Creed and Variations: Tracing the Divergence of Christian Traditions in Select Piano Works of Arvo Pärt, Olivier Messiaen, and J. S. Bach

Within the classical music universe, the works of J. S. Bach, Olivier Messiaen, and Arvo Pärt stand apart as particularly evocative of the divine. Much has been written on these three men’s integration of faith with musical practice, exploring how their music is not only spiritual in nature but distinctly Christian. But in comparing the three, one encounters deeply rooted distinctions between their religious worldviews, a distinction not only found in their personal testimonies but actually heard in their music. Their compositional languages reflect three traditions: Protestantism (specifically Lutheranism), represented by Bach; Roman Catholicism, represented by Messiaen; and Eastern Orthodoxy, represented by Pärt. All three belong to Christendom broadly, but each answers its ultimate questions from a unique perspective. These differences, ancient in origin, still hold fast today. Against this backdrop, the music of Bach, Messiaen, and Pärt becomes appreciable for its truth as well as its beauty. The informed listener and performer gain access to all the music’s riches, awake to its assumptions and its invitations. That is the aim of this document.In an effort to represent each tradition and each composer as faithfully as possible, I will bring together primary sources (taken from church history and the composers’ own writings) with modern scholarship and original analysis of the musical scores. All the compositions discussed will be instrumental works, primarily works for keyboard; in each case, this will reveal how a musical language itself, not just the texts applied to that music, can reflect held beliefs. In Arvo Pärt’s tintinnabuli works from the 1970s, I will survey how these pieces reflect historically Orthodox values: humanity’s invitation, via the incarnation, to partake in the divine nature, and the discipline of silence in the face of holy mystery. In Pärt’s writing, these ideals generate an art that is deliberately austere, suspended in time, intimately uniting triad with monody. My discussion of Messiaen’s music will focus on its ‘exoteric’ elements as distinct from the more esoteric approach of Arvo Pärt. I will examine the Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus, Chronochromie, and Saint François d'Assise as examples of Messiaen’s ornate musical language, communicating mystery not by depriving the sensory and rational faculties but filling them such that they overflow. This approach reflects a historical difference between Eastern and Western Christianity, evinced in art: three-dimensional statuary, which engages the eye, and the two-dimensional world of Orthodox iconography, which draws the eye to look through the artwork rather than at it.Finally, I will consider the musical language of Bach as evocative of the historical Protestant emphasis on divine providence and justification by faith alone. I will primarily examine The Well-Tempered Clavier and The Art of Fugue, discussing how Bach braids together individual voices to create “incidental” verticalities — a relationship that parallels Luther’s view of how the free will of man is governed by the will of God. I will also draw out Bach’s use of the “cross motive” in The Well-Tempered Clavier—a four-note motive that also spells Bach’s name according to the German system of notation. These “passion fugues” tend to feature especially dense counterpoint, pungent dissonances, and lament symbolism, a musical confrontation with anguish that one will be hard-pressed to find in the music of either Pärt or Messiaen.Advisor: Paul Barnes