Today's artist might be considered as the main composer of contemporary sacred music. He is strongly influenced by the minimalist movement & Gregorian chant. Mystic, restful & emotional might be some adjectives to describe his compositions. He is one of the most important composers of 'mystical minimalist movement' with John Tavener & Henryk Górecki. exhibitions like documenta X and the 49th and 50th Venice Biennale, Nicolai’s works were shown worldwide in extensive solo and group exhibitions.
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Arvo Pärt is one of the most important living composers of concert music. His first works, dating from the 1950s, showed the influence of Prokofiev and Shostakovich, as heard in his two Sonatinas for piano (1958). But as his musical studies under Heino Eller continued, he was drawn toward serial techniques and turned out a number of works in the 1960s in this vein. His First Symphony (1961), for instance, displays this method and is dedicated to Eller. By the end of that decade, Pärt had become disenchanted by the 12-tone technique and began writing music in varying styles. In 1976, however, Pärt started composing in what he called his tintinnabulation (or tintinnabuli) method, which involves the prominent use of pure triads. This new style resulted in music so radically different from that which had preceded it, that many observed that it seemed to have come from a different hand altogether.
Unlike most composers of major rank, Pärt did not show remarkable talent in his childhood or even in his early adolescence. His first serious study came in 1954 at the Tallinn Music Middle School, but less than a year later he temporarily abandoned it to fulfill military service, playing oboe and percussion in the army band.
In 1957, Pärt enrolled at the Tallinn Conservatory where he studied under Eller. He graduated in 1963, having worked throughout his student years and afterward as a recording engineer for Estonian Radio. He wrote several film scores and other works during this period, among them his two Sonatinas for piano, from 1958, and Nekrolog, a serial work for orchestra, from 1960. He also wrote a number of choral pieces at this time, among which was the ethereal a cappella effort, Solfeggio (1964). Pärt continued to compose music mainly in the serial vein throughout the 1960s, but received little recognition, since that method of composition was generally anathema throughout the Soviet Union. In the late 1960s and early 1970s Pärt studied the music of Renaissance era composers, particularly that of Machaut, Josquin Desprez, and Obrecht. His Symphony No. 3 reflected these influences in its austere, Medieval sound world.
By the mid-1970s, Pärt was working on an altogether new style of composition. In 1976 he unveiled this method, the aforementioned tintinnabulation, with the piano work, Für Alina. A trio of more popular works followed in 1977, Fratres, for string quintet and wind quintet (later given additional arrangements by the composer), Cantus In Memoriam Benjamin Britten (revised 1980) and Tabula Rasa, for two violins, prepared piano, and string orchestra. Owing to the continued political oppression he found in Estonia, Pärt and his wife and two sons emigrated to the West in 1980, settling first in Vienna, then in West Berlin.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Pärt, a devout member of the Eastern Orthodox Church, wrote a number of large-scale choral religious works, including the St. John Passion (1982), Magnificat (1989), The Beatitudes (1990), and Litany (1994). He has declared a preference for vocal music in his later years, and continues, like the English composer John Tavener, also an adherent of the Eastern Orthodox religion, to write much religious music.
In 1995, Pärt was recognized for his many artistic achievements by being elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His 2008 Symphony No. 4 was nominated for a Grammy for Best Comtemporary Classical Composition. He remains among the most popular serious composers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
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The 1984 ECM album Tabula Rasa was the vehicle that introduced the revolutionary music of Arvo Pärt to audiences outside Eastern Europe and initiated what was to become one of the most extraordinary musical careers of the late 20th century. Like many of the first generation American minimalists, he limited himself to diatonic harmonies and generated pieces by setting processes in motion, but the radical simplicity he achieved was the result of religious contemplation that was at least as, if not more, formative than his quest for a new musical aesthetic. The result was music suffused by an unhurried, luminous serenity, and while it was distinctly contemporary, it had an archaic quality that tied it to the music of the very distant past.
The three instrumental pieces recorded here (one of which appears in two versions) were among the first Pärt wrote in his newly developed style, which came to be known popularly as holy minimalism. (The composer prefers the term tintinnabulation, because in his words, "The three notes of the triad are like bells.") Fratres, originally for chamber orchestra, is undeniably Pärt's most popular work and exists in well over a dozen versions, two of which are included here. Gidon Kremer and Keith Jarrett bring great nuance and sensitivity to the version for violin and piano. They play somewhat loosely with details of the score, but they are entirely in sync with the spirit of the piece, and it's a gripping performance. The violin part is hugely virtuosic and Kremer is breathtaking, particularly in the crystalline purity of the outrageously high harmonics that end the piece. The arrangement of Fratres for 12 cellos is an altogether more lyrical and meditative version, and the cellists of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra play it with gorgeous tone and depth. Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten for string orchestra and bell is at once one of the composer's most brilliantly simple and profound pieces. The first violins repeat a mournful descending figure, and each of the other sections then doubles the length of the note values of the part above it so that the note that opens the piece is held two beats by the first violins, but it is sustained for 32 beats by the double basses. There's nothing mechanical sounding about the piece, though, and by its ending, it has created a mood of devastating loss and grief. The first movement of Tabula Rasa, for two violins, prepared piano, and chamber orchestra, is the most enigmatic selection, full of unexpected long silences and flurries of frenzied activity, while the lovely, meditative second movement is more characteristic of the composer. Kremer is joined by violinist Tatjana Grindenko and composer/pianist Alfred Schnittke in a beautifully expressive performance, accompanied by Saulius Sondeckis leading the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra. Produced by Manfred Eicher, the visionary who "discovered" Pärt and made it his mission to introduce him to Western audiences, the sound of the album is admirably clear and clean, except that there are some room noises in Tabula Rasa.
