You may not have noticed the ad running in this section over recent weeks, but buried among the theatre, rock and films listings is a small notice for tonight's performance of Arvo Part's Passio by the Guinness Choir at St Patrick's Cathedral. It is a rare chance to hear a modern choral masterpiece, a highlight from one of the 21st century's greatest composers.
It is the latest in a number of recitals of his works. In the past year, Part's Fratres has been played as part of the RTE's Horizon Series at the National Concert Hall and a selection of works was performed by the Ice Ensemble at Temple Bar Meeting House Square for the second summer in succession. It is recognition, not just of the beauty of the music, but that he attracts strong and often new audiences. Part has joined the ranks of the living composers recognised outside strictly classical music circles, but without the bedrock of film scores as with Michael Nyman, or the brash of Philip Glass or an association with larger events, as with John Tavener and Princess Diana's funeral. Part has built up a following because the strength and purity of his music have made him impossible to ignore.
Listeners often stumble across him, having listened to Henryk Gorecki or Barber's Adagio for Strings, but he has made his name not from a single composition but from a growing body of work, much of it deceptively simple, but all with an underlying dynamic and organic unity. Actually, the biggest problem with Part is in trying to describe his music and historians have been slow to credit him. To approach it analytically has little of the joy of simply pressing the play button on the stereo.
In Ireland his audience has been stretched from the expected channels of Lyric FM to include the musical adventurers who tune in to Donal Dineen's late night Today FM show, Here Comes The Night, where Part is often segued effortlessly with new music of all genres, suggesting that he is becoming more relevant rather than less. Dineen was behind that successful Diversions series - summertime outdoor performance events in Temple Bar - which attracted an audience for classical music seldom encountered in the stuffier venues. But that had as much to do with the music as the location.
Part's current style is almost unrecognisable from his early works, which were dissonant, and harsh and focussed on the tonal. When he did change tack, it was in the direction of collage, where he often took existing works, most notably those of J.S. Bach, and placed them at the centre of his own interpretations.
He was born in Estonia in the 1935. In the early 1960s, he supplemented his income by writing film scores much in the same way that his greatest early influence, Shostakovich. Like Shostakovich, Part's relationship with the Soviet authorities was fraught. His Credo (1968) was banned by the authorities for a decade and set in train a stylistic crisis which led to a period of silence beginning in 1968 and only ending properly in the mid-1970s. In the interim, he had locked himself away in his studies of Orthodox chant, the spiritual works of the West and spent a year in England learning the cyclical practices of ringing, all of which where to come together to inform the tintinnabuli style he has spent three decades developing.
Tintinnabuli is a Latin word meaning bells and it is the term Part uses to describe the sound he has developed - most recognisably in his orchestral works - of two or three notes overlapping and repeating in much the way of church bells. It gives a simplicity to his pieces but also a richness which is often nothing short of hypnotic. He can use both silence and single notes to create a tapestry from a work which might superficially seem to be going nowhere.
"Tintinnabulation is an area I sometimes wander into when I am searching for answers - in my life, my music, my work," he is often quoted as saying. "In my dark hours, I have the certain feeling that everything outside this one thing has no meaning. The complex and many-faceted only confuses me and I must search for unity. What is it, this one thing, and how do I find my way to it? Traces of this perfect thing appear in many guises - and everything that is unimportant falls away."
While it was his initial interest in what the authorities saw as the decadence of Western styles which caused scandal, it was the heavy religious overtones which really upset them. In 1979, he finally requested the right to leave and relinquish his citizenship, and he and his wife left for Vienna, but later settled in West Berlin, where he still lives. It was only with his arrival in the West that he began to receive true recognition, most pointedly with the help of Manfred Eichner who championed the composer through the New Series label. In fact, Part's success was such that their relationship proved to be of mutual benefit. With Part's initial success forming the backbone of a New Series which has been a valuable avenue for Eastern European composers, while Part received the major label backing which has guaranteed wide exposure.
A cult has developed around Part thanks to his reluctance to answer the many questions his followers ask. They want to know about his faith, how he writes, and whether he has spent periods in monasteries in an attempt to take both further. But he has little interest in trying to explain any sort of philosophy behind his work, instead insisting that the music and the religious texts which he adapts say all there is to say about him. Even those who have worked with him closest confirm that he dislikes talking about either his pieces or the processes through which he writes them. He seems to be an artist working as best as possible to remove any traces of ego from his music as much as from his own persona.
"I am not a prophet, not a cardinal, not a monk. I am not even a vegetarian. Don't be confused by cheap tabloid information," he says. "Of course I am in monasteries more often than in concert halls - but then again, you have no idea how many times I am in concert halls."
THERE are several recommended CDs that will serve as a good introduction. HMV Classics have an excellent cut-price Tabula rasa, a CD which has become an entry point for many newcomers. It also includes what may be his single most wonderful piece, Cantus in Memorium Benjamin Britten, in which a string orchestra plays out the same variant of the descending A-scale simultaneously at three different speeds while a solitary bell intones of the death. As with most of his work though, it is impossible to simply describe, and can only ever be appreciated by listening. The same goes for Passio, a solemn and tragic work based on the final day's of Christ's life which builds to a stunning crescendo. It is difficult to track it down in Ireland, which should make tonight's recital in St Patrick's Cathedral all the more special.
Arvo Part's Passio, with the Guinness Choir takes place tonight in St Patrick's Cathedral at 8 p.m.