Estonian born Arvo Pärt (b. 1935) spent the majority of his life, through his early years to his working life as a composer and musician, under Soviet rule. Estonia was part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) when it was occupied in 1940, when Pärt was only 5, until the state collapsed in 1991[1]. The USSR operated as a single party state, and used methods of oppression to ensure that the communist doctrine was adhered too, not only through the use of military force and surveillance of the populous, but also by heavy censorship. The censorship employed by the state was not only in the printed media, but it also ran through many forms of art, including music. The music of Shostakovich is a prime example of how the state tried to ensure that art didn’t corrupt the people; his early opera ‘Lady Macbeth of the Mtensk District’ nearly cost him his life as it was deemed anti-Soviet and Pro-Western[2].
After the Second World War, the state ensured that Western popular culture didn’t entertain its people, leaving the pop band, the Beatles without a Russian audience. This isn’t to say that the so called ‘Iron Curtain’ was a curtain which kept the West ‘Cultured’ whilst the soviet side was uncultured. Art was stil held in high esteem, with conservatoires producing musicians and opera houses producing operas, albeit with the high art highly censored[3]. Pärt’s compositions came under no less scrutiny and often came into conflict with the Union of Soviet Composers, who was both the patron and censor of all composers in the Soviet states. In the early to mid-seventies, Pärt went through a period of no creative output, an artistic exile, which this essay shall look into, considering two of his earlier compositions and if this period of no musical production was a reaction to the censors, or whether the period was merely for a time for internal reflection.
It was Pärt’s flirtation with serialism that came under the most scrutiny by the censors. The serialist technique was pioneered by Schoenberg, which was a method of composition which dictated to the composer the order to which notes should appear in the music. Schoenberg’s pupils Webern and Berg, along with Schoenberg himself formed what is called ‘Second Viennese School’. Between them they developed and modified the method of serialism. Being born out of Vienna, a hotspot of the western classical music tradition, it is easy to see why the soviet state believed serialism to be largely a western idea. Pärt utilised serial techniques into some of his earlier compositions, notably Nekrolog, perpetuum mobile and Credo. In both instances it wasn’t merely as a compositional tool but as a vehicle for expression.
Nekrolog is arguably the piece where Pärt is his most serialist He employs two tone rows for the whole seven minutes of the piece, the first often used in canon with itself, although often interrupted with motivic fragments of itself.[4] The tone row appears in many guises, having been transformed by different techniques, namely through transposition, different instrumentation, and passing the tone row through different parts. Figure 1 shows the tone row appearing in its entirety twice in bars 74-82, demonstrating how notes are repeated and different registration is used. Whilst this tone row is being played the other parts are mimicking the intervals of the tone row, in antiphonal exchanges between upper strings and woodwind and the bass instruments of the orchestra.
Figure 1: Nekrolog Op. 5, Arvo Pärt, 1960, Violin 1, bb74-82, |
It is only until bar 205 at which a new tone row is heard, in semiquaver quasi-arpeggiaic runs. Much like the first tone row it appears in canon on the half bar. Comparable to the first tone row, the interval of a second is quite prevalent. This makes the whole harmonic landscape of the work (if it can be called that) quite similar throughout the piece, even despite the introduction of a new tone row, and especially in spite of often tempo changes. Pärt makes no attempt to soften the dissonance which serialism creates, as Shostakovich does in his twelfth string quartet.
It is therefore clear that Pärt is using serialism in one of its strictest forms, in a way that Webern and Berg would surely approve. Perhaps this signifies that Pärt is not using Serialism as a compositional tool, but as a statement. Indeed, this is the first serialist work in Estonia, so perhaps Pärt is setting out Nekrolog as serialist work to give subsequent compositions a context in the harmonic history of music. The word Nekrolog is German for ‘Obituary’, and whilst a dedication was not provided by the composer. A dedication to the victims of fascism has been cited on some editions; this is something which Pärt hasn’t refuted. [5] The serialistic derivation of Nekrolog is analogous to the mechanistic and oppressive nature of the Fascist regime. This dedication could perhaps only be a way of pleasing the censors. A work that displays anti-fascistic properties, and thus pro-communist ideals, is a work which the propaganda driven regime would desire. However, the victims that the work is an obituary for may not be the victims of Fascism alone, but also perhaps Communism also. After all, both regimes display domineering tendencies over its people. Nonetheless, the reception the piece warranted was not warm to say the least. Tikhon Khrennikov (1913-2007), then leader of the Union of Soviet Composers, said that ‘[Nekrolog] makes it quite clear that the twelve-tone experiment is untenable’. Having such as prolific and influential composer in the Soviet state denouncing Nekrolog did not put Pärt’s music into a good stead with his audience, and especially not the Esthonian officials.
