Greater Antiphons

Arvo Pärt’s Greater Antiphons premiered on 28 May 2016 in Los Angeles at the Walt Disney Concert Hall as part of the Mozart & Pärt festival. It was performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and conductor Gustavo Dudamel, the commissioners and dedicatees of the work.

Greater Antiphons for string orchestra, is based on the 1988 piece Sieben Magnificat-Antiphonen for a cappella choir. As the title indicates, these are antiphons sung in the Roman Catholic liturgy during Evening Prayer on the seven days leading up to Christmas Eve (from 17 to 23 December): one antiphon with a magnificat (the Song of Mary) each day. In many languages these are also known as the Greater Antiphons or O-Antiphons, because each of them begins with a respectfu…

Arvo Pärt’s Greater Antiphons premiered on 28 May 2016 in Los Angeles at the Walt Disney Concert Hall as part of the Mozart & Pärt festival. It was performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and conductor Gustavo Dudamel, the commissioners and dedicatees of the work.

Greater Antiphons for string orchestra, is based on the 1988 piece Sieben Magnificat-Antiphonen for a cappella choir. As the title indicates, these are antiphons sung in the Roman Catholic liturgy during Evening Prayer on the seven days leading up to Christmas Eve (from 17 to 23 December): one antiphon with a magnificat (the Song of Mary) each day. In many languages these are also known as the Greater Antiphons or O-Antiphons, because each of them begins with a respectful appeal to Christ: “O Wisdom”, “O the Key of David”, “O Morning Star” etc. Arvo Pärt has assembled these prayers into one comprehensive concert piece based on the German text of the antiphons. The work is composed in rigorous tintinnabuli style and each part has its own complete form and individual character. Although we can not hear the text in the arrangement for orchestra, its music is still closely related to the images and the character of the text. 

In the original version, the choir covers its full vocal range in the first antiphon singing about the Wisdom that fills “the world from end to end”; the second antiphon with an archaic-sounding quint drone is about Moses and the laws of the Old Testament; the third antiphon, O Root of Jesse, is rushing upwards in dissonant ties; and the words of the sixth antiphon, O King of All People, assert themselves in all three layers of the texture and in three different paces. The work culminates in the pair of two opposing antiphons, the fourth and the fifth, which cover the symmetrical middle point of the cycle as well as the point of the golden ratio. In musical terms they differ from each other in texture, dynamic as well as harmony. O Key of David is a worship song for Christ the Almighty Ruler and the Conqueror of Death, sung in full-fledged fortissimo chords in A minor. O Morning Star, on the other hand, is a delicate and silent prayer to Christ as “the Splendour of Eternal Light”, where the music is accented by voices alternating between major and minor (soprano and tenor in E major, alto and bass in E minor), giving it a mysterious character. In the seventh antiphon, O Emmanuel, we can hear the musical material already familiar from the first antiphon, binding the entire cycle into a whole. 

The music of Sieben Magnificat-Antiphonen has yet another instrumental version: in 2008, Pärt arranged the piece for 8 violoncellos and gave it the title "O-Antiphonen". The version was commissioned by the cello octet Conjunto Ibérico, later renamed as Cello8ctet Amsterdam, to whom it is also dedicated.