Arvo Pärt featured in Los Angeles Times

One of Paavo's favorite Estonian composers, the highly esteemed Arvo Pärt, was featured in an article titled A milestone for semplice's master; Arvo Pärt's 70th birthday spawns a flurry of releases that celebrate his strains in the October 30 issue of the Los Angeles Times. As Mark Swed writes:

Last month, the universe executed another of its capricious yin-yang maneuvers. Although now a black date on the calendar, 9/11 also happens to be the birthday of Arvo Pärt, that otherworldly composer and spiritually wholesome presence on the musical scene. This year he turned 70.

Too little, concert-wise, has been made of a happy milestone in music, the main celebration having been an Arvo Pärt festival in the small Estonian town of Rakvere, where the composer grew up. Fortunately, though, Pärt's birthday has not been neglected on CD and DVD.

Indeed, a remarkable collection of Pärt recordings and films has just come out that not only helps us keep up to date with a composer whose music has a way of reverberating with the world mood in uncanny fashion but also provides an unusually interesting portrait of a musician and man as enigmatic as he is brilliant.

Pärt has caught on because of the luminous beauty of his sound. It seems to come from somewhere beyond our normal experience and expectations. It haunts the ear. But just about every tribute to him I've read lately begins defensively, explaining that musical simplicity does not necessarily equal triviality. No, we are reminded, Arvo Pärt is not New Age. He isn't a Minimalist, as such. He's neither this nor that.

We need no such reminders. Maybe he's not to everyone's taste, but he's loved and admired by a following that is wide and that breaks through categories.

The reason for so strong a fan base is, no doubt, the outward simplicity of Pärt's music. He is religious, and he often sets Christian texts with mystical fervor. But he transcends dogma. What his music is really about is the religion of sound. He worships it, and he worships its surrounding silences. There is only one way to listen to Pärt, and that is in a state of awe.

Among the new CD releases are three compilations that offer good introductions to Pärt, who started out as a dissident 12-tone composer in Soviet-controlled Estonia but had a breakthrough in the mid-'70s when he converted to the Russian Orthodox faith and discovered a stunning consonant chord. He played the chord on the piano, and it rang like the carillon of a grand cathedral. He called the style "tintinnabuli," from the Latin word for "bells." He wrote a small piano piece, "For Alina," based upon it, and the act of composing served as a rite of absolution....

Ultimately, Pärt is not so much simple as deep. He revisits techniques of Gregorian chant and early polyphony, but he also displays an up-to-date Cagean sense of letting sounds be. He even has a fondness for Cage's prepared piano. Nor is he all that mellow. Look out for violent, jarring contrasts.

Part of the Pärt mystique is his monk-like persona. He is not known to be much of a public figure. But in the film "24 Preludes for a Fugue," we find, as with everything else about the composer, that nothing is quite as simple as it seems. A Russian filmmaker, Dorian Supin, followed him around with a camera for five years. In snippets broken up by a more formal interview, the film peeks into Pärt's life.

It offers little in the way of explanation of this shy, gentle man, with his bushy beard and saintly demeanor, who reveals a sly sense of humor and a very good fashion sense. His pleasures appear basic but just a little off. In one scene, he visits Estonia for the first time in many years (he moved to Germany in the early '80s) and munches contentedly on a tomato with sugar, much to his wife's disapproval. But watch him in action as a musician and you understand that he knows exactly what he wants and how to get it....

Hear Arvo Pärt's composition for violin and piano, Spiegel im Spiegel (Mirror in Mirror), performed by the gifted young Russian violinist Tatiana Berman and pianist Anna Polusmiak Sunday, November 6 at 3 pm at the Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption, 1140 Madison Avenue, Covington, Kentucky; telephone: (859) 431-2060, ext. 204. Admission is free, but a Freewill Offering is appreciated to help support the Cathedral Music Series.

According to Wikipedia, Spiegel im Spiegel was written by Pärt in 1978, just prior to him leaving Estonia. The piece is in the tintinnabular style of composition, wherin a melodic voice (which operates over diatonic scales) and tintinnabular voice (which operate within a tonic triad) accompany each other. It was originally written for a single piano and violin - though the violin has often been replaced with either a cello or a viola. The piece is musically minimal - yet produces a serene tranquility.