Despite the controversy of Nekrolog, it wasn’t to be Pärt’s most contentious work; it was Credo that was most ill received in the Soviet State, and it is now the pre-tintinnabuli work for which Pärt is most well-known. The work is written for Orchestra, Piano and Chorus, with each of these playing a contributory role into delivering the works ideas. The work opens with the choir, accompanied by the orchestra, singing the words Credo in Jesum Christe (I believe in Jesus Christ), a clear statement of faith. The following words are taken from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, taken from 5 Matthew 38[6]:
Audivistis dictum
oculum pro oculo dentem pro dente,
autem ego vobis dico:
Non esses resistendum injuriae
Ye have heard that it has been said,
An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:
But I say unto you,
That ye resist not evil.
In this passage, Jesus is effectively overturning the Old Testament readings of retaliation and the idea of old and new, good and bad, and right and wrong is permeated into every detail of the work.
Structurally, the piece is almost tertiary in form, with tonality being used to distinguish the sections. The Piano plays a representation of tonality, in the form of an excerpt from Bach’s Prelude No.1 in C (BWV 846/1), which is a harmonic series based on the circle of fifths. The middle section is based on a tone row, a fundamentally serialist technique, but also derived from the circle of fifths. Figure 2 shows the tone row and how it relates to the circle of fifths.
Figure 1: Harmonic structure of the Tone row used in Credo, Arvo Pärt, 1968 |
Pärt, perhaps in response to the dislike of serialism as a westernised form of music, is blurring the lines between tonality and atonality by utilising the circle of fifths; the very basis of Bach’s music is the basis for a serialist tone row. What is even more striking is how Pärt moves towards the final section of the piece. After stating the tone row, Pärt then repeats the tone row, only with a note removed each time. By reducing the number of notes gradually, the twelve tone row transmutes into a diatonic seven note scale, until the Bach prelude is heard once more. Perhaps this could be seen as reminiscent of the idea of an ‘Eye for an Eye’, as the music returns to what it was once before.
What ought to have been a direct juxtaposition of tonalism has become more nuanced. This suggests that the relationship between old and new, and good and bad is not so easily distinguished. This work could be interpreted as making a political statement, in the same manner as Nekrolog. Pärt is not saying that serialism is one of the same as wrong, and tonalism is equal to right, but rather that serialism is just one step away from chaos, and the link between old and new and right and wrong. If this were a political statement, it could be applied to the communist regime under which Pärt was living under; Communism as a concept is neither right nor wrong, but seemingly just an unsuspecting step on the road to chaos.
Even if Credo does have concealed political ideas within, it is not the issue that was taken with the piece; instead it was the religious aspect. One gets the sense that this is a description of a personal religious dilemma that Pärt was having. Much like the rest of Estonia, Pärt was a Lutheran, and during the time of his ‘great silence’, he converted to the Eastern Orthodox Church in the 1970s, which came into the country as an indirect result of the USSR[7]. By using the Bach prelude, Pärt is using a quotation from arguably the most widely known Lutheran Composer[8]. The tonal first section could therefore stand for a time which Pärt’s was Lutheran, in blissful contentment, analogous to the C major tonality. Presumably, Pärt must have then been going through cognitive dissonance or mental quarrel in a bid to find or reaffirm his faith. This could be represented by the middle section, which is a loud, cacophony of sound. The very thing which created the chaos is the very thing that removes the chaos, and perhaps this represents Pärt coming to terms with certain aspects of his faith.
