is a heavily-bearded Estonian composer, who wrestled with his compositional style until landing on something he calls Tintinnabulation:
Tintinnabulation is an area I sometimes wander into when I am searching for answers–in my life, my music, my work. In my dark hours, I have the certain feeling that everything outside this one thing has no meaning. The complex and many-faceted only confuses me, and I must search for unity. What is it, this one thing, and how do I find my way to it? Traces of this perfect thing appear in many guises–and everything that is unimportant falls away.
Very often it is easily compared to the sounds of triads, of bells, of very simple counterpoint between two parts. This can be seen in today’s choice – his Magnificat from 1989 – in which often one part holds a fixed pitch, whilst another moves around it.
During the 1990s and early 2000s he was put together with John Tavener and Henryk Górecki as ‘holy’ or ‘spiritual minimalists’ in lazy advertising by the marketing departments of large record companies keen to tap into what seemed to be a wider public appreciation for relaxing, smooth classical music after the start of Classic FM in 1992, which in itself led to John Tavener’s The Protecting Veil and Song for Athene topping the charts.
What do you think? Is it simple? How difficult is the process by which Arvo Pärt creates and then moves a simple melody around a fixed point to create a whole piece? How would you do it?
