Bach and Pärt: Timeless Choral Sounds
Bach and Pärt: Timeless Choral Sounds
Johann Sebastian Bach and Arvo Pärt are the two composers featured in the production Bach and Pärt. At first glance, they seem to have little in common—except, perhaps, that both have composed a St. John Passion. Bach lived in 18th-century Germany and was hardly known beyond its borders, while Pärt, originally from Estonia, celebrates his 90th birthday this year and has long been among the most frequently performed living composers worldwide. However, if we take a closer look at their choral works, as performed in this concert, we can discern a striking similarity. Both composers wrote in an idiomatic style for the choir, fully utilizing its capabilities. Their works continuously alternate between powerful homophony and intricate polyphony.
Bach’s Masterful Motets
We begin with two of the six surviving motets by Bach. The motet has been a genre within sacred music since the 13th century, evolving significantly over time. The golden age of motet composition was the Renaissance, with composers such as Josquin Desprez and Orlandus Lassus. Traditionally, motets were a flexible form that could be adapted to the liturgy but were also suitable for secular ceremonies. In the Baroque period, particularly in Italy, motets evolved into a cantata-like form with Latin texts. However, the “old-fashioned” motet for a cappella choir—accompanied only by organ or basso continuo at most—persisted, including in Protestant church music, where it was naturally sung in the vernacular.
Bach’s motets were likely all composed for the choir of the St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, where he served as cantor from 1723 until his death in 1750. These motets continued to be performed in the Thomaskirche even after Bach’s passing—not because they were recognized as his masterpieces, but simply because they remained part of the choir’s repertoire. There is still debate about how many motets Bach actually composed. His son Carl Philipp Emanuel mentioned “a few,” while Bach’s first biographer, Johann Nicolaus Forkel, referred to “a great number.”
In 1802, an edition of six motets was published, known today as BWV 225–230, and two of these are featured in this production. The program begins with the motet Jesu, meine Freude. Since Bach was not required to compose motets for regular Sunday services at the St. Thomas Church—only cantatas—it is likely that his motets were commissioned for special occasions. Jesu, meine Freude was probably written for a funeral service. This five-part motet is based on the church hymn Jesu, meine Freude, written by Johann Franck in 1653. Other composers, including Dieterich Buxtehude, also set this hymn to music.
Bach’s eleven-section motet, by far the most extensive of his six, alternates six stanzas of the hymn with five settings of biblical texts taken from Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, chapter 8. Each hymn stanza is harmonized or musically varied in a different way, interspersed with freely composed biblical passages. The central message of Paul’s letter—“But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit”—is set by Bach as a five-part fugue, forming the motet’s core. The biblical texts may have been selected by an anonymous commissioner.
In stark contrast to this solemn motet is the second Bach work on the program: the exuberant Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied, written for two four-part choirs. The first section features a lively call-and-response dialogue between the two choirs, performed at a rapid tempo. Bach frequently used this double-choir technique, which originated in 16th-century Venice and remained in use well into the 18th century. In the slower middle section, the choirs alternate singing two different texts, and the piece concludes with the words “Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord. Hallelujah!” Here, the two choirs unite in a swirling four-part fugue that leaves both singers and listeners breathless.
Mozart heard this motet during a visit to Leipzig in 1789 on his way to Berlin. He was ecstatic about it, remarking that it was music from which he could still learn. He was given a copy of the piece, on which he noted that the motet truly deserved a full orchestral accompaniment.
Pärt’s Meditative Penitential Psalms
The second half of this concert is dedicated to excerpts from Kanon Pokajanen, a large-scale choral work by Arvo Pärt. Now regarded as one of the most significant sacred music composers of the 20th century, Pärt took a long time to find his true compositional voice. He studied at the Tallinn Conservatory, where he also began composing.
His earliest works from 1962 and 1963 would hardly be recognizable today as Pärt’s. Initially, he followed in the stylistic footsteps of Sergei Prokofiev and Béla Bartók, as taught at the conservatory, but he felt uncomfortable within that style. He later experimented with Arnold Schoenberg’s twelve-tone technique, which brought him into conflict with the Soviet regime. Until 1991, Estonia was part of the Soviet Union, where the authorities did not appreciate the music of Schoenberg and other modern Western composers. However, Pärt soon realized that serialism was not the right path for him either.
In 1970, Pärt converted to the Eastern Orthodox Church, which did not improve his prospects for composition commissions, as the Soviet government was vehemently opposed to any form of religion. Seeking his own voice as a composer—one that could accommodate his deep longing for spirituality and mysticism—Pärt immersed himself in the study of medieval and Renaissance music, Gregorian chant, and early polyphony. There, he found the inspiration he had been searching for. He developed a highly personal style that embraced consonant harmonies and triadic structures, deliberately distancing himself from Schoenberg’s innovations and instead looking far back into music history. He described his style as tintinnabuli, music that resonates like little bells.
From the late 1970s onward, Pärt began composing in this newly developed style—with tremendous success. In 1980, he left his homeland, and thus the constraints of the Soviet regime, to settle in West Berlin. In 1982, he wrote his first major choral work, the St. John Passion, marking the beginning of a long series of vocal compositions with a religious character that firmly established his reputation as a composer.
Kanon Pokajanen was written to commemorate the 750th anniversary of Cologne Cathedral and premiered there on March 17, 1998. The word canon in this context means rule or model, referring to a tradition within the Eastern Orthodox Church. The canon was a structured set of texts developed in the 7th and 8th centuries, drawn from the Old Testament and other sources, arranged in a specific order. Kanon Pokajanen is a work of penitence, with all sung texts—except the concluding prayer to Mary—relating to this theme.
Pärt set his composition, which took him two years to complete, to the original Church Slavonic text, the official language of the Eastern Orthodox Church. In doing so, he followed in the footsteps of Russian composers such as Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff, who also wrote sacred works in Slavonic. However, like those composers, Pärt intended Kanon Pokajanen as a concert piece, independent of liturgical function. Unlike traditional Orthodox canons, which included both sung and spoken sections, Pärt’s version consists solely of sung material.
The piece comprises nine odes, each exploring a different aspect of the overarching theme. Musically, Pärt frequently references his Russian predecessors, as well as early Western polyphony and Gregorian chant. The tempo is slow, and, as is often the case in Pärt’s music, silences between phrases are carefully placed. These silences are integral to the composition. Kanon Pokajanen demands the utmost concentration from its performers, creating the illusion that time stands still for the duration of the piece. Pärt’s resonant harmonies linger long after the music ends, while at times, the choir sings at the very edge of audibility. Combined with the dark, solemn timbre of Church Slavonic, the result is a truly unique vocal experience.
— Marcel Bijlo
