Fratres

Something buried deep within humanity’s collective wisdom penetrates the surface in Fratres, breaking through like a recollection of profound inner peace or the startling recognition of our insignificance. Arvo Pärt’s score, written in 1977, was originally conceived as a set of variations without fixed instrumentation, although it is most often heard in its version for violin and piano. The composition transcends the conventions of ego-fuelled virtuosity to enter the world of the spirit, from which its music arises imperceptibly from silence to spiral like incense in a vast sacred space. Fratres, the Latin word for “brothers”, belongs to a remarkable series of pieces, “Für Alina” and “Tabula Rasa” among them, created in Pärt’s pioneering tintinnabuli style, named after the Latin for “little bells”. These meditative works grew fully formed out of his long contemplation of Gregorian chant, medieval and Renaissance polyphony and the eternal rituals of Orthodox Christianity (to which he had converted in the early 1970s from the nominal Lutheranism of his childhood). Pärt’s layering of tintinnabuli harmonies works discreetly in Fratres to disrupt the music’s consonant minor-key chords with passing dissonances and build a soundscape that feels both ancient and modern. The piece shifts, above all, between states of extreme agitation and concentrated stillness, a metaphor for the soul’s struggle to overcome futile desire and the empty pursuit of pleasure. Violinist Gidon Kremer’s recording of the piece, made with Keith Jarrett and released on the ECM label in 1984, helped seal cult status for the otherworldly Pärt.