Arvo Pärt / Fratres

A sanctuary of sound that nourishes our eternal longing for harmony, simplicity, serenity.

Mark Rothko (American, born Russia [now Latvia], 1903–1970). Untitled (Blue Divided by Blue), 1966. Acrylic on paper mounted on canvas. Private collection. © Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko

During Arvo Pärt's student days at the Tallinn Conservatory in the 1950s, a friend remarked that the young composer could "shake his sleeves and notes would fall out."

And in that wild waterfall of notes, Pärt explored the radical stylings of musical modernism — from atonality and serialism, to complex sound collages and aleatoric symphonies in which musicians crinkled paper and squeezed children's squeaky toys.

By 1968, this approach to composition left Pärt feeling artistically and spiritually empty. So instead of following the prickly path of modernism, which he believed carried the "unbearable atmosphere of barbed wire," he imagined another style of composition — one that championed simplicity and a purity of harmony above all.

Overcoming this creative crisis meant setting fire to everything Pärt knew about composing and starting with a fresh slate. He retreated from the world for eight years, during which time he immersed himself in Gregorian chant, music of the Russian Orthodox Church, and Renaissance polyphony. When Pärt returned to public life in 1976, the whitewater rapids that flooded his earliest scores had been replaced by a gently moving stream.

His new works constituted a stripped-down style of Pärt's own making, which he called tintinnabuli. Derived from the Latin term for "little bells," tintinnabuli pairs a primary melody with a secondary line that, when the two voices dance together over a static harmony, ring and resonate like bells. Of his new method, Pärt said:

"I have discovered that it is enough when a single note is beautifully played. This one note, or a moment of silence, comforts me. I work with very few elements — with one voice, with two voices. I build with the most primitive materials — with one specific tonality."

But aside from their profound austerity, his new works offered a sense of expansive calm and mysticism. During his creative silence, Pärt had come to the conclusion that contemporary music, like the postwar world itself, was being consumed by excessive noise and a reliance on new technologies — robbing the art form of its emotional resonance and depriving humankind of a primal source of creative and spiritual nourishment. Music, Pärt believed, needed to return to its roots as an oasis for mind, body, and soul, a sanctuary we enter to cultivate inner harmony.

His colleagues were dismissive of this approach, but audiences were immediately captivated.

One of the first examples of Pärt's tintinnabuli style, Fratres (Latin for "brothers") provides just such an oasis. Above a persistent drone in the cello and a ceremonial pulse echoed by a single drum — an atmosphere Pärt referred to as the work's "refuge" — a simple chorale takes shape, growing more expansive with each new phrase like the hypnotic blossoming of a lotus flower.

Pärt composed Fratres for his friends in the Tallinn-based early music ensemble Hortus Musicus, who performed the work on instruments from the Renaissance. Take a deep breath, and take a listen:

Since that first performance, Pärt has adapted Fratres for nearly a dozen different instrumental combinations — from wind octet to string quartet and even a choir of 12 cellos. But the one I turn to most to channel tranquility and wonder is the version for string orchestra, percussion, and a violin soloist who embarks on a journey of wide-ranging emotion above the work's chorale of solace.

The solo violin emerges in a maelstrom of activity. Fingers frantically fly across the instrument, breathing life into broken chords that grow louder and more intense until the "refuge" material enters, silencing the soloist and beckoning us into stillness. As the string orchestra progresses through the chorale, the violin imbues each variation with a different character — mercurial one moment, mournful the next, its final notes whispered into the ether like a long-forgotten prayer.

With the addition of a soloist, Fratres mirrors our struggles as ancient beings in a modern world. It reminds us that past and present are always wrestling within us — and the solution to surviving a violent, divisive world spinning out of control is to satisfy our deep longing for beauty, simplicity, serenity.

Listen closely to the violinist's opening flurry of notes and you'll hear the chorale theme embedded in the lowest tone of each chord, as if waiting patiently for us to discover this pool of calm just beneath the jagged surface of our lives. In those waters we find refuge, a place where the world seemingly stands still and we're free to swim in the deep sea of eternity.

Take a listen …

Gidon Kremer, violin
Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen

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