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OUT OF PLACE IN THE 20TH CENTURY: THOUGHTS ON ARVO PÄRT'S TINTINNABULI STYLE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 July 2009

Extract

Of all recent art music styles, few have relied upon technological developments for their composition, performance and recording to the same degree as minimalism. In both the output of the principal composers of the more recent minimalist canon (namely in the objet trouvé works of Reich and Adams, the film scores by Glass and Nyman as well as through the reliance on electronic amplification common to them all) and in the counter-cultural movements characterized by music whose content is absolutely dependent on electronic media, repetitive styles have been transformed. The sophistication of these procedures has naturally resulted in a diminished sense of human labour within the compositional process and, at times, the total loss of a composer's authorial voice. The tintinnabuli music of Arvo Pärt stands out against the general tendency of such repetitive-based composers to harness the latest technology, to the extent that some commentators have baulked at the term ‘minimalist’ as an appropriate category. Robert Schwarz, for example, believes ‘neo-medievalist’ to capture something of Pärt's particular adoption of a supposedly pre-modern, non-technological attitude, while Josiah Fisk opts for the ‘new simplicity’ to describe (negatively) Pärt's monochromaticsm.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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