1. Post Soviet SPIRITUALITIES
'Holy Minimalism’
New inspiration from composers
who grew up in the Soviet Era
and lived on into the 1990s.
2. Composers
• Alfred Schnittke - Russian - 1934-1998
• Henryk Gorecki - Polish - b.1933
• Arvo Pärt - Estonian - b.1935
3. 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
4. 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
5. 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.
7. 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
9. 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
11. 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
14. 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]
15. 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'
17. 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)
19. 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'
21. 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"
22. 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"
24. 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"
26. 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
27. 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)
28. 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
