How to compose like Arvo Pärt, tintinnabuli style
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- Опубліковано 3 чер 2024
- A guide to Arvo Pärt's compositional technique.
0:00 Introduction
1:52 Structural overview
2:39 Writing an M-voice
6:15 Text setting
7:49 Adding T-voices
14:28 Additional M-voices
19:19 Building complexity
23:54 New Perspectives
ERRATA: The second purple box at the end of the section "Additional M-voices" should have gone to the measure which is two measures later, since that is the one with the same note (B) in the M-voice (the T-voices are still the same there in either case).
PATREON: / galendegraf
Find scores, handouts, and worksheets associated with this (and other) content. Great for educators who would like to teach a unit on Arvo Pärt in their courses!
RECOMMENDED/RELATED READING
Andrew Shenton (ed.) "The Cambridge Companion to Arvo Pärt" amzn.to/44yM6e3
Paul Hillier, "Arvo Pärt" amzn.to/3QwYrKb
FTC Legal Disclaimer - Some links found in the description box of my videos may be affiliate links, meaning I will make commission on sales you make through my link at no cost to you.
CITATIONS OF THIS VIDEO: The preferred full title combines the thumbnail text with youTube's title as follows: "System and symmetry: How to compose like Arvo Pärt, tintinnabuli style"
#musictheory
NOTE: Pärt defines T-voice positions slightly differently (see Paul Hillier's Arvo Pärt book). For Pärt, there are three broad categories: "superior," "inferior," and "alternating." For pedagogical purposes, I've presented positions without including "alternating" as an underlying position type. Rather than make "alternating" a fundamental *position*, I categorize it as a way of elaborating an underlying structure (by alternating between a position above and a position below). That's a pretty subtle adjustment, but wanted to mention it somewhere.
This has to be one of the best music theory videos on youtube and it blew my mind to see that this video has only 158 views. This is usually information I'd had to pay $80 for a textbook to get!
Edit: spoke too soon
And those $80 textbooks probably lack animation with pretty landscapes pictures!
you're a gift to this tiny corner of the internet@@GalenDeGraf
I’m so happy UA-cam recommends these videos to us regardless of views. Hopefully Galen’s channel will get more views! But it’s nice that quality is being pushed out!
Well you probably came too early. This video is going to blow up in popularity soon
Now 28K now w
The best and clearest explanation of this technique, in any medium, anywhere on the internet.
Pärt's brilliance is making mechanical process music so pop-sounding that it starts to feel deep. Boulez's Structures but diatonic and with vaguely religious names.
Omg, I'm having a musical paradigm shift watching this. Never had heard of Part before. His approach clicks with the way my brain works. Galen, really beautiful examples. Please make more tintinnabuli videos.
So well done. What a great contribution to the UA-cam library of educational music theory/composition videos. No surprise it's finding such a big audience!
Great video. Nobody told me this at the conservatory.
It's surprising that this system doesn't find its way into more music syllabi. I imagine it could easily be worked into a course on minimalism, or one on tonality, or even one on serialism!
I can’t even begin to express my amazement with your work, this is just incredible!
1:30 in and I’m sold. You got yourself a subscriber.
I was having a empty page syndrom for my composition: thanks, i found something! really well explained
This video took me a couple of watches to fully grasp Pärt's style, but now i understand it, im having fun improvising at the piano. This guide broke the style down so well!
The clarity and excellence of this video are stunning. Your students are really fortunate and i could wish i was one of them. I’ll never listen to Pärt the same again, and my own compositions will also be affected. Thank you!
Im not saying this lightly, but you man, are the best youtuber in the world. Amazing.
What a good video!, precisely for a composition project I am needing to use Tintinnabuli and with your explanation it has become much clearer to me; I feel happy that just after a couple of days looking for information on the subject (which I feel is not so easy to find or that they know how to explain it correctly) it is a gem to have found your content today. I thank you deeply and I hope you continue creating more content of such good quality, you deserve much more reach and recognition for your work
Incredibly high quality. So much so that I feel no words could do this video justice. A spectacular masterpiece... every second shines with clearly obvious hours of effort and dedication.
What a magnificent study and treatise. Enlightening and mind opening by equal measure. Thank you.
Hats off gentlemen, a genius!
