Arvo P}}rt's Tabula Rasa [Paperback]

One of today's most widely acclaimed composers, Arvo P?rt broke into the soundscape of the Cold War West withTabula Rasain 1977, a work that introduced his signaturetintinnabulistyle to listeners throughout the world. In the first book dedicated to this pathbreaking composition, author Kevin C. Karnes tells the story ofTabula Rasaas one of P?rt and of Europe itself, traced over the course of a quarter-century that saw momentous transitions in European culture and politics, history and memory. Beginning at the site of the work's creation in the Estonian SSR, and drawing extensively upon a range of previously unexamined archival materials, Karnes recounts P?rt's discovery oftintinnabuliamidst his experiments with the music of the Western and Soviet avant-gardes. He examinesTabula Rasain relation to modernist conceptions of musical structure, the ascetic practice of Orthodox Christianity, postwar experiences of electronic music, and the polystylistic approaches to composition that have become emblematic of the Soviet 1970s. Tracing the export ofTabula Rasato the West and P?rt's emigration in 1980, the book reveals intersections of critical commentary with visions of the end of history that attended the collapse of European communism to suggest that it was in this confluence of listening, discovery, and geopolitical reordering that enduring lines of conversation about P?rt and his music took shape.

Acknowledgments

About the Companion Website

Note on Archives and Sources

1. The Blank Slate

2. Unofficial Music: A History for P?rt

3.Tintinnabuli

4.Tabula Rasa: Listening, Reading

5. Export and Emigration

Sources for Further Reading and Listening

Index

Finally, the book that Arvo P?rt and his landmark composition deserve. Karnes is an ideal guide: meticulous yet engaging. Avoiding the usual romantic flim-flammery, he putslă•