John K

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Pärt article (from The Evangelist, the seasonal newsletter of St. Matthew's Church, Newport Beach)


While the Music Lasts
Some thoughts on the art of Arvo Pärt


For most of us, there is only the unattended
Moment, the moment in and out of time,
The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,
The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning
Or the waterfall, or the music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts.

-- T.S. Eliot, The Dry Salvages


Arvo Pärt is arguably the greatest living composer of serious music. Born in Estonia on September 11th, 1935, and raised amidst the dreariness of Soviet occupied Europe, he made a name for himself while studying composition at the Tallinn Conservatory. The powers-that-were did not appreciate his overly Western sounding music, and early in his career he received official censures from the state. He eventually left Estonia in 1980 and currently lives in Berlin, where he composes under the friendlier auspices of the German government and people.

Pärt’s music is popularly described as ‘mystical’ or ‘spiritual’ minimalism. While hackneyed descriptions of this kind are likely to raise the eyebrows of most sensible people, they are surprisingly appropriate in the case of Pärt. He himself is a deeply religious man, and his conversion to Russian Orthodoxy in 1975 marks a kind of artistic conversion and the beginning of his defining work. In the words of his wife: “if you want to understand my husband’s music, read the Church Fathers”.

His style is a characteristic blend of ancient and modern forms. Whether recalling the stately plainchant of the Middle Ages, the transcendent polyphony of Josquin, or the immaculate fugues of Bach, centuries of musical tradition shape his compositions. He exemplifies what T.S. Eliot called the ‘historical sense’. Pärt writes “not simply with his own generation in his bones”, but a “sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal and of the timeless and of the temporal together.” [1] He looks to unite the past and the present in artistic expression, to transfix the timeless moment in time.

Probably best known for his choral works, Pärt places great emphasis on language and texts. “Words write music”, he often says. Language has the power to shape ideas, enlarge sentiments, and color life in general; it also carries a spiritual dimension (think of the words in the Liturgy). These somewhat imperceptible aspects of language animate Pärt’s music. A good example is his setting of the Kanon Pokajanen, the 8th century Greco-Slavonic canon of repentance. To quote Pärt himself:

The Kanon has shown me how much the choice of language predetermines the character of a work, so much so, in fact, that the entire structure of the musical composition is subject to the text and its laws. [2]

The words must be allowed to find their own sound, according to him. In so doing, the text will find its own sound, just as the meaning of the text is a function of the meaning of the words. One might take the last movement of the Kanon (the Prayer after the Canon) as an illustration. The text begins by dwelling on subjects such as sin and the crucifixion. It ends in a more heavenly way, imploring admittance into the Lord’s “pasturage” and the nourishment of his “Holy Mysteries”. The choir is made to mirror this progression, beginning the prayer with gentle, unhurried, almost reluctant vocal lines that gradually ascend to harmonies of the most ethereal beauty. In this way, the music and the text come to form an organic whole. The sacred words are made incarnate, as it were, in the music. Beyond the mere utterance of the words, the timelessness of the text is translated into the present in the form of art.

This theme of timelessness can also be perceived in the use of ‘musical silence’. To quote Pärt again:

My music was always written after I had long been silent in the most literal sense of the word. When I speak of silence, I mean the ‘nothingness’ out of which God created the world. That is why, ideally, musical silence is sacred. [3]

Pärt’s scores are interspersed with moments of ‘nothingness’ or silence. In such moments he allows notes to ring-out to their fullest extent, giving the music a kind of spatial quality (his Te Deum is a nice example, where oftentimes what the violins are playing is not nearly as important as what the violins are not playing). It is like the intermittent sound of plainchant echoing through the walls of a spacious Medieval cathedral; the music, in a sense, leaves the present moment and unites with the illegible stones, sepulchers, and those individuals whom they commemorate.

However, it should be remembered that silence by itself is meaningless, being simply the negation of sound. What Pärt emphasizes could be called a musical form apprehended in moments of silence or stillness. The temporal succession of thoughts and feelings that accompany the act of listening is momentarily suspended in the stillness, leaving the music spread-out before the mind like a geometric object. Time seems to stand still in the form of the music. T.S. Eliot, who discusses frequently the subject of timelessness in his poetry, explains this phenomenon as follows:

Not the stillness of the violin, while the note lasts,
Not that only, but the co-existence,
Or say that the end precedes the beginning,
And the end and the beginning were always there
Before the beginning and after the end.
And all is always now
[4]

On perhaps a deeper level, it could be said that silence is to music what ‘aridity’ or ‘darkness’ is to the spiritual life. God in his essence is so far beyond human understanding that sometimes the most appropriate way to approach him is through the negation of worldly things, the senses, or even reason. The soul must be purged of temporal considerations to the point of aridity. This is the so-called via negativa, famously articulated in the 5th century writings of Pseudo-Dionysius.

