Justin Appel

Dear Friends,

This week, I have been rehearsing our choir for a weeklong residency at an English cathedral. Among many other pieces, we have worked a great deal on movements from Arvo Pärt’s Berliner Messe: the Gloria, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei.

One of the interesting parts of singing this mass is the rigor of the compositional technique, called tintinnabuli, in which one voice sings a stepwise melody and another sings chord tones — one of three notes.

In the Gloria, for instance, the youths sing chord tones strictly (G, B-flat, and D). It’s quite an interesting proposition to sing the whole text of the ‘Gloria in excelsis Deo’ to three notes. There’s a rigor and high level of structure in this part, which in Pärt’s conception, stands for a kind of objective, Divine perspective. Just next to it, the altos sing a stepwise melody that weaves its way between the structured soprano part. This plodding melodic motion relates by contrast to a subjective, human, sinful experience.

However, the whole musical material comes alive when both sound together. No longer do we perceive distinct strands languishing or being held together artificially, but rather we sense a unified, smooth-yet-varied surface combining unity of intent with a varied individualism.

Nor is this an arcane musical technique: it’s something anyone can sense by listening. We hear both of these perspectives woven together in a kind of sonic ‘redemption’: both the divine presence healing human waywardness, and the human being rising to truly divine possibilities through divine love.

That music can describe all of this is just astounding.

Yours in Christ,
Justin