Arvo Pärt's Resonant Texts: Choral and Organ Music 1956–2015

by Andrew Shenton

Statistically the most performed and listened to contemporary composer in the world, Arvo Pärt is a musical and cultural phenomenon. This book is an essential resource for anyone interested in his extraordinarily innovative and uniquely appealing music. Andrew Shenton surveys the full scope of Pärt's oeuvre, providing context and chronological continuity while concentrating in particular on his text-based music, analysing and describing individual pieces and techniques such as tintinnabulation. The book also explores the spiritual and theological contexts of Pärt's creativity, and the challenges of performing his work. This volume is the definitive guide for readers looking to engage with the form, content, and context of Pärt's compositions, as Shenton situates Pärt in the narrative of metamodernism and suggests new ways of understanding this unique and beautiful music.

Genres: Music

306 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2018

Reviews

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

As the title of this book indicates, this is a survey of Arvo Pärt’s whole output for vocal ensembles and for organ, comprising both his early years as a avant-gardiste and his later, tintinnabuli output. Andrew Shenton describes each work in turn, explaining the circumstances leading it to its writing, Pärt’s techniques (as often the music is derived from the text according to strict rules), and changes that have sometimes been made to a work after its initial performances. In some cases Shenton’s remarks are brief because there has already been substantial scholarship on the work in question, but he cites that prior work and so the reader knows where to go for an ample analysis of the piece.

Shenton’s book is most useful for gaining an appreciation of how Pärt’s musical language has evolved, even just within the tintinnabuli years. Shenton explains clearly which works use strict tintinnabuli, which are freer in expression, and which completely lack that celebrated technique. Listeners can intuitively break down Pärt’s post-1976 work into different periods, but thanks to this book I have a clearer understanding of how they differ.

The book is informative for Pärt fans and will help them get more enjoyment out of these pieces, and so it can be recommended. But there are caveats. Firstly, Shenton gets some aspects of Pärt’s Orthodox Christian faith wrong, and it would have been helpful if the book were reviewed by an Orthodox. Secondly, the prose is pretty clunky and patchwork. Shenton also undermines his own work in one place by citing the charlatan ECM “reviewer” Tyran Grillo as any sort of meaningful source.