Arvo Pärt’s “Sieben MagnificatAntiphonen”: rethinking tradition

Statement of the problem. In the Ukrainian musical community both, performing and scientific, Arvo Prt’s works arouses interest, although their presence in the repertoire of our musicians and in the studies of musicologists is insufficient. The reason for this lies, in particular, in the misunderstanding of the specifics of A. Prt’s style. The feigned simplicity, lack of external eventfulness gives rise to the opinion that A. Prt’s works cannot be an accent of the concert program, it is difficult to attract the attention of the listener for those works. In such conditions, the role of research is important, which would explain and comment on the principles of A. Prt’s aesthetics and technique, reveal the depth of the content of his work and the perfection of his stylistic solutions. The mentioned problem is especially acute in relation to A. Prt’s choral music, which, compared to the instrumental works of the composer, is much less researched and commented on. This article is designed to fill this gap. It focuses on the peculiarities of the embodiment of the sacred word in A. Prt’s choral cycle “Sieben Magnificat-Antiphonen” on the comparison of the composer’s approach and the Gregorian tradition, as well as on the specifics of the functioning of the “tintinnabuli” technique in the conditions of the choral texture. Objectives, methods, and novelty of the research. The purpose of the study is basing on the analysis of A. Prt’s choral cycle “Sieben Magnificat-Antiphonen” and its comparison with the corresponding Gregorian chants, to trace how the composer’s interpretation of these texts is consistent with the tradition of the Western Christian rite. The cycle is analyzed for the first time in Ukrainian musicology, which determines the scientific novelty of the study. The research uses general scientific and specifically musicological methods. Among the general scientific ones, there are the comparative (compares the embodiment of the canonical text in the Gregorian monody and the work by a modern composer) and the inductive (based on the analysis of individual parts of A. Prt’s cycle, the conclusions are drawn about the structure of the whole). The method of analyzing the system of musical instruments in connection with the canonical text is a specifically musicological one. Results and conclusion. As a result of the analysis of the verbal text of the “Seven Antiphons” and its musical embodiment in the Gregorian chants and A. Prt’s choral cycle, we came to the following conclusions: 1. The verbal text of the antiphons is a seven-part cycle, in which the constituent parts are united by content and structure, and the structural unification is designed to emphasize the main idea of the text: active anticipation of the Nativity of Christ. 2. The constructive unity laid down in the seven short verbal texts of the antiphons realized in the Gregorian chant: all seven antiphons have a similar melody; it alternately changes, reflecting changes in the number of syllables in the verbal text; despite these changes, the key intonations (initial and cadential structures, the method of implementing the pitch mode) remain unchanged in all seven chants. 3. The idea of a cycle in the work by A. Prt is also realized by musical means, but these means are different than in the Gregorian tradition. The key means of creating a cycle for A. Prt are not variant repetition (as in the Gregorian chants), but contrast and end-to-end development; the contrast is realized by means of dynamics and choral texture, and the through development – by the tonal organization of the cycle and the specifics of using the “tintinnabuli” technique. The analysis of A. Prt’s choral cycle confirms: the composer rethinks the tradition, remaining faithful “not to the letter, but to the spirit” of the ancient texts. Without resorting to quoting the Gregorian melody, A. Prt created an original choral cycle in which the key constructive and meaningful ideas of the texts are embodied in a fresh and convincing way.