Solfeggio

for SATB choir


"Arvo Pärt’s Solfeggio (1963) is his first a cappella choir piece. Exremely laconic musical structure is based on a simple scale of C major. Voice groups of mixed choir enter in different octaves successively with notes from the tone row, forming vertical sound clusters. The text consists only of syllable names of the notes: do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si.

The conductor and Pärt scholar Paul Hillier has pointed out that occasionally some triads occur among the clusters, “as if the composer got caught up in a secret garden, but is not yet ready to understand its beauty, which is perfect unto itself.”

This poetic miniature for choir holds a special place among Pärt’s early works as well as in his whole ouvre. On one hand, it suits well with the avant-garde spirit of Pärt’s works in the 1960s reflecting the impact of so-called sonoristic music which was especially popular amongst Polish composers. It was namely in September 1963 when Pärt visited the famous Warsaw Autumn festival of contemporary music in Poland for the first time. On the other hand, the aesthetic sound world and extremely reduced musical structure of Solfeggio bring it closer to the mostly diatonic tintinnabuli style. Musical logic that is based on strict rules or predetermined algorithms is characteristic to Pärt’s works from both of his creative periods.  

Solfeggio is dedicated to the conductor Eri Klas and premiered by the Estonian Radio Choir, conducted by Eri Klas in 1964. Later, the composer arranged Solfeggio for string quartet (2008), saxophone quartet (2008) and eight or four cellos (2010)." (Arvo Pärt Centre 2024)

 

 

The composition Solfeggio, to me was a certain revelation of simplicity and pure beauty. Written in 1963, for mixed choir(SATB), in it's foundation is only a asceding C major scale but a hocketed1, displaced and overlapping ascending C major scale. Even though as simple as it sounds, there many inspirational details in the piece, as in all of his works. Pärt’s music could be characterised as being on the one hand very simple and the other, having very subtle twists that makes it expressive and detailed. 

 

 

The choir actually sings the solfeggi letter, Do, Re, Mi etc, almost like a meditative etude. The melody is distributed among 4 voices.it is octave displaced, if it were to be played in one octave, it would be too predictable.  But by simply displacing the octaves, he gets these wonderful clusters that are fading in and fading out. Soft clusters from intervallic landscapes happen on top of each other, constantly creating harmonies without functions. The end result is a profound beauty from one of the most simple idea, a scale that almost every musician learns on their first lesson. Normally used as a mere warm up or included in a practice routine, only one scale, if thought well can produce a beautiful outcome. Although very simple, one could get various compositional ideas. You could use any scale, in ascending or descending forms, triads, arpeggios, distribute them differently for different orchestrations. If you take a look at the structure, you could see that it does not always start around the same voice and the patterns are well thought and structured. Throughout the entire piece, each voice gets to start the pattern. There is also a dynamic structure to the piece with creates another layer of depth. The constant crescendo creates tension and expectations but due to the never ending harmonic vagueness, it only resolves by decrescendo.

Arvo Pärt has built his work on the melody of the antiphon (which can be heard in the alto part) and added three polyphonic voices composed using the tintinnabuli technique. This one of the exceptions in Pärt's catalogue because he does not often composes on Gregorian Chants. However in this piece, Pärt has composed this piece the spirit of Renaissance music with a modern twist, using the traditional cantus firmus method and structuring the form with cadenzas typical of Renaissance music. With his overlapping structures he manages to create another layer.

According to the sources, another association with the performance practices of early music is the fact that Pärt simply composed Da pacem Domine as four-part music and did not designate the exact set of performers. A common practice for Pärt, this allows to alter the output with different orchestrations. This was the inspiration behind my compositions MAI, where I have taken similar structures and arranged it for different settings. It will be presented after this section. The unfixed set of timbres is also characteristic of several of his other works (Pari intervallo, Fratres etc.) and was especially relevant in his early tintinnabuli works of the 1970s.

So far, there are nine different versions of the music for Da pacem Domine for various instrumental settings: for cellos, saxophones, recorders, voices and orchestra among others. (Arvo Pärt Centre 2025)

A very similarly structured peace, De Pacem Domine, is also based on the floating and meditative construction of Solfeggio. One main difference is that, it is not based on an ascending scale but it is more based on a floating tonal harmonic movements. 

De Pacem Domine (2004)

for mixed choir (SATB) and string orchestra

The opening measure of De Pacem Domine. Even with few bars, it clear that Pärt was following a similar construction to Solfeggio. (Pärt 2004)

The Alto part having the main M-voice, Soprano section is singing an open position, superior T voice.

The Tenors seem to be altering between different positions of inferior T-voices to Alto part, to create intuitive harmonies.

The Bass section sings parallel notes to Alto section using D Harmonic Minor in 10ths.

 

These roles stay consistent, working like a perfectly designed mechanism. And displacing the rhythm to different parts creates these lingering harmonies that just shift towards each other.

Opening page of Solfeggio. (Pärt 1963)

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MAI