“Comrades in Misfortune”: Arvo Pärt and Valentyn Sylvestrov, from Experimentation to Mystery, Periphery to Center

Abstract

Like many young Soviet composers during the post-Stalin Thaw, Arvo Pärt and Valentyn Sylvestrov experimented with a range of musical techniques in the 1960s before turning in radically simplified directions during the next decades. Notably, both Pärt and Sylvestrov were among the only composers from their generation featured in the Soviet youth magazine Krugozor in the late 1960s, a time when Sylvestrov was more successful than Pärt on the global stage. But the Union of Composers of Ukraine was harsher than its Estonian counterpart, and Sylvestrov suffered severely from its policing in the 1970s. This paper explores for the first time the stylistic intersections and influences between Pärt and Sylvestrov. Focusing on the 1960s, and the appearance of music by both composers in Krugozor, it traces the parallel yet distinct paths of both composers, paying close attention to the compositions featured in the magazine: Sylvestrov’s Mystery and Pärt’s Pro et contra. The contacts and contrasts between Pärt and Sylvestrov tell a particularly potent story about musical experimentation and discovery from the 1960s through the present.