HILLIARD ENSEMBLE
at Saint Thomas the Apostle
All of this makes John’s passion story far more abstract and ethereal than the other accounts. It is therefore quite fitting that the Estonian mystic composer Arvo Part would set John’s passion to his own uniquely abstract and ethereal style of composition. Part’s music went through a number of style changes typical of composers during the 60s–serialism, aleatoricism–before he finally settled in the mid-70s on his own method. That method incorporated what Part called tintinnabuli principles, which were influenced by plainchant and the magnificent polyphony of Eastern Orthodox church music. His new style, like the parallel but coincidental development of minimalism in America, emphasized form over content, and slowly shifting repetitious phrases rooted in tonality over rapidly shifting phrases rooted in atonality. Two of Part’s albums serve as a good introduction to what he is trying to do by showing how it works in a variety of genres: Tabula Rasa, an all-instrumental album, and Arbos, a collection of vocal and instrumental works, some sacred, some secular.
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As good as His Majestie’s Clerkes are, and they were performing quite well, their alternating with a group of first-class singers such as the Hilliard Ensemble made things decidedly lopsided. The early-music choral scene in Chicago is still so new and opportunities so limited that even approaching the league of the Hilliards is difficult. But experiences such as this are invaluable for identifying weak areas. It was particularly good to hear Clerkes founder Richard Lowell Childress, visiting from England for what was obviously a very special evening for the group, in the alto section.
Part is far more minimal. He launches right into the passion text with nothing but a choral introduction titling the work and ends with a short choral prayer immediately after the death of Jesus–omitting the spear incident, the burial, the earthquake. In no way could Part’s music be compared to the ultimate genius of Bach, but purely on the level of the text Part’s setting is more reflective of the theology and style of the Gospel of John.
