Technically, tintinnabular (from the Latin tinnabulae, of bells) music is characterized by the simultaneous expression of two harmonic voices, the first, called the "tintinnabular voice," arpeggiates the tonic triad (three notes making up a chord, the tonic, the third, and the fifth notes) with the second moving diatonically in stepwise motion. Pärt's tintinnabular compositions develop slowly with a meditative tempo, characterizing a minimalist approach in both notation and performance.

Pärt's Naxos box contains all of the compositions recorded for the label to date. These includes the composer's set of Fratres, a compositional form used by Pärt as a vehicle for different instrumentations. The Fratres structurally consists of nine chord sequences, separated by a recurring percussion motif. These chord sequences follow a clear, thoughtful archetype. This method of composition is unique in that while the progressive chords fill a richly painted harmonic space, as a series they appear to have been generated by simple mathematical calculation.

Simply, this is not melodious music but harmonious music. Pärt relies on the relationship of note between one another in a vertical harmonic sense rather than the sum of notes in sequence in the melodic sense. This makes for an ethereal instrumental sound best heard in the Fratres for Strings and Percussion and Fratres for Strings.

Pärt's choral music is something else altogether. It may be richly plush as in Berliner Messe and Triodione or starkly bare as in Passio. "I am the True Vine" finds a compromise between the two visions that unites in this beautiful expression of hope and being.

Selections: Fratres (8553750); Tabula Rasa / Symphony No. 3 / Collage (8554591); Passio Domini Nostri Jeus Christi Secundum Joannem (8555860); Berliner Messe / Magnificat / Summa (8557299); Triodione / Ode VII / I Am The True Vine / Dopo La Vittoria (8570239).

Philip Glass
Of Beauty and Light: The Music of Philip Glass
Adele Anthony; Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Marin Alsop; Ulster Orchestra, Takuo Yuasa
Naxos
2008

Composer Philip Glass (b. 1937) was born in Baltimore and studied at the Peabody Conservatory of Music, the University of Chicago and finally, the Juilliard School of Music and Paris with composition teacher Nadia Boulanger with whom he analyzed scores by Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven. Glass was drawn to the music of John Cage and Morton Feldman and worked closely with Ravi Shankar in his pre-Woodstock / Concert for Bangladesh days.

Glass developed a distinctive composing style arising from his work with Shankar where Glass solidified his perception of rhythm and tempo in Indian music as being summary. When Glass returned home from France he began writing pieces based on repetitive structures and a sense of time influenced by Samuel Beckett, whose work he encountered when he was composing pieces for the experimental theater, the first being for a production of Beckett's Comédie (Play, 1963) in 1965 for two soprano saxophones; another was a string quartet (No.1, 1966).