Post Soviet SPIRITUALITIES

'Holy Minimalism’

New inspiration from composers who grew up in the Soviet Era

and lived on into the 1990s.

Composers

•  Alfred Schnittke - Russian - 1934-1998 •  Henryk Gorecki - Polish - b.1933 •  Arvo Pärt - Estonian - b.1935

Common Features

•  early style complex - experimental or serialist composers

•  later simplification; –  neo-tonal/modal –  influence and/or parody of earlier music –  growing influence of and/or conversion to religious

faith

•  each had a 'watershed' in their career and stylistic development

Alfred Schnittke (Russian 1934-98) Polystylism – German/Jewish

•  early influences included –  serialism –  Shostakovitch –  Stalinist restrictions (NB: wrote a lot of film scores)

•  Krushchev (Krushchyov) era (1953-64) –  abandoned serialism and turned to 'polystylism'

•  later –  1982 - baptized Roman Catholic –  series of strokes & ill-health 1985-on - style became

increasingly austere and concerned with mortality –  simpler, more homogeneous musical language, esp. in

1990s

Schnittke - Works

•  1972 - Symphony no.1 - pivotal work –  "In no other work has the conflict of styles and

quotations been so clear and so penetrating" [NG] –  "Music by Beethoven, Haydn, Grieg, Chopin,

Tchaikovsky and Johann Strauss is quoted and brutally interrupted and transmuted" [NG]

–  theatrical element - only 3 players on stage at start, others enter gradually and improvise until stopped by conductor; at end, they leave gradually leaving a solo violin, then return and start the work again until conductor stops work unexpectedly and abruptly.

Symphony no.1 mvt 1

Schnittke - Works •  1974-9 - Four Hymns ..

"show the creation of a new, homogeneous language … structural rigour … allude(s) to other music in more subtle ways than direct quotation"

•  1975 - Requiem shows influence of Catholic liturgical music.

•  1982 – Becomes Catholic

Credo from requiem

Schnittke - Works

•  1982 - Second String 4tet –  built almost entirely upon medieval Russian

sacred music, quoted relatively clearly in outer movts

–  "refracted and distorted" in middle movts •  1983 - Third String 4tet

–  uses Lassus's Stabat mater, Beethoven's Grosse Fuge and Shostakovitch's DSCH motto for thematic material

Third String Quartet mvt 1

Schnittke - Works

•  1984-7 - choral works such as Concerto for Mixed Chorus show "stylistic echoes and technical procedures" of Rachmaninoff

•  1990s - works (eg late symphonies & Life with an Idiot (1994)) show increasingly spare style and textural transparency

Documentary

Henryk Gorecki (Polish b.1933-2010

Henryk Gorecki (Polish b.1933)

•  early works avant-garde - premieres at early Warsaw Autumn festivals - culminated in Sconti (1960):

"while serialisation of pitch, dynamics and durations underpins much of Scontri, this exceptionally flamboyant score … is notable for its explosive mix of pointillism and movement of massed sounds. Clusters collide with solo lines, instrumental groups hocket with one another, stasis gives way to volcanic eruptions …technique is subservient to expressive ends" [NG]

Gorecki contd. •  after Sconti Gorecki thoroughly re-examined his musical

language, resulting in –  formal and technical clarity (Refren 1965) –  absorption of cultural icons from the past (Three Pieces in Old

Style 1963) –  new pitch schemes replace serial procedures - eg in Refren

whole-tone harmonies move in parallel to an melodic line moving chant-like within an ambit of a min. 3rd

–  move to extremely slow tempi –  third of Three Pieces are "unashamedly modal" and reworks a

Polish Renaissance wedding-song

•  during late 1960s concentrated on 'putting the most stringently restricted material to maximum use'

Three Pieces in Old Style 1963

Gorecki contd. •  1970-86 dominated by vocal music

– Totus tuus (1987) –  Second Symphony (1972) "2nd movt … marks an important stage in G's conversion to a

more consonant language"

– Third Symphony (1976)

Totus Tuus

Gorecki - Third Symphony 'Symphony of Sorrowful Songs'

•  hugely popular and influential •  3 long slow movts, solo soprano •  demonstrates:

–  a fully diatonic/modal harmonic language –  incorporation of pre-existing music –  repetitive element rooted in folk and church music NB: all these features are typical of the 'Holy Minimalists'

Third Symphony 1 st mvt

Gorecki Third Symphony contd. •  influences:

–  esp. Szymanoswki (1882-1937), also Ives & Messiaen –  Polish hymnody and folk-song –  specific references to music of Chopin & Beethoven

"the third {movt.) isolates a two-chord alternation from Chopin's Mazurka op.17,no.4 and elides it harmonically, and symbolically, with the chordal climax from the development section of Beethoven's 3rd Symphony" [NG]

–  1st movt. is canonic, Aeolian mode –  2nd movt. "is memorable for its harmonic head-motif"

Gorecki contd. •  post-1980 gradually turned again to instrumental

and chamber music, eg Lerchenmusik (1984-6) –  new approach to pre-existing music - now disguised

and only gradually revealed (eg last movt. - a Vespers chant merges with the opening of Beethoven's 4th Piano Concerto)

•  "fame and fortune came late in life, accidentally and bemusingly"

Arvo Part

Arvo Pärt (Estonian b.1935) •  earliest works neo-classical but … •  … surreptitiously studying serialism •  1963 Perpetuum mobile - serial in pitch, duration & rhythm

throughout •  others use canon, collage, combinations of opposing tonal

languages (dissonance/neo-Baroque) •  pivotal work, summative of this period, is Credo (1968):

"here the tonal world of Bach's C major Prelude (Book I of '48') is slowly distorted through application of a chain of 5ths used as a 12-note row … provoked an official scandal - not for its musical language but for its avowal of Christianity"

Fur Alina - Tintinambulism

Pärt contd. •  after Credo Pärt reached a musical and professional

impasse; "For several years (from 1968) he concentrated on exploring tonal monody and simple two-part counterpoint in exercises inspired by his studies of early music and Gregorian chant"

•  1976 - new language - 'Tintinnabuli' - named after bell-like resemblance of notes in a triad

•  1980 emigrated to first to Vienna, later to Berlin •  hugely influential, especially in stimulating new school

of Estonian composers

Features of 'Tintinnabuli'

•  2-part homophonic texture –  1 (melodic) voice moves mostly by step around a

central pitch, usually based on a pre-ordained mode –  2nd 'tintinnabuli' (harmonic) voice sounds, note-against

note, the notes of the tonic triad (either that nearest to the pitch of the melodic voice or nearest-but-one).

•  pre-determined scheme of voice movement and of structure (often dictated by text)

•  eg The Beatitudes (SATB, org) (1990/rev.1991)

Pärt works •  Fratres (1977, rev/arr other forces 1992/1993) •  Cantus in memory of Benjamin Britten •  Passio (St John Passion) (compl. 1982) - cf

Grove7 article for substantial outline of this (also see P.Hillier, Arvo Pärt, Oxford, 1997): now available on NAXOS 8.555860

•  An den Wassen zu Babel (orig. SATB & chamber group (1976-84), rev. for SATB, org (1994)

•  Litany (1994) - first work since 1971 to use substantial orchestra

Cantus

Cantus

An den Wassern zu