The ‘negative way’ had an enormous influence on the spirituality of the Eastern Church -- and by default the spiritual life of our composer. It was not until the late Middle Ages that vernacular translations of Pseudo-Dionysius brought the via negativa to the full attention of the West. Following this trend, the 16th century Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross wrote about the ‘dark night’ of the soul. According to him “the soul departs from all created things, in its affection and operation, by means of this night and marches on toward eternal things.” [5] Once this dark, arid place has been reached the soul is like a clean slate, ready to receive God’s grace in its simplicity and power. St. John quotes often from Scripture in reference to spiritual aridity: “in a desert land, without water, dry, and without a way, I appeared before You to be able to see Your power and Your glory.” [6]

Returning to Pärt, we find in his music strains of the via negativa. Musical compositions are oftentimes so fraught with technical considerations (e.g., instrumentation, theory) that the beauty of an individual note or a melody is lost in the commotion. Pärt begins with a clean slate of silence -- he even named one of his instrumental compositions Tabula Rasa -- and allows himself only the simplest of tools to work with: scales, triads, voices. The composer calls his style ‘Tintinnabulation’, after the bell-like sound made by the tonal triad. He thinks of it in the following way:

Here I am alone with silence. I have discovered that it is enough when a single note is beautifully played. This one note, or a silent beat, or a moment of silence, comforts me. I work with very few elements -- with one voice, with two voices. I build with the most primitive materials -- with the triad, with one specific tonality. The three notes of the triad are like bells. [7]

Pärt’s music should not be separated from his Christian principles, as illustrated above. His art is brilliant on many different levels, but this would be nothing without the spirituality of the composer. Indeed, art itself is a function of the spiritual faculties of the artist. It is called, in the precise language of St. Thomas, a ‘virtue’ of the practical intellect: a kind of habit of the intellectual soul or spirit [8]. The soul of the artist subsumes both the efficient and the formal cause of his art. If the soul is redeemed and animated by grace, then it will readily produce art that bears the same mark [9]. It is not surprising, then, that Pärt often spends years in silence, prayer, and contemplation before composing. He wants his soul to be properly ordered before creating. As the soul draws nearer to God, artistic creation becomes more a reflection of divine creation. The Christian artist is ideally a type of mystic, and his art is evidence of his participation in the life of God.

Christianity is thus a creative force to Pärt. Following the quotes above, he looks to make music out of silence in a way that is analogous to God’s act of creation ex nihilo, and just as the creation was brought forth through the Word (St. Augustine goes so far as to say the Word is “like the art of Almighty God” [10]), his art consists in creating through the sacred words and traditions of the Church. Everywhere his music bears similar imprints of the Christian soul. He is fond of comparing, for example, the melodic voice and the triadic voice that constitute Tintinnabulation to theological notions such as sin and divine forgiveness (respectively). The former voice is a picture of the temporal world, and the latter voice is a picture of the eternal world, both intersecting at the "moment in and out of time".

In some sense listening to Pärt is like not listening to music at all, but “you are the music”. That is, you belong to a different, eternal world and the music is hinting at your true identity. This power of art to fuse the timeless with time, ultimately, points us towards the Incarnation. It is not always easy to apprehend the ‘Word made flesh’ -- the most important instance of the timeless fusing with time -- in everyday life. Noise, commotion, and above all sin tend to get in the way. Pärt, in his uniquely artistic way, encourages us to break this tendency. The Word incarnate in his music is a picture of the Word incarnate in us.

Recommended Recordings

Instrumental: Tabula Rasa / Fratres / Symphony No. 3; Gil Shaham (violin), Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Neeme Järvi (conductor); Deutsche Grammophon, 1999.

Vocal: Te Deum / Silouan’s Song / Magnificat / Berlin Mass; Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, Tallinn Chamber Orchestra, Tõnu Kaljuste (conductor); ECM New Series, 1993.






[1] T.S. Eliot, Tradition and the Individual Talent.
[2] CD liner notes, ECM recording of Kanon Pokajanen.
[3] CD liner notes, Deutsche Grammophon recording of Tabula Rasa.
[4] T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton.
[5] St. John of the Cross, The Dark Night.
[6] Ps. 63:2-3.
[7] CD liner notes, ECM recording of Tabula Rasa.
[8] Summa Theologica, I-II, Q. 57.
[9] Ibid., Q. 55, A. 2, unumquodque enim quale est, talia operator.
[10] De Trinitate, book VI, X.11, ars quaedam omnipotentis atque sapientis dei.

11 Comments:

  • Hey John,

    Interesting post.

    I can't contribute much about Part, but I will embark on a couple tangents.

    I think you are right to lump T.S. Elliot in with Christian Mystisim, especailly his later works.

    Speaking of the via negativa, have you ever read "The Cloud of Unknowing"? It sounds like it would be up your alley -- I think it is from some 14th century monk.

