FurAlina.com - Interpretations of the Music of arvo Pärt

Interpretations of Arvo Pärt's Music

With this project my aim was to interpret three of the best known Arvo Pärt pieces using electronic recording techniques. Where possible I have tried to accentuate the stylistic features of Pärt’s music including tintinnabuli and his use of drones.

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Fur Alina - Working on my piano interpretation of Fur Alina was one of the hardest parts of this project. The simple two line piece required many hours of recording as one mistruck note could ruin the extremely exposed piece.

The B bass note is very important for the piece. It is suggested in the score that the B is held by the pedal indefinitely until its release. I took this literally and extended the piano sound using a program called Peak. Fur Alina is a very ethereal piece that lends itself to audio manipulation. There is additional reverb, echo and compression on the sound of the piano arpeggios as well as flanger on the bass note.

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Fur Alina Electronic Version - This interpretation of Fur Alina is more experimental and abstract. The melody is much harder to hear, but still audible with careful listening.

I wanted the general aura of Fur Alina to remain, but for the piece to be much more ambient and provide more the idea of the piece rather than a carbon copy. Each note from Fur Alina is present, but they are embellished with arpegiated figures which colour the tune and the tintinnabuli accompaniment. The low drone changes subtely through filters and is occasionally lowered in pitch. White noise also sweeps through the piece.

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Spiegel Im Spiegel - This was an exercise for me in understanding the different piano lines as well as the different moods of each part of the piece. The piano line was recorded in 4 tracks, each given their own slightly different set of effects and panned differently so as to try to keep them as distinct as possible. Adding reverb and delay to the piano sounds created an unplanned but welcomed ringing bell-like sound in the upper register. The colour of the violin line frequently changes as well as being panned to different locations with each new phrase.

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Spiegel Im Spiegel - Electronic Version - In this interpretation, the principles spoken about above are taken to an extreme. Each piano line is given a different instrument, mainly bell sounds. The violin line is treated heavily with effects to make it sound as synthetic as possible.

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Fratres - Fratres lends itself perfectly to experimentation with instrumentation. Indeed there have been whole CDs released just with different versions of the piece. I wanted to take the idea of changing instrumentation further by having the instruments change with each new statement of the motive. Throughout the piece, the instrumentation remains the same during the moments where the exact familiar music is repeated. Like Part’s tintinnabuli pieces I wanted to create the sense of change whilst always remaining grounded.

For more music see AndrewHolgate.com