Some scholars would draw the parameters of the term "minimalism" along geographic and chronological boundaries that would exclude Arvo Pärt. After all, he was half a world away from the tape loops of Steve Reich and the meditative drones of La Monte Young when the term came into existence, and did not settle into his "mature" style until a few years later. On the other hand, if we take minimalism to mean a rich musical return on preliminary work preceding the act of composition, Pärt easily qualifies. A work such as Bogoróditse Djévo demonstrates how effectively Pärt can focus basic musical effects in such a way as to elicit powerful emotional response.

This focused expression has a prayer-like quality, and indeed, much of his music reflects the composer's own religious devotion. Bogoróditse Djévo, like many of his other works, takes as its text part of the Russian Orthodox liturgy. Its title translates as "O Mother of God," and its text is one of praise and adulation for Mary. The sonority of the work reflects the lush diatonicism inherent in Pärt's signature tintinnabuli technique, which combines melodic voices moving mostly by step (a practice which makes the occasional leap all the more dramatic), with so-called tintinnabuli voices, which move between tonic chord tones, lending a continuous tonic resonance.

Pärt has compared this technique to the dichotomy of the spirit and the flesh, or of the heavenly and the earthly. In Bogoróditse Djévo, this concept emerges in the texture as well. The piece begins with hushed liturgical incantation on a sustained chord, softly punctuated by the contour of the Church Slavonic text. Suddenly, this reverence is interrupted by reverie; the chordal stasis becomes harmonically active, and arching melodic lines jubilantly emerge from the rich chordal ensemble. The rest of the piece is characterized by the alternation of these two contrasting expressions of divine joy.

The result of a commission from the world-famous King's College Choir at Cambridge, the work was composed in 1992, and received its premiere in that year as part of the school's annual Christmas concert.

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