Talk:Tintinnabuli

Rewrite

I rewrote this article, including the basic musical foundation of the style, and the fact that Pärt invented the style and pioneered it with Spiegel im Spiegel and Für Alina. Copyedited and trimmed parts that didn't seem to contain useful information. Comments welcome of course. Best wishes. --MarkBuckles 05:06, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Paul Hillier's book on Pärt has a ton of information on the workings of the style and several thorough analyses of compositions. If you have access to it you could summarize some of it here. Rigadoun 00:46, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I've heard this is a great book. Don't have it myself - anyone who does it welcome to add more. -- MarkBuckles 03:45, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Tintinnabulation

Why does [title] redirect here? They are two very diffrent things.

7h3 0N3 7h3 \/4Nl)4L5 Pl-l34R ( _t / _c) 22:58, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Tintinnabuli

It is misleading to present "titinnabuli" as the plural of the singular "titinnabulum". The declension of "titinnabulum" is set out in the Wiktionary article "Titinnabulum". "Titinnabuli" is the genitive singular. The plural (nominative, vocative and accusative) is "tintinnabula".

85.2.95.48 (talk) 08:06, 11 November 2010 (UTC) Gérald Mouquin, Lausanne, CH (gerald.mouquin@bluewin.ch)

Description of style obviously incorrect

The first paragraph contains the following sentence describing the style:

Musically, Pärt's tintinnabular music is characterized by two types of voices, the first of which (dubbed the "tintinnabular voice") arpeggiates the tonic triad, and the second of which moves diatonically in stepwise motion.[1]

Based on the recording at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ6Mzvh3XCc it is obvious that the description is false in that it asserts that the first voice arpeggiates the tonic triad. Although the recording begins with 6 arpeggiations of the tonic F major triad (C F A), the seventh arpeggio consists of the notes Bb F G. There are numerous other instances throughout the recording in which the chord being arpeggiated is not the tonic triad F.

I would change the article except that I don't have a reliable source that describes the style correctly, and the source cited in footnote 1 seems to express the mistake I've identified. On the bottom of page 92 in http://www.amazon.com/Arvo-Pärt-Oxford-Studies-Composers/dp/0198166168/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1404417097&sr=8-1&keywords=Oxford+Studies+of+Composers%3A+Arvo+Part I found the following:

The basis of tintinnabuli style is a two-part texture...consisting of a 'melodic' voice moving mostly by step from or towards a central pitch (often, but not always, the tonic) and a 'tintinnabuli' voice sounding the notes of the tonic triad.

I don't think my identification of this mistake consists of original research except in the sense in which the term is used at Wikipedia, since surely anyone who has read the score for Spiegel Im Spiegel or who has heard Spiegel Im Spiegel and can identify chords knows that the chord being arpeggiated changes. Can anyone provide a reliable source with a correct description?

I have written to Paul Hillier, the author whose work is cited in footnote 1, raising the issue I identified above.

The page cited in footnote 2 contains the following:

This triad is, in most cases, the tonal center of the piece from which Pärt rarely departs.

I take exception with the "rarely", but at least this source allows for the triad to change.

There is a link to the first page of the score on this page: http://www.sheetmusicplus.com/title/spiegel-im-spiegel-sheet-music/5524895

John Link (talk) 20:18, 3 July 2014 (UTC)