Arvo Pärt: Tractus

Words preached by Saint John Henry Newman supply the essence of Arvo Pärt’s Littlemore Tractus and stand more broadly for the consoling spirit of this deeply moving album. The Estonian composer’s Newman setting, recorded here in a new arrangement by Tõnu Kaljuste for chamber choir and strings, gives voice to a prayer for peace at the close of day or the end of life. Its gentle sentiments resonate in the sublime stillness of Sequentia and again in the mantra-like pizzicato strings of These Words…. Pärt’s music, free from artifice and ego, magnifies the power of the story of Abbot Agathon, whose compassion, tested by an angel disguised as a leper, proves boundless, and of Vater unser (Our Father), a radiant incantation of the prayer which Jesus taught to the world.