    Personally, I'm not too fond of Elliot's artistic project. I've noticed that you, Blake and Chris all seem to be big Elliot fans. I'd be interested to hear more about why you like Elliot.

    But I am sort of fond of certain aspects of Christian mysticism -- particularly the idea that not all knowledge is mental, but that there is a non-rational element to our experience and knowledge.

    By Blogger Johnny T, At 11:42 PM  

  • Hey JT,

    Thanks for the comment! Perhaps your point about mysticism is why I love TSE so much. The Four Quartets, at least, are brimming with the stuff. Just off the top of my head, there are lots of cataphatic references ("descend lower, descend only into a world of perpetual solitude") and lots of allusions to particularly English spiritual traditions ("all shall be well" etc. from Julian of Norwich, as quoted in Little Gidding, or even the title "Little Gidding" itself, hearkening back to the world of Nicolas Ferrar, George Herbert, Charles I).

    That's only one point, however, where I identify with TSE. His sense of history has always intrigued me, lover of the past that I am. He's like a Joyce figure to me, but in a more meaningful way. We share the same Anglo-Catholic understanding and practice of Christianity... His mysticism, and mysticism in general I think, goes hand in hand with a thoroughly sacramental (or say incarnational) spiritual life.

    Now that I think about it, pretty much everything I wrote in the article about Part as an artist could be applied to Eliot as an artist. Of course, that's why I'm qouting him all over the place!

    By Blogger johnk, At 9:03 AM  

  • Oops. I should have written "apophatic" instead of "cataphatic". My Greek sucks.

    By Blogger johnk, At 12:17 PM  

  • Well, the question is did you mean knowledge obtained via affirmation or negation. If the former you mean cataphatic (which is what I think you meant). If the latter you meant apophatic, "a" being an alpha privative. Kata is the Greek preposition down from or down toward. Anyway, not to nerd you out. This is what I'm living and breathing lately. But don't you mean that Eliot is about affirming the things of God positively rather than via negativa? Now I'm confused! =)

    As for the Part article. . . BRAVO! I love it, and I am not surprised. You know, when Chesterton wrote "St. Thomas Aquinas: The Dumb Ox" he basically wrote a biography of himself. I find this to be true in my writing as well. It's hard to get past our obsessions, and in some sense they never leave us. . .nor should they.

    Eliot the historian is amazing. His command of history, and his ability to take it back up and re-serve it through a modern lens is second to none.

    Lastly, an interesting side note is that C.S. Lewis didn't really like Eliot precisely because he thought Eliot's mysticism was too cultic. Apparently the only time they ever met Lewis went over for a party and was thoroughly freaked out by Eliot's "friends." I don't remember exactly where I read that, so don't quote me, but I believe it was in his letters, perhaps 2nd collection.

    Peace.

    By Blogger Christopher, At 5:09 PM  

  • This comment has been removed by the author.

    By Blogger Christopher, At 5:15 PM  

  • http://www.burkestichting.nl/nl/stichting/isioxford.html

    By Blogger Christopher, At 5:35 PM  

  • Totally know what you mean about the "obsessions". Part and TSE have been with me, informing me, framing my view of the world ever since I discovered them both as an undergrad.

    I remember hearing something about Lewis criticizing J. Alfred Prufrock (he never would have compared a sunset to "a patient etherized on a table"). TSE was definitely more "artsy". I couldn't see Lewis writing the Waste Land or being buddy-buddy with the likes of Ezra Pound, etc. On the other hand, I couldn't see TSE writing Narnia or (even) Mere Christianity.

    The personalities are just different. I pay lip service to Lewis while offering TSE something between dulia and hyperdulia, which is quite the commentary on my own personality.

    By Blogger johnk, At 5:43 PM  

  • Very informative essay on the two, thanks!

    By Blogger johnk, At 5:51 PM  

  • BTW, I actually did mean 'apophatic'. Here's the full TSE quote:

    Descend lower, descend only
    Into the world of perpetual solitude,
    World not world, but that which is not world,
    Internal darkness, deprivation
    And destitution of all property,
    Desiccation of the world of sense,
    Evacuation of the world of fancy,
    Inoperancy of the world of spirit;
    This is the one way, and the other
    Is the same, not in movement
    But abstention from movement; while the world moves
    In appetency, on its metalled ways
    Of time past and time future.

    By Blogger johnk, At 8:34 AM  

  • ha! Well, I don't know if that is the via negativa, but I suppose you could call that anthropo-apophatic!

    Yeah, I think Lewis had a bone to pick with old TSE. He doesn't appear to have acted too consistently toward him. I can see how Eliot's poetry and brand of mysticism would rub he and Tollers the wrong way.

    By Blogger Christopher, At 1:08 PM  

  • Thanks for writing this.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, At 1:37 PM  

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