Arvo Prt's Tabula Rasa (Paperback)

Paperback. One of today's most widely acclaimed composers, Arvo Paert broke into the soundscape of the Cold War West with Tabula Rasa in 1977, a work that introduced his signature tintinnabuli style to listeners throughout the world. In the first book dedicated to this pathbreaking composition, author Kevin C. Karnes tells the story of Tabula Rasa as one of Paert and of Europe itself, traced over the course of a quarter-century that sawmomentous transitions in European culture and politics, history and memory. Beginning at the site of the work's creation in the Estonian SSR, and drawing extensively upon a range of previously unexamined archival materials, Karnes recountsPaert's discovery of tintinnabuli amidst his experiments with the music of the Western and Soviet avant-gardes. He examines Tabula Rasa in relation to modernist conceptions of musical structure, the ascetic practice of Orthodox Christianity, postwar experiences of electronic music, and the polystylistic approaches to composition that have become emblematic of the Soviet 1970s. Tracing the export of Tabula Rasa to the West and Paert's emigration in 1980, thebook reveals intersections of critical commentary with visions of the "end of history" that attended the collapse of European communism to suggest that it was in this confluence of listening, discovery, and geopolitical reordering thatenduring lines of conversation about Paert and his music took shape. The first book dedicated to the breakthrough work by one of the most acclaimed composers today, Arvo Paert's Tabula Rasa tells the story of its composition and premiere against the backdrop of late Soviet culture and the end of the Cold War. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…