1. Litany, for ATTB soloists, chorus & orchestra 22:45
2. Psalom, for string orchestra 6:45
3. Trisagion, for string orchestra 11:53
Hilliard Ensemble:
David James - Counter Tenor (Vocal)
John Potter - Tenor (Vocal)
Rogers Covey-Crump - Tenor (Vocal)
Gordon Jones - Bass (Vocal)
Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra
Tallinn Chamber Orchestra
Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir
Tõnu Kaljuste - Conductor
Saulius Sondeckis - Conductor
AMG:
"Undoubtedly linked to his deep religious convictions, much of Arvo Pärt's music seems to explore, challenge, and even alter perceptions of time-to perhaps intimate the eternal within a given frame of mortal time. Works like Festina Lente and Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten are structured as fractals or holograms: we are presented with the same musical material layered on top of itself, moving concurrently at several different rates of speed. We are thus able to view the musical figure in simulated three-dimensional time, from various angles and distances. In these works, time is treated as matter. Pärt's Litany: Prayers of St. John Chrysostom for Each Hour of the Day and Night, is a different kind of exploration, one whose subject is not the fluid material of time, but the containers (clocks, calendars, lifetimes) that the mortal mind stores that material in.
Composed in 1994, the work calls for a full orchestra, ATTB soloists, and choir. It takes as its text a set of prayers attributed to John Chrysostom, a fourth-century saint. As the title suggests, there are twenty-four prayers in all, most of them short, proverbial utterances of a few words. The work is built upon Pärt's signature 'tintinnabular' technique, a kind of proto-minimalist concept that retains an omnipresent sense of tonal center while disregarding the traditional 'functionality' of harmonic progressions. The texture is well suited to devotional music, as it maintains a generally serene harmonic stability while allowing a unique kind of expression-providing a force against which dissonance can resist. The technique relies on the combination of two lines, conveniently identified in Paul Hillier's authoritative book as 'M-(melodic) voices' and T-(tintinnabular) voices.' The M-voice follows a stepwise contour that is based on the length of individual words; thus, a longer word will generally be set to a broader melodic curve. These lines are set in a kind of counterpoint to the T-voices, which leap between tonic chord tones above and below the M-voices. For Pärt, this duality has all kinds of religious overtones. The composer sees the M-voice as representing carnality, mortality, and sin. The T-voice is associated with spirituality, godliness, and redemption. The Litany is thus a complex matrix of musical devices and well as musical symbols.
Though it certainly doesn't approach the length of time represented, the work marks off divisions of 'time' with musical cues. The first four 'hours' are each introduced by a descending scale that grows by one note with each subsequent prayer. After the descending scale, the choir holds one or more pitches, according to the number of that particular hour, while a soloist sings the prayer text. During the next four hours (five through eight), pizzicato scales of between five and eight notes (again, corresponding to the number of the prayer) announce the hour. The numerical cues from the first eight prayers are employed in combination to mark the remaining prayers of the first half. In the second half, the timpani counts down, announcing each odd-numbered hour by repeating a figure the appropriate number of times. The even-numbered hours are signaled by an ever-growing scalar figure in the woodwinds.
This entire series is set within an overarching harmonic cycle. The first half begins on a high B, under which an E minor harmony is established. The second half moves to C# minor, but at the end drops to B, indicating the full circle of the earth's rotation and the return to the beginning of the cycle."
Litany
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Litany