Arvo Part's Tabula Rasa

One of today's most widely acclaimed composers, Arvo Pärt 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 Pärt and of Europe itself, traced over the course of a quarter-century that saw momentous 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 recounts Pärt'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 th