Arvo Pärt's Resonant Texts: Choral and Organ Music 1956–2015 by Andrew Shenton

Abstract

Reviewed by: Arvo Pärt's Resonant Texts: Choral and Organ Music 1956–2015 by Andrew Shenton Thomas Robinson Arvo Pärt's Resonant Texts: Choral and Organ Music 1956–2015. By Andrew Shenton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. [xxi, 288 p. ISBN 9781107082458, $99.99; ISBN 9781107442894 (paperback), $29.99; ISBN 9781108514866, $80.] Figures, tables, music examples, two appendices, bibliography, index. [End Page 462] While its subtitle implies a targeted niche, this latest contribution to Arvo Pärt scholarship aims for more and succeeds. Andrew Shenton, an organist and choral conductor, includes "at least a brief description of every piece that is written for, or can be played on the organ and every work that includes one or more singers" (p. xvi). But Shenton, also a scholar of music and theology, considers compositional technique and the spiritual implications of the composer's entire oeuvre. He addresses Pärt's works not covered anywhere else, and the entries for virtually every piece discussed make some reference to the most recent research available. For twenty years, Paul Hillier's Arvo Pärt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997) has been the principal monograph on Pärt's music. Now, subtitle notwithstanding, Arvo Pärt's Resonant Texts stands as the go-to reference for performers, scholars, concert curators, and fans, as Pärt's prominence continues to rise. Of the book's ten chapters, five constitute a compositional timeline that divides Pärt's output into five distinct eras, each named for a major, representative work. The remaining are standalone essays: a brief prelude, a primer on Pärt's "tintinnabuli" technique (pp. 30–47), a look into Pärt's theology and spirituality, a discussion of performance practice, and a short postlude situating the composer in Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker's "metamodernism" (p. 267). These perceptive essay chapters are smartly interspersed among the matter-of-fact timeline chapters, assisting the flow of a front-to-back reading. A straight read-through, however, may conceal the book's true value as a reference work that provides specific data and discussion. The data includes details of commissions and dedications, dates of composition and premieres, alternate titles and translations, texts, instrumentations, lengths, recordings, and publications. Shenton establishes the provenance of the works but also manages their numerous revisions, arrangements, re-orchestrations, and even the musical borrowings between them. While some users might prefer the efficacy of a tabular listing in an appendix, Shenton's smooth integration of this information into the prose might more deeply engage the researcher originally seeking a quick reference. The discussion is a mix of description, analysis, and commentary. At some points, it reads as a straightforward, measure-by-measure account of the music. Its real strength, however, lies in Shenton's description of a composition's "core," or "what Pärt called the 'nucleus'" (p. xvi). Pärt's tintinnabuli works often can be summarized by a small excerpt and a figure outlining the compositional plan (see his quasi-Stravinskian rotational array for Summa [p. 68] and his tintinnabular plan for Spiegel im Spiegel [p. 70]). Where this is impractical, Shenton usually includes an excerpt that shows the musical flavor and texture. He finds reasonable similarities to other composers (Benjamin Britten, Philip Glass, Leoš Janáček, Carl Orff, Franz Schubert) but sometimes uses a more critical, subjective ear, deeming certain pieces "(un)successful" or "(un)remarkable." Some researchers may balk at this, but a performer assembling a concert program likely will appreciate Shenton's expert opinion. The first of the book's major topics is the development of tintinnabuli, the technique whose foundation is the interaction of an arpeggiating (tintinnabular) "T-voice" and a melodic "M-voice," indeed a "whole new species of counterpoint" (p. 34). The essay [End Page 463] chapter on the topic reviews the existing analytical literature and intriguingly proposes analysis by "dissonance values" (p. 45), something Shenton has explored in prior research but does not pursue much further here. He hints at its potential in analysis of text-setting, but one supposes it has implications in rhythmic analysis too. Music theorists (Paul Hindemith, Ernst Krenek, and others) have long proposed rankings of...