Arvo Pärt, born in Estonia in 1935, has had a stable yet varied compositional career. While studying at the Tallinn Conservatory, Pärt worked as a recording engineer as well as a composer of film/theatre music. He embraced a neo-classical style in his early piano works and even ventured to employ serialism for a brief period; the latter was not well received by his critics, though Pärt continued to dabble in it until the 1960’s. In 1964, Pärt began exhibiting influence of Bach (imitating Baroque style) as well as demonstrating his interest in Bach in other ways (employing a “BACH” motif in his own works). After his Credo (1968), Pärt turned his attention to simple, tonal counterpoint inspired by early music and Gregorian chant. This led to the development of a technique all his own which he called “tintinnabuli” (named for the resemblance of notes in a triad to bells). Feeling as though his growth as a composer was limited in the Soviet Union, Pärt and his family settled in Berlin in 1980. His more recent compositions have called on aspects of such genres as Gregorian chant (Te Deum) and chamber music (Stabat mater) in addition to honing his tintinnabuli technique.
Written in 1990, Pärt’s Berliner Messe brilliantly illustrates some of his most significant compositional attributes. Evoking qualities from early music and Gregorian chant, Pärt used traditional methods and notation to offer his own interpretation of all the usual movements of a mass. The “Sanctus” in particular, for voices (alto, bass and tenor) and organ or strings, employs many of these early music traits with some of Pärt’s own unique twists. This polyphonic movement is reminiscent of 15th century music. Though it certainly doesn’t make use of any of Pärt’s early compositional techniques (such as serialism), it also doesn’t directly pull from the typically modal techniques of Renaissance polyphony. Rather, Pärt chooses to employ diatonic tonality with a fair amount of dissonance, perhaps alluding to the text of this movement of the mass (and representing the sins of men realized while praising God). In particular, his diatonic choice is executed in a particular way, reinforcing the piece’s tonality: stepwise motion primarily around a central pitch, to be discussed in greater detail shortly.
This was not the only way in which Pärt put his own touch on early music qualities. Many 15th century compositions made use of a polyphonic technique known as “fauxbourdon.” In this method, a treble voice (the “cantus firmus” in early music) is accompanied by two lower voices: one a sixth below and one a fourth below the treble. Pärt, though influenced by fauxbourdon, does not use it directly in this piece; rather, he employs his own “tintinnabuli” style which recurs throughout many of his later works.
With tintinnabuli in the “Sanctus,” Pärt exhibits many of these traits. He uses a three-voice structure, taken from traditional fauxbourdon; the alto functions as the cantus firmus in fauxbourdon, while the bass consistently sings a sixth below the alto. As this interval is also an inverted third, the results are many first- and second-inversion chords throughout the piece. However, rather than having the third voice (the tenor) function as it typically would in traditional fauxbourdon (a consistent fourth below the cantus firmus), Pärt gives it a different function as his “tintinnabular” voice. Its purpose, then, is to arpeggiate none other than the notes of the tonic triad (C# minor) throughout the movement. In typical tintinnabular technique, this action is used in conjunction with other voices moving diatonically stepwise, as is clearly seen here in the outer voices: the alto and bass. This stepwise motion in tintinnabuli usually occurs around a central pitch, in many cases the tonic; this is true in the case of Pärt’s “Sanctus” from the Berliner Messe, in which the stepwise diatonic motion in the cantus firmus (alto) never strays far from C# (with range only as widespread as the G# below and the E immediately above). Through this simple, “minimalist” technique, the (tonic) triad truly becomes the focus of the piece (as Pinkerton described).
Pärt’s style in general has evolved such that it has become less over time (earning him a categorization as a “minimalist” composer); the “Sanctus” exemplifies this beautifully. In this particular piece, Pärt has indicated no tempo markings (though it is often performed at a fairly slow tempo), and there are few dynamic changes (marked p at the first measure for the instrumentation, the dynamic range only varies as far as pp–mp; for the voices, there is no change marked from the initial p in thirty measures of the movement). There are, however, many meter changes; meters vary from those containing just one beat to those containing eight. In the “Sanctus,” one can see and hear the characteristics of 15th century music (polyphony, a twist on fauxbourdon, etc.) and general early music (the overall structure and genre of a mass); there are also certain traits of the “Sanctus” from the Berliner Messe which demonstrate other aspects of either tintinnabuli in particular, minimalism or Part’s compositional style in general. For example, the piece embodies minimalist techniques; it is written for small orchestration and can be performed with as few as three voices. This piece truly shows a new take on an old genre and technique (whether through its tintinnabuli-specific stepwise diatonic motion of the outer voices paired with arpeggiation of a tonic triad in the tenor, its minimalist-specific characteristics or any of its other remarkable qualities), proving that Arvo Pärt has brought a lot of new and inventive perspectives on music to the table.