a study of cantus in memory of benjamin britten by arvo part

7/29/2019 A Study of Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten by Arvo Part

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H o m e A r t W r i t i n g M u s i c B u d d h i s m b l o g e m a i l

Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten by

Arvo Part

DHARMACARI JAYARAVA

This essay is my own work. I'm happy for you to use it as long as I am acknowledged as the author (just as I have

acknowledged my sources). Rather than copy it onto you website, please link to me - I'll consider linking back to

you.

Arvo Part (pronounced "pairt") was born in Estonia in 1935. Although at that

time Estonia was a nascent independent republic, the Soviet Union took control

of it in 1940, and stayed except for a brief period under the Nazis, for the next

54 years. Part's musical education began at age 7, and by 14 or 15 he was

writing his own compositions. While studying composition at the TallinnConservatory it was said of him that: "he just seemed to shake his sleeves and

notes would fall out". [1] There were very few influences from outside the

Soviet Union at this time, just a few illegal tapes and scores.

Arvo Part's oeuvre is generally divided into two periods, and he is best known

for his more recent works. The early works range from rather severe

neo-classical styles influences by Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Bartók. He then

began to compose using Schoenberg's 12 tone serial method, but this not only

earned the ire of the Soviet establishment, but also proved to be a creative dead

end. Part's biographer, Hillier, says:

"… he had reached a position of complete despair in which the

composition of music appeared to be the most futile of gestures, and he lacked the musical faith and will-power to write

even a single note". [2]

This may be an overstatement however since the transitional third symphony

was composed during this time. However it is clear that Arvo Part experienced

a deep crisis. His response to this impasse was to immerse himself in early

music, to go in effect back to the very roots of western music. He studied

plainsong, Gregorian chant, and the emergence of polyphony in the

Renaissance. At the same time he began to explore religion and joined the

Russian Orthodox Church, perhaps indicating that the crisis was spiritual in

nature, rather than simply musical.

The music that began to emerge after this period was radically different. ArvoPart describes it as "tintinnabular": as like the ringing of bells. The music is

characterised by simple harmonies, often single unadorned notes, or triad

chords which form the basis of western harmony. These sound like ringing

bells, hence the name. The Tintinnabuli are rhythmically simple, and do not

change tempo. The influence of early music is clear. Another characteristic of

Part's later works is that they are frequently settings for sacred texts, although

he mostly chooses Latin texts rather than Estonia, or the Slavonic used in

Orthodox liturgy. Part is unusual for a modern composer in that he is very

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popular in his own lifetime.

Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten emerged in 1977 which is fairly

early in the development of the tintinnabular style, but has most of the

recognisable features. It was written, as may be guessed, in response to the

death of the British composer Benjamin Britten in 1976. This was prior to his

eventual emigration to Austria in 1980, with the Soviet Union still controlling

and dictating what was acceptable. It would have been difficult for Part to find

recordings or scores for Britten's music which he described as having "unusual

purity". [3] With the death of Britten, Part's hopes of a meeting with this

kindred spirit were dashed.

Which brings us to Cantus itself. Describing music in words seems like a

quixotic adventure at best, and I can only hope that the reader will also be a

listener: that they will locate a recording of the work [4], or be fortunate

enough to attend a performance of it, and will read these words with the music

echoing in their minds.

Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten begins with three beats of silence. A

significant fact which I will return to shortly. Then very very softly

(pianississimo), and very slowly a bell is struck. Three times it rings out and

dies away, and it continues to be rung almost all the way throughout the piece,

mostly in groups of three, gradually getting louder. The other instruments, 1st

and 2nd violins, viola, cello, and double bass enter one at a time. They are each

playing the same melody - a simple descending A minor scale - but each is

playing it progressively slower in the ratio 1:2:4:8:16, so that the double basses

are playing at 1/16 of the speed of the 1st violins. This is an old form called a

mensuration canon, which was popular in Renaissance music. The first violins

start at the upper limit of their range, playing the first note, then repeatedly

descending through the A minor scale, adding a note each time. The melody

seems, at first tentatively, and them more confidently to probe downwards into

the lower registers. Each instrument begins softly, but by stages increases until

at the end they are all playing very very loud (fortississimo!). Each voice

except the violas is split into two (and at times four) parts with one playing theA minor scale, and the other providing a sort of anchor by playing only notes

from an A minor chord. This produces a sort of spiralling effect, with pulses of

tension and release.

Each voice, then, is questing downwards, but it is not a blind search. Each is

seeking a particular note which forms part of an A minor chord. The violins,

having started first, are the first to reach their note, and having got there they

simply play that note continuously until the end. As the other instruments find

their pitch the effect is like the finishing of a jigsaw puzzle. At about the same

time as the violas find their note, the bell lapses into silence. There is a definite,

strong sense of completion when the double basses find the low A that

completes the final chord, resolving the last dissonance. And so we reach a

point where each of 6 voices (the cellos are still paired) playing at full volume,an A minor chord at a very low pitch, which continues for 30 beats. Then

suddenly on the first beat of the last bar beat the bell is struck very softly, too

low to be heard above the roar of the strings. [5] Simultaneously the strings

stop, so that we hear the bell softly ringing and dying away into silence once

more.

Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten, as I said, begins and ends with

silence. You might say that all music does this, but in Cantus it is in the score,

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it is programmed into the music and is integral to the structure of it. [6] I

suggest that this silence, is like the blue sky at the beginning of a Buddhist

visualisation practice. It is the pregnant void of shunyata. Three beats of silence

also begin the 1st violin part. This becomes 6 beats for the 2nd violins, 12 for

the violas, 24 for the cellos, and 48 for the double basses. In other words

although we hear the instruments joining in progressively, they actually begin

at the same moment! Silence in music is a great source of creative tension. For

the performer it is a koan - how does one 'perform' silence?

The whole piece is built around the A natural minor scale, also known as the

Aeolian Mode. Both the scale and the fundamental chord built from its notes

have a characteristic melancholy to them. Music written in a minor key is

almost inevitably sombre, sad, or even dark. If anything in music symbolises

the bitter-sweetness of human existence, it is the minor chord. There is in it a

sense of longing and of existential dissatisfaction. But this is not just any minor

key, it is "A" minor which is the model for all minor scales and has ancient

associations going back to the ancient Greeks, to Pythagoras and his music of

the spheres. By choosing A minor Part is declaring his connection with

archetypal musical modes which form the foundations of modern harmony.

As I mentioned each voice, each instrumental part, is twofold. This separation

into two voices, one which sticks to the notes from the A minor triad, and the

other which is free to wander over other pitches, has a definite intended

symbolism. The latter "always signifies the subjective world, the daily egoistic

life of sin and suffering, [the former] meanwhile, is the objective realm of

forgiveness". [7] Part goes further:

"This can be likened to the eternal dualisms of body and spirit,

earth and heaven; but the two voices are in reality one voice, a

twofold single entity. This can be neatly and enigmatically

represented by the following equation:

1 + 1 = 1 [8]

There are resonances here with Buddhist doctrines about the duality between

samsara and nirvana, existence and non-existence, the conditioned and

unconditioned, which are also not two.

Arvo Part's biographer suggests that "how we live depends on our relationship

with death: how we make music depends on our relationship to silence". [9] It

is death that sparks this piece. The characteristic Buddhist response to death is

to search for the deathless. In the story of the four sights the Buddha-to-be goes

forth into homelessness, into the unknown, in order to solve the problems of

old age, sickness and death. In listening to Cantus, especially for the first time,

we go into the unknown. The bell heralds death, it is the funeral bell and the

initial response is instability. The first few bars seem to teeter on the edge of

chaos, and we may be asking ourselves: "is this going to be one of those

discordant, morbid, 'modern' works?". But soon things settle into a more

recognisable pattern, and the entry of the lower voiced, slower moving

instruments provides much needed stability. The quest has begun, each voice

begins searching downwards, repeatedly pushing lower and lower, seeking

something. The result is a sonorous tapestry, swirling with colour and

unexpected conjunctions of tension and relaxation, which result not from the

whim of the composer, but come from the structure of the canon itself.


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And then one by one each voice finds the pitch it has been seeking, sustains it

until the end, which is more than 250 beats in the case of the 1st violins. The

spiritual life is like this. We search around looking for answers to the big

questions. Then when we find the Dharma, we don't get answers, but we get

practices which can take us to a place where the questions are transcended.

Once we have the practices it's just a matter of sawing away until we reach the

goal. We do this on an ever deeper level until at last the light of Bodhi dawns,

and we are transformed in the deepest level of our being. As the double basses

finally hit their note there is a palpable sense of relief, of relaxation combined

with energy.

And then suddenly the music stops - or almost. In this moment there is a sense

of spiritual death. As Bodhi dawns we die to our old self, our old

self-centeredness. But with spiritual death there is spiritual renewal, and even

though we don't hear the striking of the bell, it is struck, and rings on after the

reverberations of the strings have died away. This last bell is the opening of the

door to the deathless, or perhaps more prosaically it is the opening of the

imagination to the possibility of the deathless. At this point there is little more

to be said, since Nirvana is ineffable. And so we return to silence, once again

written into the score. But this is not the silence of the absence of sound. It is

the silence that is sound, and the sound is silence.

Arvo Part's music is recognisably religious since so many of his works are

settings of religious texts. In the case of Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten

it is not just religious, it is spiritual. Cantus bares similarities to Buddhist

visualisation practices, and since it is a re-enactment of the spiritual path it

could also said to be puja. Cantus is not only profoundly beautiful, it is

beautifully profound. It uses very simple elements to create a rich and complex

whole, and seems to entirely fulfil Sangharakshita's criteria that art should

communicate a sense of values that can transform our lives. [10]

Notes

[1] Hillier, P. Arvo Part . (Oxford : University Press, 1997). p27.

[2] ibid. p.64.

[3] ibid. p.103.

[4] I recommend the version of Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten on the

Naxos CD Fratres . Hungarian State Opera Orchestra. Naxos 8.553750

[5] In at least one recording the striking of the bell is heard, but after

examining the score I believe the composer did not intend it to be heard.

[6] Part, A. Cantus in memory of Benjamin Britten für streichorchestra und

enie glocke. [musical score] (Wien, Philhamonia : 1980). PH555.

[7] Hillier. p.96.

[8] ibid. p.96.

[9] ibid p.1

[10] Sangharakshita. The Religion of art. (Glasgow : Windhorse, 1987).

P.84-85


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a study of cantus in memory of benjamin britten by arvo part

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