Arvo Pärt’s Fratres exists in many musical forms. The original version, composed for string quintet and wind quintet, precedes a series of variations written over fifteen years. Versions include, among others, arrangements for piano and violin, cello and harp, solo violin, and string orchestra. The most popular versions of Fratres are comprised of multiple parts, and are characterized by dramatic, emotional arpeggio sequences, sudden silences, and simple, sweeping, melancholic interludes.

Of all the variations of Fratres, the arrangement for twelve cellos is the simplest, but also the largest of the works; an overwhelming, dreadful universe. The immensity of the piece lies in the powerful voices of the dozen cellos, the harmonic density, and, most significantly, the eternal nature of Fratres expressed by its overall structure. In Twelve Cellos, the emotional and atmospheric schema of Fratres is approached in its purest form.

The structure of Twelve Cellos is in part comparable to a single bell curve; a steady rise and fall in volume spans the entire piece. However, this massive swell is incrementally interrupted by near silence – a single cello note, timid and distant, which seems to be held throughout the entire composition. This voice begins the piece, accompanied by the soft, patient beating of a low-pitched drum; its rhythm straightforward and tame. The other cellos emerge quietly singing their melancholic harmonies. In this first iteration, their volume is level with the initial cello note, as if they share a source. After a few phrases, the singing cellos hush and the drum returns, seeming now, in following the song of the cellos, to be insisting on silence. Its beating appears warlike, as if maintaining order by its pattern.

As the song progresses, the cellos return and depart again and again, gaining volume with each appearance. Melodically, each emergence resembles the last, and the variations that occur seem self-same, like the rewording of a deep feeling. As the intensity increases, the make-up of the harmony becomes less disguised and its variations more apparent – yet it retains mystery through the interweaving, elusive nature of its melodies. A distracted listener may find they are reflexively led by the highest pitched voice, serving as a guide through the cellos’ broad song. A more adventurous ear will find a multitude of melodies, and thereby become curious as to where each of them lead. As the voices cross paths with one another, the ear is able to be taken in a multitude of melodic directions, yet always in the belly of the overall harmonic utterance. One wonders if these melodies do anything more than refer to other melodies, as if they are close siblings absorbed in one another’s identity, afraid to be left alone for too long.

Though the drumming between the cellos’ song continues the same simple, spread-out striking as before, its character is altered through contrast. Alongside the intensity of the cellos’ volume and harmony, it begins to signify a space whose contents (the single cello note among them) are primitive and original, void of the sorrow of the cellos’ song, yet seemingly complicit in its melancholy.

The cellos’ song soon begins its descent, decreasing incrementally in volume, departing almost as soon as it arrived. It returns to its place amongst the initial note, which continues its quiet, eternal monotone until the songs end.

Though Fratres for Twelve Cellos does not contain the variety of movements found in other Fratres variations, it is largest of the Fratres worlds. It achieves the communication of an overwhelming, eternal object, and does so through musical mechanisms of suggestion.

Considering the impossibility of demonstrating, or simply conceiving of, something that is overwhelming and eternal, Pärt instead implies these qualities. One may indulge more thoroughly in Pärt’s implication of this transcendent object by asking an initially peculiar question: “where is the listener?” In relation to each expressive component of Twelve Cellos, one must respond to this question in terms of eternity.

To begin with an obvious component, the initial cello note and its accompanying percussion, one must say when the listener is here, he/she is complacent with its eternal, unmoving presence. The note rings out throughout the entire piece, and the drum beats incessantly the same rhythm, implying a forever that, if moving, is moving nowhere. The listener’s placement here between the greater cellos’ songs suggests an eternal return to stasis; an unrelenting, transcendent truth, from which harmony emerges, and to which harmony will always adhere. Here, even the anticipated interruption by harmony implies eternity, as we not only expect it to return, but know by now its self-same form.

The incremental cellos’ song, although changing, seems to intentionally remain itself. Its melodies move, but their movement is limited by an overall atmospheric and emotional schema – the cellos’ unified harmonic entity. As described above, the individual cellos’ voices become discernible only when the listener makes an effort to observe them as individual melodies, but this becomes difficult as the melodies intersect and merge, and thereby either lead the listener through a nearly innumerable amount of possible melodies, or ultimately give way to the larger harmonic presence. As such, one may conceive of the cellos’ song as shifting rather than moving – a set collection of sounds timed to rearrange after each whole note.

The most fascinating device Pärt employs to suggest an eternal object is Twelve Cellos’ overall structure. As the components of the song may be shown to express unmoving-ness, what can we say happens? Where is the listener?

The rise and fall of volume throughout the piece is arguably its most essential feature. If it may be said that the piece does not otherwise go anywhere, then volume is the piece’s sole action. By steadily amplifying the piece, a sensation of becoming closer to it is simulated. After Twelve Cellos has established its tonal atmosphere, it pulls you deeper and deeper into its world while allowing (or perhaps insisting) the listener go up for air now and then (implying an overwhelming-ness to its world). It is then in fact the listener who moves, approaching an unmoving, shifting object suspended in the “silence” of the initial, unending cello note. It does not go anywhere – you just get closer to it.

As the listener moves away from Pärt’s world, it recedes into the distance; a lonely, dark place, explored moments ago by the listener. The listener has passed by it, or maybe through it, but as the listener leaves, one can’t help but imagine it continues on out of ear-shot, forever.