RhoDeo 2122 Sundaze

 Hello,




Today's artist might be considered as the main composer of contemporary sacred music. He is strongly influenced by the minimalist movement & Gregorian chant.
In 1958, he entered at the Tallinn Conservatoire & he became famous through USSR with his composition 'Our Garden'. At the beginning of the seventies, he began to use serialism in his works but he stopped. An interest for Gregorian chant & medieval music then brought a new dimension to his music. 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 title track, the 34 minute "Miserere" really holds the disc on its own and is all you really need to hear, yet the other two tracks are not without their merits, and are most likely simply beyond what I can understand. Some might find all of the works here superb just from within their own worlds of sound, some will find them confusing and boring, and some will need a pairing of the ideas behind the composition and lyrics in order to get the full appreciation."Miserere" is the most listenable on its own, with a wide, rich dynamic and timbral range (holy s##t at 30:02-30:20--deep organ note and vocal suspension over it), along with a real sense of travel and dramatic tension--even if you don't know or care about the Latin text or its religious meaning. Part also achieves as much emotional leverage with his sparse opening minutes as he does with the climactic full ensemble moments. The lonely clarinet, oboe, and bassoon notes echoing in the hall in conjunction with the flowing vocal line is haunting and gives a sense of the immensity of space, both inner and physical.

"Festina Lente" starts busy and stays busy for its relatively short five minutes, and feels more like a time-filler or an exercise that Part might have written just to get ideas out of his head. It feels like a work he could have just as easily unraveled and stretched into a 54-minute study in intervals and layers.

"Sarah Was Ninety Years Old" is aptly titled since it feels like it takes ninety years to play out AMIRITE?
Kidding aside, what starts as near-comedy with a lone drummer playing a four-note, two-pitch motif in a steady journey that recalls the logic and work of an elementary student, turns into some absorbing, thought-provoking, and ultimately intense patterns of growth. The work has deeper religious meaning and context, but to me it sounds like someone at the end of life, lying still, waiting for death, which approaches in the gradual growth of the drum patterns. The vocal interludes in between representing reflection on the life lived, and the ending representing the passage to the afterlife. Since I have no connection and find little meaning in the biblical implications of the work, it's a testament to the writing that it still communicates to me, as does a majority of Part's music thus far.



<a href="https://multiup.org/8b293391663e253d9e878e6536d7afbe">  Arvo Part - Miserere   .</a> (187) mb)

01 Miserere 34:34
02 Festina lente 5:24
03 Sarah Was Ninety Years Old 25:28

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Like a multi-decker sandwich, this record alternates thick slices of Arvo Part's early work with the refined elegance of his later music, on which Part's currently high reputation rests. The three later pieces included here (Summa, Fratres and Festina lente) have all been recorded before. Of the four older works, three are not otherwise available on record (Collage teemal BACH, If Bach had been a Beekeeper and Credo); the Second Symphony has been championed once before by Neeme Jarvi, in the company of the Cello Concerto, Perpetuum mobile and the other two symphonies (BIS).
Tastes will differ, but I find myself enjoying the filling far more than the bread. Festina lente, for string orchestra, is one of Part's most exquisitely bell-like scores, and the Philharmonia here play it beautifully. On ECM, however, it's more strongly coupled with the Miserere and Sarah was ninety years old to form one of the most appealing Part records on the market. The short Summa is properly a setting of the Creed for four voices, and it has been sung perfectly by The Hilliard Ensemble (ECM, 9/87); Jarvi's new version is an arrangement for strings. Fratres also exists in more than one incarnation. Two other realizations, respectively for 12 cellos or for violin and piano, are available on ECM ((CD) 817 764-2). Now we have a third arrangement, for string orchestra. To my mind this is the most effective yet, and it has the advantage of including all nine of the intended variations. This track is probably the record's best selling-point.
Set beside these gentle delicacies, the four early pieces seem garrulous, confrontational and bewilderingly eclectic, with their uncomfortable mix of high modernism and variously digested quotation—largely of Bach, but also of Tchaikovsky in the Symphony No. 2. It's instructive to hear them, if only to learn more about the context from which Part's later music emerged. In their own right, however, I doubt if these scores would have earned the composer a fraction of the international acclaim he now enjoys.'



<a href="https://mir.cr/01RMEHKS">   Arvo Part - Collage </a> ( flac 216mb)

Collage Sur B-A-C-H (7:45)
01 I Toccata. Preciso 2:43
02 II Sarabande. Lento 3:31
03 III Ricercar. Deciso 1:26
04 Summa (1991 Version) 4:14
05 Wenn Bach Bienen Gezüchtet Hätte    7:28
06 Fratres (1983 Version) 9:51
Symphony No. 2  (14:37)
07 I    6:48
08  II    3:07
09 III    4:37
Festina Lente    
10 In Einem Ruhigen Zeitmaß. Molto Legato 5:44
11 Credo 12:38


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Te Deum is a setting of the Latin Te Deum text, also known as the Ambrosian Hymn attributed to Saints Ambrose, Augustine, and Hilary, by Estonian-born composer Arvo Pärt, commissioned by the Westdeutscher Rundfunk in Cologne, Germany, in 1984. Te Deum employs Pärt's signature tintinnabuli compositional style. Tintinnabuli is often described as a minimalistic compositional technique, as its harmonic logic departs from that of the tonal tradition of Western classical music, creating its own distinct harmonic system. Tintinnabulation is a process in which a chosen triad encircles a melody, manifesting itself in specific positions in relation to the melody according to a predetermined scheme of adjacency. In its most rudimentary form, Pärt's tintinnabuli music is composed of two main voices: one carries the usually stepwise melody (M-voice) while the other follows the trajectory of the melody but is limited to notes of a specific triad (T-voice). In the case of Te Deum, it is a D triad that is featured in the T-voice, and as such provides the harmonic basis for the entire piece.

