Tabula Rasa and the ECM Legacy
"One of the essential recordings in my library, and safe to say one of the greatest and most important releases in the recording era."
Re-cleaning the Slate
I had read about Arvo Pärt before I first heard his music, and the first thing I heard was the Tabula Rasa LP. I picked up a copy at the old Tower Records Annex at Astor Place and Lafayette, it was a cut-out and probably priced at $2.98.
The first track on side A is Fratres, the version for violin and piano, played by Gidon Kremer and Keith Jarrett—I had heard both musicians before, especially Jarrett, his Atlantic and ECM albums, especially Belonging which is in my personal “essentials” library. And that’s probably the reason I bought it1, because even that price was precious to me and I would agonize over each album I wanted.
Of course, I was in no way disappointed, because this is one of the essential recordings in my library, and I think safe to say is one of the greatest and most important releases in the recording era. Pärt has always been a New-Agey kind of balm to Western listeners who enjoy certain kinds of mood music but otherwise are indifferent to the state of the Western compositional tradition. The proportions between the number of people who have Tabula Rasa and who have his incredible Passio must be immense2, but having this album means being exposed to not just brilliant craftsmanship and immense sonic and emotional beauty, but to revolutionary compositional thinking in the late-70s/early-80s3.
ECM reissued this on vinyl in September, a fine sounding pressing in a gatefold jacket with the original liner notes reprinted in a large format booklet. It’s not necessarily an improvement on the 1984 original (except for sound), but it is good to have Tabula Rasa in this format again, because it’s one of those albums that’s an album, where flipping from the A to B side is a literal and figurative representation of Pärt’s range of thinking and artistry.
It’s still available as a regular CD, and also this CD/book edition:
This is a wonderful reissue which really fulfills the point of identifying and repackaging historically important recordings. The book has the original liner notes and photos, and also an introduction from Paul Griffiths, and facsimiles of Tabula Rasa and Cantus, and complete study scores for all the music on the album! If you love this album and can read music, that’s the one you should have. (Here’s the direct ECM link for ordering.)
Remain Composed
Looking back on 40 years of ECM albums since Tabula Rasa was first released—and especially looking from the outside, from a listener’s standpoint—what ECM is becomes clearer. Yes, the label’s first record was Mal Waldron’s Free at Last (and the 2019 vinyl reissue with bonus material is the best archival release ECM has yet produced), and it’s been the central home for Keith Jarrett, and has important discographies by the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Dave Holland, Don Cherry, Carla Bley, Jack DeJohnette, and many more. But after establishing a particular sound and style of modern jazz, one I would call progressive and edging into the avant-garde, but one interested in consolidating breakthroughs rather than producing them, ECM has produced very little this century that has expanded its legacy, or even shown changes in aesthetics and understanding that are a natural part of aging. Manfred Eicher established what he did, and has stuck to it. As music has moved on, by staying where it is ECM has become less relevant.
Except for the one enormous change Eicher instituted, which was the New Series. Tabula Rasa was not the first release from the imprint, that was Music for 18 Musicians4. What this reissue tells me is that the New Series has eclipsed the jazz side in importance, and that the sound of it is the context that underlines what the essence of the label’s thoughts on jazz are.
The New Series has given the world Steve Reich, Pärt, Meredith Monk, and the Evan Parker Electro-Acoustic Ensemble. It’s given us rich improvisations on John Dowland, fantastically fresh thinking from András Schiff on the Beethoven Piano Sonatas (IMO the single best recorded cycle), and revived the important reputations of Erwin Schulhoff—who never wrote a bad note—and Mieczysław Weinberg.
The substance and importance of all that speaks for itself, and the label’s sound and openness to minimalist music centers Nik Bärtsch, along with Jarrett, as the aesthetic and stylistic core around which ECM is organized. An ambivalent piece of evidence for this is Keel Road, the latest from the Danish String Quartet. In an era when there are easily two dozen fabulous string quartets, the Danes are the very best, everything they do has incredible skill, musical judgement, and expression, while also being clear and accessible. And then they put out this lukewarm album of folk song arrangements, a crossover that should never have happened from a label that made arguably the greatest crossover in 1978, when it released Music for 18 Musicians5
I think that nails ECM. For better or worse (usually for better), it’s a label that values what I would call a compositional sense of form and structure. ECM is orderly, and I don’t mean that in a bad way as after all music makes order out of time. What ECM focuses on, even in improvised music, is a sense of time being shaped with great skill, intelligence, and especially beauty. And if a jazz musician like Jarrett happens to do that, that’s fine. But what the label searches for, inside its own soul, is music like that from Monk, Bärtsch, and Pärt—music that sculpts time while pleasing the body. That’s an achievement of the highest order.
This is an album of contemporary classical music that also feels like a jazz album, not because it’s on ECM but because of the musicians on it and their presence in modern music. I learned a huge amount about jazz by following musicians from album to album—Miles Davis brought me to Jarrett, for example—and that also works with the modern era of the Western classical tradition, where composers are still alive, and also play. Kremer is a great violinist and I followed his name to other ECM albums of classical music, and he along with composer Alfred Schnittke, who plays the prepared piano part on Tabula Rasa, opened up the whole world of post-Soviet composition that was pretty much happening in real time. Jarrett of course has made several recordings of Baroque keyboard music for ECM, some excellent some not so, and has his own fine (and underrated) album of compositions, Bridge of Light, and he debuted Lou Harrison’s Piano Concerto, both on recording at the 1985 premiere at Carnegie Hall, which I attended.
The composer in me loves both but is more impressed with the latter, just as I can grasp the Rite of Spring but can barely comprehend the genius of Agon.
There’s an edition in the Oxford Keynotes series on the album, written by Kevin Karnes, that fills in the valuable context of Pärt as a dissident composer, and the trials and tribulations of getting music like this accepted by musicians, much less performed and recorded.
And the thing about that one single album is that, after it came out, the rest was history.
One thing worth mentioning is that this recording quickly became a favorite of choreographers, with countless dances create to these pieces. Just google "Pärt Tabula Rasa Ballet..."