The Pärt-Bach parallel you draw with the Cello Suite opening is super interesting. I think it expresses very neatly this feat you mentioned in the beginning for Pärt's music to sound both old and new, since he basically reconstructs this tension between counterpoint and chordal harmony that exists in baroque music, but entirely on his own terms. Very cool video, thanks.
Elegant, beautiful, clear exposition. Thank you.
This was incredibly informative and well-made, and it gave me some newfound appreciation for the music of Pärt, which in the past I found rather dull, before listening to pieces like Da Pacem.
It's been a while since I've watched a music theory video. This get's my thumbs up! 👍
Very simple yet very effective. Excellent, thank you.
How remarkably insightful!
20/10, perfect video, thanks a lot. Keep making this high-quality job. PRICELESS
This is wonderfull, how deep You go in to this knowledge si really impressive
A beautiful presentation. Thanks so much. Earned a subscription!
Fascinating. Great video, thanks.
Brilliant analysis. Thank you
Thank you for this amazing video!
Fantastic content! Keep it up with the work! Thanks so much for sharing the information and hard work you put into it!
Fantastic video. Thank you.
This was a brilliant video! So inspiring, and so genuinely educational! Arvo Part has been a new discovery of mine, and his Tintinnabuli style was brought up in one of my classes but not dived in to. This was such a happy coincidence to find on my feed! Will definitely be playing around with some of the principles you laid out in this (again) fantastic video!! Hope to see more great videos like this one from you in the future!!!
Great tutorial ! Thanks
Amazing video! Informative and concise
Thank you so much for this, I’ve always wondered how Pärt approached harmony and this video made it so easy to understand!
Magnificent video. Thank you, this truly brings a new wat of thinking on music composition
This was incredible, thank you
This is so beautiful. Great concepts thank you for sharing
Thank you for this video. All ideas were really clearly laid out and easy to understand. I love resources like this which give you the tools to try and start writing the music you love
Wonderful explanation, thank you 🙏 I'm looking to apply these compositional techniques to a world of electronic music and it's a cool puzzle to think about the various shapes, offsets and logic rules and how I can recreate them with components in software and hardware
Thank you very much for this. I wanted an idea for a new composition and this will be perfect as I would like to write a choral work.
Very informative, thank you
Whaou ! Amazing content. Thank you so much for those great explanations
This is a brilliant video. I am amazed. Please keep going, brother.
Please make this a series
Thanks a lot for sharing. This is very inspiring
fantastic video!
killer. i'm recommending this to my subscribers.
This takes me back to my college days where I wrote a thesis analysing Kanon Pokajanen.
Near the beginning of this year, I wrote several small choral pieces at a breakneck pace. My composition instructor commented how it reminded him of Pärt sometimes and told me to look him up. I never really understood tintinnabulation until now, but I am shocked to find that one of those short choral pieces (the one I consider my best) essentially uses T-voice construction throughout
Great video, thanks !
I’m taking AP Music Theory in school right now and I’m proud to say I can understand this… mostly lol 😅 I would love to see more of these types of videos!!
This is beautifully demonstrated, and such a clear narration. Would love to hear even more audio clips as each section is presented, especially the real Pärt examples - is there a copyright restriction on those sort of things?
Using excerpts for educational purposes is generally considered fair use, but using full pieces usually requires licensing. In most audio examples, I provided a "related piece" in the caption which you can also seek out, and for which many of the compositional strategies discussed just before should apply.
This is really cool! I've been getting into Arvo Part's work recently, and it is amazing. Maybe a video about "Fratres"? No rush, but it would be cool to see :)
Great video
This music sounds like Perotin had never solved the first problems of counterpoint.
Congrats on an awesome video
Thanks! Learning animation was a total game changer.
Really great video!
Glad you enjoyed it!
This is very good. Of course, species counterpoint is very helpful in understanding this kind of thinking. Plainsong and faux-bourdon doubling likewise.
Great stuff!!!
Excellent video, my god man
Songs like the healing of arinushka are the most genius: how else to describe a melody that is so simple and logical yet so new and memorable and moving. Millions of musicians try to make melodies, but 99% fail and their melodies are grey, uninspiring or unoriginal. Making a simple yet new and memorable melody is a feat!
Incredible
Fantastic.
Thank you!
Good stuff!
Fascinating !!
