Pärt. Bruckner

“When the Day of Judgement arrives,” Anton Bruckner (1824-1896) said “And God calls me and asks ‘How did you use the talent I gave you?’ I would like to give God the score of Te Deum and say ‘Look, I did this for You alone!’ I hope He will judge me fairly. After that I will probably manage to slip in.” These words encompass everything about Bruckner with his childishly naive, touching and sincere faith. This imaginary talk with God at the gates of Heaven is a continuation of his dialogue with Eternity which the great symphonist carried on throughout his life.
It is generally accepted that in his symphonies Bruckner was speaking to mankind and in his choral works he was speaking with God. But such a division of his works into secular and religious is more than merely conditional, because starting with Beethoven the borders between them have been conditional and blurred. Starting with Beethoven, according to the German music historian Paul Becker, the symphony has the role of a “secular mass.” the symphony blends together in one the experiences of the audience in concert halls as does a Sunday service with its parishioners in church. the seriously ill Bruckner dedicated his final Ninth Symphony “To my beloved God” and when working on it prayed fervently for the strength to complete the work. in the Ninth’s Adagio he quotes a theme from the Gloria of the Mass in D Minor: here is evidence of the unity of music!
Bruckner began to compose his Fifth Symphony in B Flat Major (1875–1878) in the summer of 1875. Having completed the score in May 1876, the composer perfected in over the next two years. No-one, however, would perform it. Bruckner was never to hear his darling opus performed by an orchestra. It was only eighteen years later following the triumph of the Seventh Symphony that the Fifth was performed in Graz. Bruckner was so ill that he could not attend the premiere, which took place on 8 April 1894 and which proved a great success. When the composer’s energy returned, in 1895 he undertook the second and final version of the score.
The symphony opens with a slow introduction akin to a chorale in character; Bruckner also quotes from it again in the start of the finale, thus underlining the main form-defining role of the motif. Possibly it also served as the basis for the rather widespread informal name of the symphony, Catholic. Apropos, it is equally frequently called Heroische, as along with the chorales and penetrating songful lyricism the symphony contains heroic fanfares and bold and intensely dramatic themes; the development of these themes impresses with its unusual, refined counterpoint brilliance.
The Adagio, as is always the case with Bruckner, is the central movement of the symphony. It was with this movement that the composer began work on the score. in terms of form it is a double-themed rondo; the first theme is a bleak and focussed melody sung by the oboe while the second is powerful and on an epic scale, first appearing in the full-sounding song of the chorus of strings. the development of both themes lead to pathétique culminations.
The scherzo – in complex three-part form – “looks” to the 20^th century with its convulsed and changeable atmosphere, increasingly unlike the natural one surrounding romantic characters. Here Bruckner foresees the crisis of romanticism, and he foretells the symphonies of Mahler and Shostakovich which make frequent use of grotesquely broken “werewolf themes,” and previously “sweet features” are at times so altered they are unrecognisable. Bruckner even encrusts the fabric of the Scherzo with both themes of the Adagio in slightly altered form as if afraid to “touch” something so holy.
The finale sums it all up, though it casts a retrospective glance at what has already been performed. Nothing is forgotten: the slow introduction and the main theme in the sonata allegro first movement, the themes from the Adagio and the Scherzo foretell the music of the Finale. the expansive sonata form rests on three themes, all different in character – the chant-like main theme (a courageous step and decisive move) and the pliant and melodically winding secondary and final theme that resurrects the calling fanfares from the first movement. Quietly, as if gradually, the grandiose development begins, executed in the form of a giant double fugue. the rising and falling dynamic waves of the development lead into the elated coda of the symphony – the victorious sound of the colossal orchestral tutti.

The words in the above epigraph from the start of the prayer To the Most Holy Mother of God are the life and artistic credo of Arvo Pärt (1935-). He began in the late 1950s as one of the most radical avant-garde composers in the USSR, having been tempted by dodecaphony, aleatoric music and polystylistic music (a collage technique facilitating composition using the most avant-garde techniques together with quotations from Bach and Tchaikovsky). One decade later all of these achievements of contemporary composition technique lost all their charm for him: like a hermit-monk, Arvo Pärt immersed himself in a study of Gregorian chorales and anthem chants, the medieval polyphony of the school of Notre Dame and orthodox tradition. His artistic seclusion lasted almost eight years, during which the composer developed his own deeply individual style known by the Latin term tintinnabuli (“bells”). This style has also absorbed ancient traditions and contemporary influences alike. We should not forget that Pärt graduated from the Tallinn Conservatoire in 1957 (composition class of Heino Eller, a pupil of Alexander Glazunov). In the USSR Pärt’s music was subjected to censorship and banned. In 1979 Pärt emigrated and currently lives in Berlin.
“I work with simple material,” Arvo Pärt says, “with triads. Three sounds are enough to give the listener the most lofty spiritual pleasure.” In these words some see a challenge to the centuries of experience of music has produced, while Pärt’s music may seem banal and devoid of imagination. But – and this is an amazing thing – when you listen to it carefully any prejudices disappear. Pärt’s asceticism is far from the studied manner of medieval scholars as well as from the consistently striking repetitions of contemporary minimalists. Goethe’s maxim springs to mind – “It is in self-limitation that a master first shows himself.” the composer characterised his new style in an exemplary fashion as “the flight into voluntary poverty.”
It is not only in choral music but in purely instrumental music too (intended for the concert hall) that Pärt remains a truly orthodox believer: on his orchestral scores you can see words from Russian prayers that convey ideas to the conductor or the musicians. “My language of prayer is Russian,” the composer has said.
It was impossible to give a more precise title to the work that turned a new page in Pärt’s music. Tabula rasa (double concerto for two violins, string orchestra and prepared piano, 1977) literally means “a clean board” in Latin, a technique frequently used to characterise man’s natural, turbid consciousness, his absolutely natural, unprejudiced reactions, not constrained by any life experience including any experience as a listener. Ludus (“Play”), the first section of the concerto, immerses the listener in a contradictory atmosphere of the present with its wobbly “balance” between good and evil, between intellectual searches and the bustle of the world around. Here the music – with rare “diversions” of the avant-garde – is entirely traditional. the second section Silentium (“Silence”) requires complete dissolution in a state of inner peace and, at the same time, listening intensely to the healing silence of nature, it demands that you immerse yourself in the depths of eternally continuing contemplation.
Iosif Raiskin