<a href="https://www.imagenetz.de/43Tau"> Arvo Part - Tabula Rasa .</a> (281mb)
01 Fratres 11:26
02 Cantus In Memory Of Benjamin Britten 5:00
03 Fratres 11:51
04 Tabula Rasa 26:08
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Pärt's 1987 release, Arbos, shows the composer working within his medium, bringing forth a body of music sacred in sound and message and presenting new compositional techniques. Utilizing a limited palette of tones, arranged in repeating patterns, these works are often (understandably) categorized with the works of Glass, Reich, and Riley. The tonal palette is often borrowed from European medieval styles, and this, in conjunction with the liturgical subject matter, make these new compositions feel centuries old. His Pari Intervello, originally scored in 1978 for wind instruments, is here recorded for solo organ. One of his more famous pieces, Stabat Mater, is presented here -- an airy piece that floats just on the threshold of awareness. Scored for vocal trio and string trio, this is a simply beautiful piece -- very expressive and lilting.
<a href="http://depositfiles.com/files/k5i6fsaoz"> Arvo Part - Arbos </a> ( flac 216mb)
01 Arbos 2:25
02 An Den Wassern Zu Babel 6:30
03 Pari Intervallo 5:42
04 De Profundis 6:50
05 Es Sang Vor Langen Jahren 5:51
06 Summa 5:16
07 Arbos 2:25
08 Stabat Mater 23:53
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Never one to dress up his religious work in ostentatious garb, Arvo Part has selected the most severe, detached and economical musical style for this Passion according to St John. More a liturgical act than a concert piece, it makes no concessions whatever to modern conventions of Passion music. Stubbornly repetitive and monochrome, deliberately anti-dramatic and neutral, it achieves its extraordinary and noble effect through the simplest of means: measured recitative, piquant chanted choruses and the clear, bright timbres of a small instrumental ensemble.
The work plays for 70 minutes without a break.
<a href="https://mir.cr/0N4XP5XM"> Arvo Part - Passio </a> ( flac 238mb)
01 Passio Domini Nostri Jesu Christi Secundum Joannem 70:52
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A fine new disc in celebration of Pärt’s 75th birthday, with world premiere recordings of the Stabat mater in choral-orchestral guise and the Cantique des degrès, and the Third Symphony, a work that marked the beginning of a sea-change in the composer’s compositional style, back in 1971. The Stabat mater receives a performance that misses no nuance of its new, more dramatic trappings, but I’d urge anyone also to experience the original chamber version (the Hilliard Ensemble, ECM, 9/87). The Cantique is much more recent (1999/2002), and an intriguing example of what happens to Pärt’s music when he sets different languages, in this case French. There’s a sprightliness to the work that seems to correspond directly to that language (Poulenc?), but which frequently turns out to have Mozartian intentions. If the work sounds difficult to describe, it is.
As for the Symphony No 3, the work’s dedicatee Neeme Jäarvi has a sure feel for the music’s disconcerting contrasts, of almost academic bicinia and heart-on-sleeve pseudo-Tchaikovsky, but I detect overall a little more warmth, a touch more flexibility and a more legato sound in this new recording. Most remarkable is the second movement, which in the Berliners’ performance runs to just over nine minutes, whereas Neeme Järvi brings it in at 6'22". I’m more convinced by the latter; the slower speed stretches it to just beyond that point at which the innate tension and relaxation of the long melodic lines is broken. But the orchestral sound is luscious and no subtlety missed: an important disc for any admirer of the composer.
<a href="https://multiup.org/d613ca3e9d1483f014fb8dbcc502d16e"> Arvo Part - Cello concerto, Symphonies 1-3</a> ( flac 296mb)
Concerto for Violoncello and Orchestra «Pro et contra» (1966)
(Neeme Jarvi, Mstislav Rostropovich)
01 – I Maestoso
02 - II Largo
03 –III Allegro
04 Perpetuum Mobile, Op. 10 (1963) –
Frans Helmerson – cello
Simphony No.1 (1964)
05 – I Canons
06 – II Prelude and fugue
Simphony No.2 (1966)
07 First Movement
08 Second Movement
09 Third Movement
Simphony No.3 (1971)
10 First Movement
11 Second Movement
12 Third Movement
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Very nice choice of albums,thanx.
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