Thank you so much for this video. Would you be possible willing to the something like this som other of your other courses on composer´s techniques. I find this very fascinating. Greetings from Sweden. :)
Brilliant !
That's really great
Has anyone been mysteriously unsubscribed from a load of their favourite UA-cam channels therefore having to resubscribe again? I’m getting sick of it!
Very enlightening and inspiring. What programs are you using for sound recording and animation? I am very interested in this.
Audio mockups: Cubase (VSTs: Spitfire Symphonic Organ, Orchestra Tools Tallinn, Native Instruments Noire)
Musical examples: Dorico
Animation and effects: Final Cut Pro
Thumbnail: Adobe Photoshop
Thanks!@@GalenDeGraf
Thank You!
Stellar !!!
Great video! Which Vsts/soundfont did you use for your voices/chorus?
Amazing!
Very good but more sonic representation of what you show would be greatly appreciated ! Thanks
The game destiny and destiny 2 uses this technique everywhere
This was phenomenal! Could I possibly wish upon a star for a similar video about Górecki's sacred/holy minimalism (i.e. the style of Symphony 2's second movement, Symphony 3, Beatus Vir, O Domina Nostra, etc.)?
Pärt - will be spoken like Pjart
This is super interesting. What are the limits to this? Can you use this system with any scale/mode and triads within that scale? Can you use it with atonal scales, such as whole-tone or diminished? I am truly fascinated by this. Subscribed and I will show this video to all my musician-friends. Thanks, and keep up the good work!
i have used exactly these kind of extended techniques - very useful in teaching composition. As long as you impose some kind of strict limitation on note choices. Doubling a line with specific but alternating intervals is another idea.
If you want to write original music, I don't see why there should be any limits on scale/mode/triad! But if you want to sound like Pärt, you'll probably at least want to make sure that the three notes of the triad are all members of the scale you choose. I know he has used more exotic scales than what I mention in the video, though. I believe I may have heard something from the album "Arvo Pärt: Orient and Occident," but I don't recall the specifics. Please report back here if you find an example with a cool, unusual, underlying scale example (if I find anything, I will too)!
@@GalenDeGraf OK, thanks!
Great video. Great animations. What software are you using to create them?
Final Cut (animation), Dorico (notation), Cubase (audio), and Photoshop (thumbnail).
Thanks@@@GalenDeGraf
Hi, what is the song playing in the background of the video.. thanks
Background audio at the beginning is drawn from the musical example for solo organ later in the video 17:43
🙂
Very clear teaching and useful information! My one recommendation to 'level up' the quality of the video would be to spend a bit of time in a DAW learning how to breathe life into your MIDI instruments, so that the beauty of your music can reach more people than just those who understand the theory of why it works.
There's more for me to learn in DAWs, but here's where I also confess that this project was taking too long and I cut some corners mainly in the audio mockup process. As one example, I realized that having the tempo more consistent--while less natural--allowed me to streamline the animation process by copy/pasting or by setting a consistent scroll speed. I definitely prioritized animation over mockups for this theory video, but I appreciate the advice and will work on improving the DAW side of things in the future.
1:10 does anyone know the name of the song please?
Go to around 17:30 in the video that’s where I compose the music heard at 1:10.
@@GalenDeGraf can you release this piece yourself? I love it
@@individualism20 If it's just for personal use, I have scores to my youTube music over on the Patreon site. (But if you're looking to license it for recording or commercial use send me an email.)
@@individualism20 Okay, I put it up on Soundcloud too if you just want to listen... soundcloud.com/galen-degraf/organ-texture-tintinnabuli-style
@@GalenDeGraf thanks so
Much! I don’t think it’s too
simple imo , I think it’s great. Love your videos.
Hi, can I dm you?
Use my name at gmail to send me an email.
The results are beautiful but am I wrong in thinking it rather formulaic? I feel if only a tiny tiny bit cheated.
"Formulaic" can mean (literally) "following a formula," but also "predictable, boring." Since aspects of the "formula" for Pärt's music are custom written for each piece of music, it doesn't necessarily sound "predictable," since each piece will follow a slightly different formula. But also, isn't using a formula an essential aspect of most tonal idioms, such as cadences and common progressions? If anything, Pärt's music might seem refreshing in its ability to try out new tonal formulae at its core...