The work is scored for three choirs (women's choir, men's choir, and mixed choir), prepared piano, divisi strings, and wind harp. According to the Universal Edition full score, the piano part requires that four pitches be prepared with metal screws and calls for "as large a concert grand as possible" and "amplified". The wind harp is similar to the Aeolian harp, its strings vibrating due to wind passing through the instrument. Manfred Eicher of ECM Records "recorded this 'wind music' on tape and processed it acoustically." The two notes (D and A) performed on the wind harp are to be played on two separate CD or DAT recordings. According to the score preface, the wind harp functions as a drone throughout the piece, fulfilling "a function comparable to that of the ison in Byzantine church music, a repeated note which does not change pitch."

On an ECM records leaflet, Pärt wrote that the Te Deum text has "immutable truths", reminding him of the "immeasurable serenity imparted by a mountain panorama." His composition sought to communicate a mood "that could be infinite in time—out of the flow of infinity. I had to draw this music gently out of silence and emptiness."



<a href="https://www.imagenetz.de/JXQEd">  Arvo Pärt - Te Deum </a> ( flac 230mb)

01 Te Deum 28:43
02 Silouans Song ("My Soul Yearns After The Lord ...") 5:35
03 Magnificat 6:38
Berliner Messe   
04 Kyrie    3:09
05 Gloria    3:42
06 Erster Alleluiavers    0:52
07 Zweiter Alleluiavers    1:10
08 Veni Sancte Spiritus    4:57
09 Credo    3:56
10 Sanctus    4:04
11 Agnus Dei    2:41
 
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Drawing from the writings of St. John Chrysostum (c. 349-407), whose prayers for daily hours comprise the font from which Arvo Pärt anoints this musical setting, the Estonian composer spins a soft thread of light with limited information. Like the equally visceral settings of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff before him, Pärt’s is utterly moving and uniquely colored by the sensitivity of his instrumental writing, such as listeners have encountered in his Miserere and Passio. The voices of Litany seem to arise out of their orchestral surroundings as if they have been hiding within it and are only now choosing to reveal themselves. Such is the effect of the Hilliard Ensemble’s unity throughout. Tubular bells and horns make their presence known. Subtle clues from orchestra and choir announce the hours as women’s voices pour their glorious shine like starlight from an alabaster jar. Philip Glassean punctuations of winds enhance the spell. The volume builds, only to subside, returning to the silence of a head bowed in contemplation. Under the guidance of Tõnu Kaljuste, the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra and Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, along with the Hilliard Ensemble, have given us a most selfless reading of this masterful composition.

Following this are two pieces performed by the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra at the baton of Saulius Sondeckis, under whose direction the world at large was first introduced to the music of Arvo Pärt through ECM’s Tabula Rasa. Originally conceived as a string quartet, Psalom emerges here as one of the composer’s most heartrending pieces for strings, second perhaps only to Silouans Song. Each phrase is lifted before it fades, blurring “vocal” lines like breath in winter air. Trisagion also takes its inspiration from St. John Chrysostum. Like a landmass over time, it falls into the inevitability of erosion, so that only the abstract remains untouched by the limits of tangibility. It ends on a repeated proclamation that would be overbearing in its insistence, if not for its decline in volume and number, mathematically reduced to zero.

Pacing is absolutely essential to the mood and architecture of the entire album, and this the musicians accomplish with uncanny immediacy. One of the more powerful post-Te Deum releases, Litany is sung and performed with unparalleled dedication. Countertenor David James is the perfect foil for Pärt’s anti-dualism, and emerges as the voice of reason in an unreasonable era.

<a href="http://depositfiles.com/files/jhfi1fz94">  Arvo Part - Litany</a> ( flac 141mb)

01 Litany 22:45
02 Psalom 6:45
03 Trisagion 11:53

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Sacred minimalism at its best.Beautiful, quiet and epic, just perfect.....



<a href="https://multiup.org/cfd874e1ce8be4ab554bb3b3de6f2ddd">   Arvo Pärt - Theatre Of Voices, Paul Hillier - De Profundis</a> ( flac 261mb)

01 De profundis (Psalm 129) 8:19
Missa sillabica
02 Kyrie 2:21
03 Gloria 2:16
04 Credo 3:44
05 Sanctus 1:20
06 Agnus Dei 2:35
07 Ite missa est 0:28
08 Solfeggio 5:14
09 "And One of the Pharisees" 10:05
10 Cantate Domino (Psalm 95) 2:50
11 Summa (Credo) 6:24
Seven Magnificat Antiphons
12 O Weisheit 1:50
13 O Adonai 2:52
14 O Sproß aus Isais Wurzel 1:07
15 O Schlüssel 1:57
16 O Morgenstern 2:21
17 O König 1:29
18 O Immanuel 3:26
19 The Beatitudes 8:08
20 Magnificat 6:47

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