Published
Symphony No. 4
When the commission arrived, Pärt was working on a choral piece based on an ancient canon of the Orthodox Church, Kanon Pokajanen, a prayer to the guardian angel. He decided to use this material as the basis of a symphony written for the leading orchestra of a city called Los Angeles.
The work is dedicated to Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a Russian oil magnate who was accused of fraud by Putin’s government and sentenced to ten years in prison before eventually being pardoned; he subsequently lived in Switzerland. Pärt’s protest is directed against Putin, whom he regarded as having eliminated a political rival. It continues a stance the composer has maintained against Russia under several regimes: first persecuted by the Soviet authorities for his atonal music and later for works with a Christian religious character.
The composer described the work in these words: “The tragic tone of the symphony is not a lament for Khodorkovsky, but a gesture of respect towards the great power of the human spirit and human dignity. With my composition, I would like to extend my hand to the prisoner, and through him to all prisoners deprived of rights in Russia.”
The first movement, con sublimità, is divided into three sections of different character. The first is meditative, with long suspended notes moving slowly and solemnly. It retains the mystical quality of the composer’s more recent work and has been described as an introspective funerary lament.
Since 1976, this style Pärt describes with the word, “tintinnabuli,” which means “bells.” The influence of medieval music is clear in the emotional effect of Pärt’s “tintinnabuli” works: they are somber, contemplative, yearning, and simply beautiful. His compositions often set Christian religious texts, which also resembles music from the European medieval period.
Pärt’s fourth and final symphony is the only one which he composed in the “tintinnabuli” style. The first movement, “Con sublimità,” (with sublimity) may seem inappropriately marked: sublimity, which we would expect to be enthralling beauty, is sad, even unfulfilled. One reason I love Pärt’s music is because he is able to present us with beauty that accesses a unique realm of our emotional experience. In other words, sorrow and yearning can sometimes be the appropriate feelings in the presence of beauty.