Hm. This is utterly engrossing. I can tell a lot has happened to Common Practice theory since I sat enraptured by Henry Onderdonk and Andrew Imbrie, hearing them dissect Bach and Mozart within the textual guidance of Rameau, Schenker and Walter Piston.
I must point out that Part's innovations, if that's how he refers to them, are not dramatically different in spirit from Boethian and Gregorian counterpoint, which form the bones of Purcell's triadic harmony, tonal home key and rounded melodic, narrative arc. The new terminology here addresses a new angle for seeing "sound through time," but the principles of proportion and symmetry, sequence & surprise, pause & happenstance, assertion & recapitulation, all cooperate just as before with sounds that strike our ear as "lyrical." These foundational impulses are vertical in the history of all arts, and also horizontal across them, as Raphael's plump-cheeked Madonnas and Titian's ravishing colors dazzle our eye, and prefigure the rounded, graceful arcs of melody in Bach and Handel, or alluvial and autumnal evocations in Brahms and Dvorak. The shape of beauty, sound of power and story of truth all rely on the same emotional fuels, visual codes and verbal physics because evolutionary psychology is a mix & match of dynamic, plastic responses, not rigid keys for specific locks to self-sealing cubbyholes. If that's how we learned or felt or tended toward, then mammals would never have gone off flying and birds wouldn't be swimming. Byron wouldn't have died as a rebel for revolutionary Greece and Borodin wouldn't have been a Nobel-worthy chemist.
I think Part explored complex emotions with new sounds but not with a different human heart or unfamiliar sound waves.
Interesting comment. What happens to this system if we move to microtonal scales, which is the basis of Indian or Turkish music? Does it still work?
@@KlavierKannNichtMehr Wow, that's a great question. Off-hand I'd say no, because Part is originating his fundamental esthetics of the lyrical with Western impulses. But actually, composers like Lou Harrison and John Cage started out as typical students of Rameau tonality but quickly shifted their ear to Indonesian gamelan sounds and Asian tonal families. So we'd have to ask a composer who's familiar with both tonal theory and non-Western theory systems. I personally love diatonic, modal and whole-tone scales, so microtonal scales are a challenge for me to warm up to. (But I love Fairuz, it turns out!)
which organ soundfont did you use?
Spitfire Symphonic Organ (for the early example with organ and voice), and Tallinn (for the solo organ piece).
Interesting system, but it doesnt tell you much about what youre actually writing. Definitely a nice tool in conjunction with other systems, but alone youll wnd up writing music you dont actually understand
I got 6 min in and gave up as the examples were presented visually rather than acoustically which made it all too abstract for me.
Then you’ve missed half a dozen audio examples (with animation), starting around 7ish minutes in.
Not good I need audio examples
What examples do you want to hear, or is some audio malfunctioning for you? Also, keep in mind this channel is unmonetized and paying licensing fees was not really in the budget.
you can play your origina; examples for free@@GalenDeGraf
@@bellottibellotti9185 I'm not sure what you mean. This video has half a dozen audio examples in it. It also links at the end to my Bach-Pärt homage in its entirety as a separate video.
okey I'll watch it again
lack of sound demomstration starting at 3 minutes a staff of notes appear on the screen they would stick in my head if i could hear those passge going up and down ect . i want to hear spiegel im spiegel .you see, i cant read music but i do have relative pitch so I need to hear it. I guess your upload is meant for people with a higher musical education
I don't wanna hate but...
No I actually I want to hate:
How is music just maths? Where is the meaning in this music of symetry? Even with bach you can always hear the "im honour of god" part. Music isn't valuated by music itself.
I‘m just here to explain how the method works. Up to you all to decide whether to love it or hate it!
@@GalenDeGraf yeah thanks for the great video anyways. It just feels really wrong for me to bring music down to maths. But idk
I‘m working on some music analysis for Bear McCreary‘s score to Rings of Power now. Judging from your username, maybe that‘s more your style? Not sure when I‘ll actually get around to animating it for a video, so just be verrry patient!
@@GalenDeGraf definetely. That sounds interesting👍
Just released part 1 of my Middle Earth music analysis videos if you‘re interested!
I love the asceticism but it seems a little too harsh sometimes, like the film "Babette's Feast" toward the beginning. Have an occasional (accidental) teaspoon of sugar or a (rhythm) bit of cheese with that stale bread. It won't hurt you I promise