After all, it was the title that got the work banned in the Soviet Union, for labelling a work. With a name so evidently religious in tone, it was deemed to be defiance against the state. Reportedly, one of the sterner bureaucrats in the censor office was away when Credo was presented, and seemingly the other workers in the office took no notice of the work[9], and at its Premier, the audience enjoyed so much, it was given an immediate encore. However, when officials became aware of the work, it was banned for its overly personal and religious, thus provocative title, for over a decade. Credo was the last major work before Pärt’s years of musical exile, most probably due to the immense conflict between composing pieces, often of personal nature, and composing works that were not deemed too provocative by the state. This surely has to be about the inhibition of his creative output, rather than desire to create state-pleasing works to generate cash flow, for Pärt managed eight years without any composition. Paul Hiller described the years of silence as ‘hardly the meditational calm… rather the frustrated immobility of an engine fully revved up, but unable to move’[10].
In an interview to an Estonian radio station in 1968, the year of the premier of Credo, Pärt discussed what it was that made music lasting, saying:
The secret to the contemporaneity [of music] resides in the question: How thoroughly has the author-composer perceived, not his own present, but the tonality of life, its joys, worries and mysteries? …Art has to deal with eternal questions, not just sorting out issues of today. In any case, if we want to reach to the core of a musical work, no matter what kind.. we have to throw out our ballast- eras, styles, forms, orchestration, harmony, polyphony- and so to reach to one voice… [with the question]: ‘Is it truth or falsehood’[11]
It is this idea which embodies what the ‘great silence’ was about: after coming to an artistic dead-end, Pärt was refuting the idea that modernist music was a progressive force the history of music. He was starting to believe that the perpetuity of Bach’s music, for instance, wasn’t necessarily because it was inherently timeless or displayed contemporary qualities. Instead, that the music is the answer to a plethora of eternal questions; the correct solution to all problems. Foreseeably, maybe he felt that his music up to 1968 wasn’t contemporary enough to give the best available answer, as the political and indeed personal nature of the work was encumbering the solutions it could give to a future audience.
Therefore, the compositional exile was not a direct retaliation to the Union of Soviet Composers strict patronage and censorship of music. That doesn’t necessarily mean that Pärt was not feeling the strains of having a constrained compositional output, it is almost certain that he was. It would seem wiser to assume that the reservations that the Soviet state had about his music manifested itself in questioning Pärt on his compositional technique. The political and religious subtext being so superficial was not necessarily a problem of his work, and nor does its inclusion make a work anymore or less ‘contemporary’ (Bachs work, revered by Pärt, having an apparent religious layer, but equally enduring). Nonetheless it was an hindrance to his own composition. It was in 1976 when Pärt once again put pen to paper and the tintinnabuli style was born, a style born out of the sound of bells and heavily influenced by Eastern Orthodox Gregorian Plainchant (Rather than Lutheran Bach), but not so apparent as before. Pärt saw the notes of a triad like the sound of bells[12], and involved a pseudo-serialist method of composition, which wasn’t atonal, but neither tonal. In essence, he created the new sound world of tintinnabuli.
[1] Hough, Jerry F. 1997. Democratization And Revolution In The USSR, 1985-1991. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution:240
[2] Fanning, David and Fay, Laurel. “Shostakovich, Dmitry.” Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press, accessed June 3, 2016
[3] Krebs, Stanley. 1970. Soviet Composers And The Development Of Soviet Music. New York: W.W. Norton: 50.
[4] Henderson, Lyn. “A Solitary Genius: The Establishment of Pärt’s Technique” (1958-68). The Musical Times 149, no. 1904 (2008): 83
[5] Shenton, Andrew. 2012. The Cambridge Companion to Arvo Pärt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 36
[6] Matthew 5:38-39, NIV
[7] Paul D. Hillier. “Pärt, Arvo.” Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press.
[8] Christoph Wolff, et al. “Bach.” Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press, accessed June 3, 2016,
[9] Hillier, Paul. 1997. The Music Of Arvo Pärt. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 58
[10] Hillier: 66
[11] Hillier: 65
[12] Paul D. Hillier. “Pärt, Arvo.” Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press.
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