Written by Anna Vorhes

BORN: September 11, 1935 in Paide, Estonia
Today he lives in Laulasmaa, Estonia where he has established an archive of his music

INSTRUMENTATION: Strings and SAT (soprano, alto, tenor) choir

COMPOSED: The first version was commissioned by the Alban Berg Foundation and was performed by a trio of singers with a string trio of violin, viola and cello. The Tonkünstler-Orchester Niederösterreich commissioned the setting for full string orchestra and three-part choir. Tonight’s performance, however, features three soloists.

WORLD PREMIERE: The trio version premiered Oct 30, 1985 at the Konzerthaus in Vienna. The full version premiered December 6, 2008, at the Musikverein, Groβer Saal in Vienna. The Tonkünstler Orchester performed the work with Kristjan Järvi conducting.

DURATION: 24 minutes

SOMETHING INTERESTING TO LISTEN FOR:

Arvo Pärt calls his compositional technique tintinnabuli, a word which evokes the spirit of bells. Silence and space are part of the technique. Pärt speaks about the importance of pause and of silence in communication, and also in his compositions:

“The more important things happen between two people—for example, two people who are very close to each other—are not stated, are not even that possible to express. One doesn’t need to say anything and shouldn’t say anything. Yet these things are very important. There is a sort of barrier, and when someone feels this barrier and the strength of such things I believe they must pause often. These pauses mean a great deal. They follow on from what has been said before, or are preparation for what is to come.” 

As you listen, silence should be a treasured part of the experience. Pärt’s melodies are clear, often based on the sounds of Gregorian chant and later Renaissance settings of the chants. Stabat Mater features a melody with a three-note motive. The music may sound more sparse than we are used to, but the result calls out an emotional response. 

PROGRAM NOTES

There are scores of compositions titled Stabat Mater based on a text that originated in the thirteenth century. Various people have been presented as possible authors of the poetry. This list includes four popes, a couple of monks (one English), and a saint, each considered as author of the original Latin poem. Musical settings of the work were quick to follow the poem and continue to this day without pause with new compositions introduced every year. The body of works titled Stabat Mater fascinated a Dutchman named Hans van der Velden who collected and studied recordings and compositions. He shared his work on a website he titled “The Ultimate Stabat Mater Site” and he offered an in-depth examination of the tradition and a plethora of examples of the works including numerous translations. After his death in 2008 his wife picked up the mission in his honor, and the site is an active collection with new examples of historic and newly composed works added frequently.  

Stabat Mater is a poem intended to lead the reader (or listener in a musical setting) to contemplate the emotional response of the Virgin Mary standing at the foot of Christ’s cross as he is crucified. The poem is twenty stanzas of three lines each. These lines have eight, eight and seven syllables respectively, and the stanzas are paired with a particular rhyming scheme: AAB CCB for each pair. The pattern was a common medieval practice, allowing for easier memorization in a time of limited literacy. It is this historic text we hear tonight.

Arvo Pärt started his life in Estonia under Soviet rule. His first piano was not in reasonable shape, especially in the middle range. As a result, many of his first experiments in playing and composing combined very high and very low pitches. This may be a subconscious part of how he composes in tintinnabuli, which often calls for widely separated pitches. His compositional exploits led him to explore serial and atonal music, popular in the middle of the twentieth century. Then from 1969 to 1976 Pärt did very little composition, partly because of the Soviet reaction to his writing and partly because he became intrigued with medieval and renaissance music. When he came back to composing, the study of historic music had changed his perspective.

In 1980 Pärt and his family were given permission to leave Estonia and emigrate to Austria. Compositions from this period show the tintinnabuli technique as it becomes more and more refined. By the time Pärt was commissioned to write the Stabat Mater his technique was fully evident.

While the technique is quite complex, a simplified explanation might help listeners follow the format. The basis for the construction is found in the overtones created by bells rather than the overtones used by the orchestra. Pärt uses three voices to create the effect he wants. The melody is covered by one voice, sometimes the highest pitch, sometimes the lowest and sometimes in the middle of the other two voices. Interval spacing (the distance between the pitches of each part) is often wide. Silence is important to create the bell-like effect. Ryan Turner, writing for Emmanuel Music, describes the result:

“It combines voices homophonically in such a way that one voice outlines simple, scalar melodies, while the other leaps above and below the melodic line, always to notes within the tonic triad. The result is a kind of sonorous tonal reverberation that is always harmonically stable, but full of shimmering dissonances from the melodic voices.”

If a longer and more complex explanation is of interest, you can find a master’s degree thesis on the topic of Pärt’s tintinnabuli written by Oranit Kongwattananon at the University of North Texas available on the internet.

Stabat Mater begins with Pärt’s interest in religious chant from the middle ages and adds his creation of the spacious music created using tintinnabuli technique. The result is appropriately haunting in depicting a scene Christians contemplate frequently.

Arvo Pärt has been the most performed living composer nine times in the last twelve years as measured by UK based Bachtrack. (John Williams finally outpaced him in 2019, and Bachtrack did not issue statistics for 2020 or 2021 due to the pandemic. Pärt was back on top in 2022.) Minimalist composer Steve Reich said of his peer, “And yet he’s enormously popular, which is so inspiring. His music fulfils a deep human need that has nothing to do with fashion.”