La Sindone was composed on commission by the SettembreMusica festival in Turin for the cultural programme of the Turin 2006 Winter Olympics, Le Olimpiadi della Cultura. The piece is dedicated to the artistic director of the festival, musicologist Enzo Restagno, who published a book about Arvo Pärt in 2004, which has been translated from Italian into several languages.
La Sindone (Italian for “shroud”) refers to the Turin Shroud stored in the Turin Cathedral. In some inexplicable way, the image of the face and body of a crucified man have appeared imprinted upon the cloth. It is believed that the body of Christ was wrapped in this shroud. The Turin Shroud is one of the most important, but also one of the most mystical Christian relics; many circumstan…
La Sindone was composed on commission by the SettembreMusica festival in Turin for the cultural programme of the Turin 2006 Winter Olympics, Le Olimpiadi della Cultura. The piece is dedicated to the artistic director of the festival, musicologist Enzo Restagno, who published a book about Arvo Pärt in 2004, which has been translated from Italian into several languages.
La Sindone (Italian for “shroud”) refers to the Turin Shroud stored in the Turin Cathedral. In some inexplicable way, the image of the face and body of a crucified man have appeared imprinted upon the cloth. It is believed that the body of Christ was wrapped in this shroud. The Turin Shroud is one of the most important, but also one of the most mystical Christian relics; many circumstances around it still lack a scientific explanation.
This orchestral composition is in one movement and is a musical reflection and journey in the footprints of this religious mystery. The three sections of the work could be conditionally linked to the death of Christ: crucifixion, entombment and resurrection. In music these are reflected with dramatic fortissimo chords, then the quiet descending sequences on the compositional principle of prolation canon, marked by the performance instructions fragile and dolce (fragilely and sweetly). The movement to the last section is marked by an energetically expanding ascent from lower string instruments to higher strings. Austrian musicologist Leopold Brauneiss has interpreted the music of the last section in the programme booklet of the premiere as follows:
“Here the music seems to heave a sigh of relief as the veils of the second section fall away and the music becomes suffused with a brilliant light. We return to the complex sound world of the beginning marked by the interval of the tritone and the music moves towards a threshold which is no longer that of the abyss but its peak. It does not dissolve but converges towards a unison E, wrapping itself around this note which right from the start has appeared in various ways as a starting point for flight. The tonal gravitational force of this note is such that it pulls together all the disparate elements of the whole piece. The music could end here with this triumphal event, but Pärt adds a concluding, sweet-sounding chord of E minor. For us normal human beings, it is not possible to see everything with clarity: the mysteries remain shrouded, as does the Holy Shroud and the resurrection.”
La Sindone premiered at the Turin Cathedral in February 2006, with Olari Elts conducting the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra. A new version of the composition, where Pärt principally revised the music in the middle section, premiered in July 2015 at Pärnu Music Festival, performed by the festival orchestra conducted by Paavo Järvi.
