Für Alina

Instrumentation

Musical Terms (4)

• calm, uplifted manner English
  Pärt's own performance direction printed in the score of Für Alina: 'in calm, uplifted manner, listening to one's inner self'. It encapsulates the meditative quality required for all tintinnabuli piano music.
  Take this direction literally. Begin by listening to the room's silence before playing the first note. Allow each phrase to end completely before starting the next. The performer's interior state shapes the music directly.
• melodic voice Latin
  In Pärt's tintinnabuli style, the M-voice is the stepwise melodic line that moves through the notes of a given scale, often expanding and contracting symmetrically around a central pitch.
  Follow the melodic line with a singing, connected tone. Each stepwise ascent or descent should feel inevitable, as if the melody is growing organically from silence.
• tintinnabuli Latin
  Pärt's self-invented compositional technique first used in 1976, named after the Latin word for 'little bells'. Each passage consists of two voices: a melodic (M-voice) moving stepwise and a tintinnabuli (T-voice) restricted to the notes of a tonic triad. The two voices move together as an inseparable whole.
  Allow the long sustained resonances of the piano to ring fully. Avoid rushing — the silence between notes is as important as the notes themselves. The pedal is essential to let overtones accumulate.
• tintinnabuli voice Latin
  In Pärt's tintinnabuli style, the T-voice is the accompanying voice restricted exclusively to the notes of the tonic triad. It shadows the M-voice by always sounding the nearest triad tone below (or above, depending on the work).
  The T-voice should never dominate. Balance it slightly softer than the M-voice so the tonal pillar is felt rather than heard. Its bell-like resonance should seem to emerge from the instrument's overtones.