Collage über B-A-C-H

The work Collage on the Theme B‑A‑C‑H was created in the postmodernist, polystylistic tradition. In it, Arvo Pärt establishes a dialogue between the contemporary and the Baroque: he employs a ten‑tone series as a matrix, but situates it within Baroque characteristics - instrumentation and textural organization drawn from the Concerto Grosso, Bach‑style thematicism, Baroque cyclicality and genres (Toccata, Sarabande, Ricercar), rhetorical formulas such as passus durusculus, and Baroque methods of transforming musical material. Not only in this work, but throughout the composer’s oeuvre, his style is conceived as a message of dialogue between present and past, modernity and tradition. In Sarabande, Pärt quotes almost in full from Bach’s Sixth English Suite, interrupting the texture in two places to engage in dialogue with contemporary stylistics. The Toccata interprets the B‑A‑C‑H motif as a structural rather than a thematic principle. The tone B‑flat (B) introduces the exposition; A serves as the central pitch between the first two sections; at the end of the second section, C becomes prominent; and finally, B (H) concludes the entire work. In the last part, Ricercar, the theme‑series is quoted in all voices.