The piece is a meditation on death. Pärt's biographer, Paul Hillier, suggests that "how we live depends on our relationship with death: how we make music depends on our relationship to silence."(Hillier 1997) 

 

It is significant that the piece begins and ends with silence—that the silence is written in the score. This silence creates a frame around the piece and has spiritual significance. It suggests that we come from silence, and return to silence; it reminds us that before we were born and after we die we are silent with respect to this world. This idea and frequent emphasis on Silence is also connected to the chapter II Silence | Space, of this thesis.

 

 

 
Cantus was premiered by the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Eri Klas on 7 April 1977 in Tallinn, but there were already plans to perform it with the BBC Symphony Orchestra at London’s Southbank Centre in 1978, under the conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky. However, because the Soviet authorities refused to allow the composer to travel to England, Rozhdestvesnky cancelled the performance in protest, which in turn, caused a scandal in the international media. A year later Pärt was finally granted a travel permit and Cantus was performed by the same orchestra at the BBC Proms festival. 
 
Today, Cantus has become one of Pärt’s most popular works. (Arvo Pärt Centre 2025)
 

Speaking on his reaction to Britten's death, Pärt admitted,

 

Why did the date of Benjamin Britten's death – 4 December 1976 – touch such a chord in me? During this time I was obviously at the point where I could recognise the magnitude of such a loss. Inexplicable feelings of guilt, more than that even, arose in me. I had just discovered Britten for myself. Just before his death I began to appreciate the unusual purity of his music – I had had the impression of the same kind of purity in the ballads of Guillaume de Machaut. And besides, for a long time I had wanted to meet Britten personally – and now it would not come to that. (Kremer 1988)

Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten

Pärt was finishing an elegiac orchestra piece at the time, which he decided to dedicate to the memory of his deceased colleague, out of respect and admiration for his work.

overview of the ratio of speed between the sections in Cantus.

Cantus has five layers of tempo, which enter in turn and each of them enters an octave lower and twice as slow. What has been played by the violins end up being played by the double basses in one sixteenth of the tempo.

Analysis

 

This piece is one of the most clear structured usage of his technique Tintinnabuli in Pärt's works. In a simplified manner the melody is a descending A minor scale, constantly adding one extra note to the rhythmical phrase and starting over and over again. Cantus begins with three bell tolls out of the silence, followed by violins, in high register, playing in the descending A minor scale. The first violins are divide into M-voice and a 1st position infererior T-voice. Each subsequent string group enters an octave lower, beginning their descending scale at half the speed (presented above the chart), in what is known as the prolation canon.1 With this, five layers of melody in different registers and tempos are created, accompanied by their own tintinnabuli voices. The slowly descending scales create an effect of endless slow-motion falling, and of peace and sadness. By the end of the composition, everything converges on the same point:  one by one, the voices arrive at the low A minor chord. The entire composition resembles a single large-scale cadenza, with a tension that seems to want to avoid any final resolution.

 

- Violin I div. first section has the main M-voice melody while second section accompanies with inferior 1st position T-voice in A minor.

- Violin II div. copies the Violin I 8vb, half speed. The section is also divided as M-voice and inferior first position T-voice. Starting when a 3/4 phrase of VL I finishes.

- Viola section is the only section which is not divisi, following the melody 2 octaves lower in 1/4th speed. It starts

- Celli div. is playing the melody with and inferior 1st position T-voice 3 octaves lower than the main M-voice, playing 1/8th speed.

- Violin I stops when M-voice reaches C4, and stay there until the end of the piece.

- Violin II does the exact same thing but they reach to A3 and stay there until the end of the piece.

The bell sound are quite regular throughout, in groups of three strokes followed by a rest. Just before the first violins reach there final long C', the piece reaches its dynamic peak. 

The sketch of the imagined sound of Cantus, by Arvo Pärt. 

from the cover of(Shenton 2012)

Beginning of the string entries, M-voices only. 2

→

Fratres