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| Song In Mourning |
| band: Arvo Pärt's "Cantus In Memory Of Benjamin Britten" |
| Album: Cincinnati Symphony (Concert) |
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Arvo Pärt
"Cantus In Memory of Benjamin Britten"
Paavo Järvi & Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra
"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, two voices. I build with primitive materials—with the triad, with one specific tonality. The three notes of a triad are like bells and that is why I call it tintinnabulation."
~ Arvo Pärt (Paide, Estonia, b. 1935)
"Deep down Louisiana close to New Orleans
Way back up in the woods among the evergreens
There stood a log cabin made of earth and wood
Where lived a country boy named Johnny B. Goode
Who never ever learned to read or write so well
But he could play the guitar just like a ringing a bell"
~ Charles Edward Anderson "Chuck" Berry (St. Louis, b. 1926)
Arvo Pärt has become a cult figure as a composer. He has fan sites on myspace and outsells many well-known pop bands. My initial contact with the Cincinnati Symphony was to inquire about seeing a performance of Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten. Arvo Pärt and Henryk Górecki have brought more listeners to modern composition than any other two composers alive today. They have done this the old fashioned way. After mathematics took music hostage for a long dry season, these two former 12-tone composers have come to write music that storms the barriers of the heart.*
Arvo Pärt's early works are credited with bringing serial technique to Estonia with the composition of Nekrolog, and he continued to write serial music into the 1960's including his first two symphonies. His acceptance varied widely from official praise to the banning of his Credo in 1968. His music was in transition for a period when he found his voice in response to 14th and 16th composers Machaut, Ockeghem, Obrecht, and Josquin. His Symphony No. 3 (1971) was composed in the spirit of European polyphony.
Then there was an epiphany in his life. One story written of Pärt has him asking a Russian Orthodox priest how he could write music as an act of prayer. The priest's response: "All the songs have been written. All the prayers have been prayed." So the story goes, he went into self-imposed silence as a composer. When he emerged in 1976, he had understood the words of the priest. If there is nothing new under the sun, he could write in any style that suited his heart. Pärt's music found comfort in the tonal restrictions of the Middle Ages as a choice that his soul responded to.
The Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten is all the more striking coming from a composer of serial music. This music moves me. It is the very sound of morning for the loss of man and his music. That Britten would be the subject of this Estonian composer's keening is as remarkable as love itself. How did it come to be that this depth of loss would be felt across so many time zones for an English composer of tonal music, a master of the muted horn, and master of the ethical dilemma in the drama of Billy Budd, Peter Grimes and a War Requiem? It may be that Pärt's depth of emotion in this Cantus has brought Britten into the repertoire as a companion piece. Britten may have suffered from not being hip enough to write 12-tone or serial music when that formula was all the rage. Pärt points at him with reverence.
The Cantus is a familiar piece to me on CD. I think I must have heard it more than 100 times. Paavo Järvi's performance with the Cincinnati Symphony nevertheless brought me close to tears. Sitting in the balcony I was struck with the palpable amount of quiet in it's beginning. From that first struck tubular bell, the orchestra is a large choir of silence, then a cellophane coating of music over the hushed breath of so many musicians, and then a cascade of violins and a warmth of brass. The orchestra seems to be responding to the bell's announcement of the even of a loss. The morning intensifies in repeated phrases building as though adding mourners to the wake. I thought of the words of poet Theodore Roethke, "a real hurt is soft," and W.H. Auden's words about Yeats, "All the reports we have agree, the day of your death was a dark cold day." Arvo Pärt's Cantus plays an orchestra "like a ringing a bell." In the terms of modern composition, his music of this period is tintinnabular. Whatever word you choose, this music rings out mourning in wave upon wave of bells to summon the faithful. A composer has died, and this is the principal melody we hear in response to the news. We mourn the loss without a requiem, but with a melody.
After this introduction to the importance of his music, Järvi brought Janine Jansen onstage to perform Benjamin Britten's Violin Concerto No. 1. Jansen's recordings generally follow the most popular and tonal works from Vivaldi's Four Seasons to any number of pieces also found in the repertoire of The Longines Symphonette available on late night TV with all the best melodies in classic music for a bargain price. (She has recorded Harbison and Shostakovich, as noted exceptions.) Her performance of this violin concerto was absolutely extraordinary. She brought a dedication to Britten's music that made it a living thing. It is rare that a performance has such spirit and musicality that Joe Sixpack might be convinced of the power of serious music after a day at work. I saw the Philadelphia Orchestra do that once with Beethoven's Seventh. It's a special thing. Conductor Ricardo Muti and the concertmaster laughed out loud between movements that special night, aware of their special achievement. I think Janine Jansen, Paavo Järvi brought that same magic to the game on this concerto, and the CSO hit the ball out of the park with this performance of Britten. Why hasn't Janine put recorded a Britten album? It's a wonderful thing when music is played so well it doesn't need to be described in grand terms.
After an intermission, the Cincinnati Symphony returned to perform Shubert's Symphony No. 9 called "The Great." Paavo Järvi's introductory comments onscreen at the performance acknowledged this piece as being "repetitious." Perhaps I'd heard enough music to satisfy the day. I didn't hear the greatness in this piece. I heard the repetition. My liking of this symphony had it's limits, but they are my limits. The Cantus has been erroneously described as minimalism for all it's repeats, but that's just wrong for more technical and heart felt reasons than I care to say. I guess "The Great," in my listening, is the one that got away.
* I am a fan of 12-tone. While it won't win the hearts and minds of audiences, I've heard Schoenberg played beautifully. From 1977 to 1979, I went to CalArts as a theatre student, and heard more 12-tone and serial music than anything else. It was a great lesson in listening. At the CalArts New Music festival in 1984, a composer whose name I remember as David Kim offered the following explanation:
"You have to remember, when 12-tone and serial music was invented the sciences were all the rage. They were advancing 10 years for every one year in the arts. We became jealous, so we took mathematics as an ally. It later took us hostage. But who'd want to go back?"
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