Pärt en Schubert

Thu 05.03.2009 — 20:15 hrs De Oosterpoort in Groningen

A chance to listen to two highlights from the sacred work of composers who experienced their faith in very different ways. Schubert’s masses are more like concert works than liturgically conceived. Melodious, sometimes with pseudo-Baroque fugal passages, subjectively emotional rather than subdued. He also takes liberties with the text of the Ordinary. In every case he omits from the Credo of his masses the belief in ‘the one Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church’. This applies no less to the Mass in E-flat major, the Great Mass, which dates from the year in which he dies, penniless, ill and exhausted.
Pärt, on the other hand, seems during the course of his life to gain in spirituality. In an emotional crisis he not only searches for the roots of Western music, but also immerses himself in religious matters and converts to the Russian Orthodox church. His sacred works reflect a profound and serene faith. As he himself writes: the text of the Te Deum contains ‘immutable truths’ which remind him of the ‘infinite clarity of a mountain panorama’. His musical style evolves at the same time. Once again in his own words: ‘I felt I had to raise this music carefully out of silence and emptiness.’

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