{"id":118958,"date":"2021-11-08T13:26:53","date_gmt":"2021-11-08T13:26:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newcriterion.com\/2021\/11\/08\/in-memoriam\/"},"modified":"2023-10-03T13:56:24","modified_gmt":"2023-10-03T17:56:24","slug":"in-memoriam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newcriterion.com\/2021\/11\/in-memoriam\/","title":{"rendered":"In memoriam"},"content":{"rendered":"
St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church moved into its present location by the Hudson River in Lower Manhattan in 1919, renovating and occupying a small tavern built on the spot in 1832. For decades, it welcomed Greek immigrants and worshippers to its humble sanctuary. By the 1970s, the thirty-five-foot-tall structure had been dwarfed by the skyscrapers of the burgeoning Financial District, particularly the World Trade Center\u2019s Twin Towers which soared over 1,400 feet above from just across the street. On the morning of September 11, 2001, when the South Tower collapsed, it leveled the church, which was the only building outside the main World Trade Center complex to be destroyed in the attacks on New York of that day. Mingled among the debris and destruction were the ashes of lost relics of Sts. Nicholas, Catherine, and Sava, donated by Czar Nicholas II<\/small>.<\/p>\n
Those ashes were on the Estonian composer Arvo Pa\u0308rt\u2019s mind when he composed \u201cO Holy Father Nicholas,\u201d a piece written for the opening of the new St. Nicholas Church and National Shrine at Ground Zero. In a curious juxtaposition, the piece received its world premiere in the atrium of the first-century B.C.<\/small> Egyptian Temple of Dendur at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. On the Monday night I was in attendance, a contingent of Orthodox bishops and priests sat in front of center stage, the grand doorway of Osiris\u2019s temple rising from just a few feet behind.<\/p>\n
As part of a concert billed as \u201cCelebrating Arvo Pa\u0308rt at The Met,\u201d preceding and following the premiere was a selection of many of Pa\u0308rt\u2019s most famous pieces from his nearly seventy-year career. Experiential Orchestra collaborated on these works with a newly formed choir, Artefact Ensemble, with conducting duties passed back and forth between EXO<\/span>\u2019s James Blachly and Artefact Ensemble\u2019s Benedict Sheehan.<\/p>\n The performance began with \u201cFratres\u201d (1977), perhaps Pa\u0308rt\u2019s best-known work and an exemplar of his tintinnabuli<\/i> (\u201clittle bells\u201d) style. Pa\u0308rt\u2019s tintinnabuli<\/i> pieces are poised, elegant conversations between deceptively simple diatonic melodies and a strict choice of notes from a harmonic triad. While the melody is allowed to wander more freely, the harmonic grounding serves as the melody\u2019s \u201cguardian angel,\u201d as Pa\u0308rt puts it.<\/p>\n \u201cFratres,\u201d though not written with any specific arrangement of instruments in mind, is usually taken up by a violinist and pianist or violinist and string orchestra; the latter arrangement was used here. Nine melodic segments are separated by ten so-called \u201crefuges\u201d of brief percussion and silence.<\/p>\n \u201cFratres\u201d presents a particular challenge for the stamina of the violinist (in this case the concertmaster, Michelle Ross), whose arsenal must include a gymnastic array of harmonics, arpeggi, bounced bowing, col legno<\/i> (the stick of the bow bounced across the strings), and simultaneous bowing and pizzicato. Ross handled the harmonic passages well; in \u201cFratres,\u201d this is particularly nerve-wracking for the performer, on whom the spotlight is directly cast while she navigates the ephemeral and often dissonant overtones produced by harmonic playing.<\/p>\n Advanced musical theorists can explain how \u201cFratres\u201d and Pa\u0308rt\u2019s other tintinnabuli<\/i> compositions have a highly mathematical, even algorithmical basis. Though \u201cFratres\u201d has no specific religious connotation, many of Pa\u0308rt\u2019s other works are overtly religious, in rebellion against the state-enforced atheism that Pa\u0308rt endured during his childhood and early career in Soviet Estonia.<\/p>\n