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Arvo Part created a new musical technique that he calls "tintinnabulation."
The State Tretyakov Gallery's St. Nicholas Choir and the Seasons Chamber Orchestra will perform nine works by the composer, who emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1980 after his works were criticized as religious propaganda. Several pieces on the program, which covers the period from the 1960s to the early 1990s, will be performed for the first time in Moscow.
Part graduated from the Tallinn Conservatory in 1963, a time when Western avant-garde musical influences were few and far between in Estonia. Nevertheless, he abandoned an early penchant for neo-classicism and became interested in serial music, in which a whole composition is based on a set sequence of notes. He then moved into minimalism and "collages" of different musical styles. The composer's early period will be represented in the concert program with his 1964 "Solfeggio" for unaccompanied choir.
After several years of experimentation, Part reached a creative impasse and entered the first of several self-imposed periods of contemplative silence. Using the break to investigate the religious origins of notated music, he plunged himself into medieval chants, bell patterns and plainsong, and ultimately developed a technique that he called "tintinnabulation" that was intended to mimic the ringing of bells.
The composer elicited disapproval from the authorities for using religious themes in works such as the 1968 "Credo" for piano, chorus and orchestra. This meant that his music was rarely performed in the Soviet Union, although it was already beginning to be discovered in the West. After receiving permission to emigrate, Part became an Austrian citizen, but settled in Germany, where he has lived for the last 23 years.
In a sign of changing official attitudes, Sunday's concert was organized by the Russian Union of Composers with support from the Russian Orthodox Church's foreign relations department. Among the television channels publicizing the event are the military channel and the recently-founded Russian Orthodox satellite channel Spas.
The centerpiece of Sunday's concert will be Part's Berlin Mass, completed in 1991 to celebrate the re-unification of the city where the composer lives. Since emigrating, Part has used religious texts as the basis for many of his compositions, such as the 1991 "Silouan's Song" for string orchestra and his 1989 "Magnificat" for unaccompanied choir, both of which will be performed Sunday.
Although Part's birthday falls on the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks by pure chance, his music has already been used to commemorate the suffering of the victims. Film director Michael Moore played Part's "Cantus in memory of Benjamin Britten" over scenes of the aftermath in his movie "Fahrenheit 9/11."
Arvo Part's 70th birthday concert takes place Sun. at 7 p.m. in the Conservatory Great Hall, located at 13 Bolshaya Nikitskaya Ulitsa. Metro Biblioteka Imeni Lenina. Tel. 933-3200.
