Estonian vocal ensemble Vox Clamantis and their leader Jaan-Eik Tulve have established themselves among the leading interpreters of Arvo Pärt’s music over a quarter-century of close collaboration with the composer – a relationship that builds on the almost half a century long artistic partnership between Pärt and producer Manfred Eicher. Of their ECM recording The Deer’s Cry, the BBC Music Magazine wrote that “the level of artistry necessary to achieve the kind of living, breathing performance given here by Vox Clamantis is a rarity ... This grippingly authentic and superbly sung collection may now be the finest single-disc introduction to Pärt’s music.” And I heard a voice, recorded in Haapsalu Cathedral, Estonia, and released as Arvo Pärt turns 90, shows that the rapport between choir and composer, rooted in a shared feeling for both ancient plainchant and contemporary music, continues to deepen.
The new album, focusing primarily on recent compositions by Pärt, also reaches back to embrace the Sieben Magnificat-Antiphonen, written in 1988, and based upon the scriptural verses intoned in the Roman Catholic liturgy during evening prayers in the week before Christmas. In the liner notes, Kristina Kõrver indicates how Pärt allows the character of each text to influence his settings of it. Thus, reference to the Laws of Moses in O Adonai are expressed in a “more archaic sound and ascetic expression”, while Jesse (O Sproß aus Isais Wurzel) incorporates dissonance “like a little flower pushing its way through the pavement”, as Pärt once said.
On Für Jan van Eyck (composed in 2019), Vox Clamantis are joined by organist Ene Salumäe in this dedication to the great Flemish painter. Inspired by the altarpiece Adoration of a Mystic Lamb in St Bavo’s Cathedral Ghent, the composition is based upon the Agnus Dei section of Pärt’s Berliner Messe (refer to the New Series album Te Deum).
O Holy Father Nicholas (2021) was written for the opening of the new St Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church and National Shrine at Ground Zero in New York. The original church was destroyed in the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001. Pärt’s choral work is based on the English text of a prayer from the Orthodox liturgy, a text he had previously set in its Russian version on the Alleluia-Tropus, and which was sung by Vox Clamantis on Adam’s Lament and The Deer’s Cry.
Title piece And I heard a voice (2017) is, to date, the only work of Pärt’s set to sacred text in his mother tongue, with words based on a passage from upon the 1938 Estonian translation of the Book of Revelation, where the phrase “they rest from their labours” is expressed as “they breathe from their labours [nad hingavad oma vaevadest]”. As the booklet essay notes, “the incessant repetition of these words becomes the most important image of the work, the symbol of eternal life.”
The Kleine Litanei (2015) pays homage to the Irish Benedictine monk, theologian, and philosopher St Virgil (c. 700-784). Nunc dimittis (2001) sets text from the Gospel of St Luke; here Pärt makes freer use of his tintinnabuli technique, emphasising the meaning of the words through the deployment of variated texture, and underlining the word lumen (light).
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Vox Clamantis, comprised of singers with a passion for plainchant, early polyphony and contemporary composition, was founded by conductor Jaan-Eik Tulve in 1996. Arvo Pärt, Helena Tulve and Erkki-Sven Tüür are among the composers who have written works for them.
The ensemble’s ECM discography includes Arvo Pärt’s The Deer’s Cry. Vox Clamantis also appears – alongside the Latvian Radio Choir and the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir – on Pärt’s Adam’s Lament, which won a Grammy Award in 2014.
Other recordings include Cyrillus Kreek: The Suspended Harp of Babel, and Filia Sion (Gregorian chant to works by Perotin, Hildegard von Bingen and Petrus Wilhelmi de Grudencz), Erkki-Sven Tüür’s Oxymoron, Arboles Iloran por lluvia with works by Helena Tulve, and an album with music by Henrik Ødegaard.
And I heard a voice was recorded in 2021 and 2022 in Haapsalu Cathedral and produced by Manfred Eicher.
A special release concert with Vox Clamantis takes place on September 11 at the Church of St John the Baptist in Kärdla, on the island of Hiiumaa, Estonia. Further details of the many musical events around Pärt’s 90th birthday can be found at the web site of the Arvo Pärt Centre:
