Tintinnabuli

Tintinnabuli (from Latin meaning the plural ‘bells’) is a compositional style put to practise, and closely associated with the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt.

It is basically most recognisable when listening to his two works, Für Alina and Spiegel Im Spiegel, both composed during the 1970s. Especially in the former there is dissonance between the few notes played, and if played softly enough, they produce a sound similar to a bell being played, echoing in the distance.

When being referred to being stylistically close to Pärt’s tintinnabuli, a work can also have a long and meditative tempo, a minimalist approach to notation, among other things after the aforementioned quality of sound.

Pärt himself has explained the term in this way:

Tintinnabulation is an area I sometimes wander into when I am searching for answers - in my life, my music,

my work. 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. Tintinnabulation is like this. . . . The three notes of a triad are like bells.

And that is why I call it tintinnabulation.[1]

Sometimes much of Pärt’s work has been referred to as tintinnabuli, and after his choral works he most certainly is most famous for these "minimalist" composition. Although this might be correct with his work from the 1970s, his style has gone through various changes. Yet perhaps the best guide to his musical style and philosophy has been said by Pärt himself, as taken from the liner notes of the ECM release of Alina, from the beginning of an essay ‘White Light’ by Hermann Conen, as translated into English by Eileen Walliser-Schwarzbart):

I could compare my music to white light which contains

All colours. Only a prism can divide the colours and make

Them appear; this prism could be the spirit of the listener.

—Arvo Pärt—

External links/Sources

• An article on tintinnabuli at arvopart.org
• The Pärt quote can be found from the website above, itself quoting Richard E. Rodda's liner notes for Arvo Pärt's Fratres, I Fiamminghi, The Orchestra of Flanders, Rudolf Werthen, (Telarc CD-80387).