IAPL2012-CB-0531-052.. - The International Association for ...

ENERGY, TIMBRE, AND VECTORIAL COMPOSITION IN THE
WORK OF ERKKI-SVEN TÜÜR
AN ESSAY BY KERRI KOTTA
It is a striking fact that works by contemporary Estonian composer Erkki-Sven Tüür are
often performed in regular symphony concerts together with works by Western classical
composers and are not confined to specialized events such as “new music festivals..”
In part, this fact surely testifies to the popularity of Tüür’s music. However, unlike the
idiom of Arvo Pärt, another famous Estonian composer, Tüür’s musical language cannot
be characterized as particularly “listener-friendly,” nor can his persona be associated
with a clearly defined ideological or religious agenda, which might allow a broader
audience to relate to his music more easily.
Despite its sophisticated modern form, Tüür’s style in general remains quite easily
accessible. Arguably, one aspect that makes this paradox possible is the composer’s
original treatment of music as an experience of a kind of energy. Tüür began his
musical career as leader of the progressive rock-group “In Spe.” While this fact should
not be weighed unduly in considering his later development in the classical idiom,
it nevertheless suggests why Tüür pays so much attention to the “energy” output of
his compositional structures. Tüür’s musical structures are often complex, but their
musical effect—their energy—can be grasped and enjoyed without any specialized
musical education. As in rock music, the composer manipulates musical energy in order
to build up the musical dramaturgy and communicate with his audience.
The composer’s devotion to producing events of musical energy is also evident in his
stylistic experiments of the 1990s, the decade that established Tüür as a composer of
serious art music. His work of that decade shows, amid a larger search for a meta-style,
a treatment of tonality and atonality as abstract models rather than as historical or
stylistic phenomena. One might say that he uses tonality and atonality as “carriers”
of certain type of musical energy. This conception of music in terms of the energy it
might produce also explains why Tüür carefully avoids using direct stylistic quotations
in works that could otherwise be characterized as polystylistic. Much more than style,
it is the idea of a transformation of musical energy that captivates this composer. He
exploits in particular constant fluctuation between tonality and atonality to generate
an impression of powerful energy clashes.
Tüür has decisively refrained from identifying his music with the (eclectic and
historically-oriented) Neo-Romantic movement, but much of his work lies in productive
dialogue with the major formal archetypes of classical music. Two archetypal narrative
trajectories are easily traced in his work: the sonata form and the sonata cycle.
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