Four Centuries of Great Music September 13, 2025 Celebration of the 90th Birthday of Arvo Part (ENCORE)

Today on Four Centuries of Great Music I am celebrating  the 90th birthday of composer Arvo Part  which is on this coming Thursday,  September 11th.   Arvo Pärt is an Estonian composer of contemporary classical music. Since the late 1970s, Pärt has worked in a minimalist style that employs tintinnabuli, a compositional technique he invented. This simple style was influenced by the composer's mystical experiences with chant music. Musically, Pärt's tintinnabular music is characterized by two types of voice, the first of which (dubbed the "tintinnabular voice") arpeggiates the tonic triad, and the second voice moves diatonically in mostly stepwise motion.  The works often have a slow and contemplative  tempo.  His music is the second most often performed of any composer, second only to film composer John Williams.

This first hour of tonight’s program features Arvo Pärt’s Passio.  This passion is taken from the Gospel of John in Latin.   In comparison with the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke), John’s account is terse, and Pärt's pared-back musical language matches this accordingly.  Pärt employs a quartet of four singers (soprano, alto, tenor and bass) to deliver the narrative. They are often accompanied (but just as often not) by a quartet of
violin, oboe, cello and bassoon.   It is in 4 parts:
Passio: I. Passio Domini Nostri Jesu Christi secundum Joannem 9:38
Passio: II. Et adduxerunt eum ad Annam primum
11:28
Passio: III. Adducunt ergo Jesum a Caipha in praetorium
26:18
Passio: IV. Tunc ergo tradidit eis illum ut crucifigeretur
14:28

Antony Pitts & Tonus Peregrinus
Pärt: Passio
Naxos

We open this second hour of this episode of Four Centuries of Great Music celebrating  the 90th birthday of composer Arvo Part with perhaps his most played work Fratres.  It is three-part music, written in 1977, without fixed instrumentation and has been described as a "mesmerizing set of variations on a six-bar theme combining frantic activity and sublime stillness that encapsulates Pärt's observation that the instant and eternity are struggling within us”.   

Here is a performance Fratres for Violin, String Orchestra and Percussion by Daniel Hope, Simon Halsey conducting the  Deutsches Kammerorchester Berlin from the album Spheres Deutsche Grammophon


Für Alina (1976)
Jeroen van Veen
Arvo Pärt: Für Anna Maria, Complete Piano Music
Brillant Classics

Let’s close this episode of Four Centuries of Great Music celebrating  the 90th birthday of composer Arvo Part with his  L'abbe Agathon for soprano and string orchestra.

The choice of text for L'abbe Agathon written in 2008 was influenced by the origins and history of its commissioner, the Beauvais Cello Octet.  Beauvais France is located near the ruins of one the oldest leper colonies in Europe.  It reminded Part of the fourth century hermit Agathon who carried an angel disguised as a leper to the market place.  The dialog between the angel disguised as a leper and Agathon is the contrast between tonal music and the unearthly polytonal harmony.  The appearance of the angel in its true form is marked by a change of the texture of the music to rising arpeggios of the strings, while the departure of the angel is heard as the gradual ascent of the soprano melody to a tessitura that borders on the etherial.

Here is a performance of Arvo Part’s L'abbe Agathon by the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra with soprano Maria Listra from the album  Arvo Part Tractus