The buzz about Part

Composers Datebook

Synopsis

From 1976 to 1984, Estonian composer Arvo Pärt kept revising and adjusting his chamber piece If Bach had Raised Bees.

On today’s date in 1983 one version of this piece — for harpsichord, electric bass guitar, tape and small chamber ensemble — received its premiere performance at a new music festival in Graz, Austria.

Pärt’s work opens like a minimalist piece, with repeated notes perhaps imitating the buzzing of the bees mentioned in the title. What he meant by If Bach had Raised Bees is open to various interpretations, but technically speaking, the piece is a slow transformation of an instrumental humming in the key of B-flat into a Bach-like cadence in the key of B-minor. Was the deeply religious-minded Estonian composer suggesting that bees somehow symbolized a harmonious community of God’s creatures? Or was the title, in English at least, a pun on the shifting key of “BEE-flat” to “BEE-minor?”

In any case, this piece was one of several Bach-inspired works, “Bach collages,” as Pärt called them, each he said “an attempt to replant a flower in alien surroundings … if they grow together into one, then the transplantation was the right move.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Arvo Pärt (b. 1935): If Bach had Raised Bees; Philharmonia Orchestra; Neeme Järvi, conductor; Chandos 9134