This is a paper I gave at the University of Central Missouri New Music Festival. This piece is not performed very often, but has soo much interesting “stuff” going on in it. I hope you enjoy!
The meeting of Arvo Pärt and J. S. Bach in
Collage über B-A-C-H
Arvo Part, born 1935, began his compositional career in Estonia during Russian Communist control. He primarily used modernist styles, such as serialism, despite the fact that they went against the Communist Party’s “social realism” aesthetic. Serialism is defined by the Oxford dictionary of music as, “a method of composition in which a fixed permutation, or series, of elements is referential. Most commonly the elements arranged in the series are the 12 notes of the equal-tempered scale. This was so in the technique introduced by Schoenberg in the early 1920s and employed by him in most of his subsequent compositions.” As Part’s compositional style matured and became more stifled by the Communist regime he began to find his own unique voice without engaging strict serialist technique while still being a modernist. Prior to 1964, Part toed the line of avant-garde composition and economic viability. That year marked the beginning of Pärt exploring a new style, with five works including Collage über B-A-C-H. This new style continued to utilize his pre-1964 quasi-serialist technique while allowing room for a new tonally rooted aesthetic. While there is an obvious connection to older music through his overt and veiled references to Bach, there are several different aspects of this piece that cause it to exemplify the combining of old and new.
Collage über B-A-C-H is in three movements, Toccata, Sarabande, and Ricercare, “the titles of the three movements Toccata, Sarabande, and Ricercare openly proclaim the work’s grounding in the heritage of the past.” (Hillier 49) These titles and styles are borrowed from the Renaissance era, circa 1350-1650 for music, and carry specific implications with them.
By definition a toccata is, “a piece intended primarily as a display of manual dexterity, often free in form.” This toccata, written for strings alone, is in a declamatory style starting with the violins and violas playing a unison b-flat. The opening section is dictated by a 10-note row that is repeated until all of the voices have played the row in all four forms, prime, retrograde, inversion, and retrograde inversion. As the movement continues all 12 tones are present to complete the aggregate, or chromatic saturation, before Part begins again with a new section to repeat the building process. At the beginning the first four notes spell out a b-flat major chord contained within an octave and slowly expand to cover five octaves mimicking the expansion to the aggregate within the orchestration. While Pärt’s toccata retains the constant motion of notes that we expect from a toccata, the notes are not moving in scalar motion but quick repetition of single pitches.
The Sarabande adds the oboe, harpsichord, and piano to the instrumentation and as conductor Paul Hillier describes in a volume dedicated to the music of Pärt includes a “rescoring of the D minor Sarabande from Bach’s Sixth English Suite. Chosen, we may guess, for the lyrical and somewhat disguised use it makes of the B-A-C-H motif.” “German sarabandes [are defined as]… as one of the dances in suites for a solo instrument such as keyboard or lute, and in continuo chamber suites for violin or other instruments. They are characterized by an intense, serious affect, though a few are tender and gracious, and are set in slow triple meter with a strong sense of balance.” The movement is in a binary form, ABAB, with the 8 and 16 measure sections differing in style, tonality, and instrumentation. The first eight measures are played by the oboe, harpsichord, and reduced strings and is a direct quotation of Bach with orchestration by Part that, “simply plays Bach’s music, cool, unmediated except for the particulars of the orchestration.” (Hillier 51) The texture is clear and light with a piano dynamic. In Collage über B-A-C-H the melody line is directly lifted from Bach and given to the oboe with the strings and harpsichord playing the same supportive role.
The next 16 measure section begins with a massive change in harmony, dynamic, and texture. The oboe and harpsichord are omitted, replaced by the piano and full string section, where octave clusters in the strings and piano overwhelm Bach’s harmonic language that was so tonally rooted. “The strings absorb the melody by playing it in 12- part clusters or parallel semitones, doubled by the piano, over a pedal D. The ear recognizes the melodic shape at first, but as the pedal drops away, the melody winds away from its model in the upward spiral.” (Hillier 51) This process is repeated with the next two sections, clear then complex, and finishes with another section of direct quotation of the Bach material.
This orchestration and texture can be directly linked to an adagio movement from the Easter Oratorio by J.S. Bach. The instrumentation for the Bach is oboe, strings, and harpsichord. The oboe line is a slow and introverted expressive melody that is not overly ornamented or virtuosic. The texture remains clear and focused on the oboe as the movement continues with the strings and harpsichord simply providing harmonic structure for the solo line. Part imitates this instrumentation and texture precisely.
The oboe, harpsichord, and piano are then removed from the ensemble as the Ricercare begins with the B-A-C-H motive in its prime form, the notes being Bb-A-C-B natural derived from the notes’ German names, played by the second violins. A ricercare is, “in its widest sense, a piece of an esoteric nature; a technical exercise either of a practical nature or illustrative of some device of composition.” Then at the distance of one measure the violas enter with the B-A-C-H motive, followed by the cellos, first violins, and finally the basses all in root position. The result is “strict counterpoint, in which statements of the B-A-C-H motif are variously inverted, transposed, and augmented, overlapping from the beginning in a continuous stretto texture” (Hillier 51). Stretto is the quickening of entrances to increase the harmonic rhythm. The first entrance of each part is in the middle range of each instrument and slowly expands outward to cover the range available. With all of this transposition and repetition of a single motive the audience might expect to become overwhelmed with a “wall of sound” and lose track of the melody. However, this is not the case. The strong pulls towards a tonal center, shortened sections, and an incredibly strong cadence at the end provide the listener with clarity and resolution that is indicative of both Bach and Part.
The way Pärt combines direct quotations of Bach with 12 tone clusters is inventive and jarring to the listener, “far from undermining the serial element, [tonality] will be required to co-habitat with it, in a free association of styles.” (Henderson 85) Though I believe he demonstrates that if the listener is given something to hold on to, such as the contour of Bach the melody, they can make sense cognitively of what could otherwise be deemed chaos.
