Arvo Pärt (; born 11 September 1935) is an

Estonia Estonia, officially the Republic of Estonia, is a country in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, and to the east by Ru ...

n composer of

contemporary classical music Contemporary classical music is Western art music composed close to the present day. At the beginning of the 21st-century classical music, 21st century, it commonly referred to the post-1945 Modernism (music), post-tonal music after the death of ...

. Since the late 1970s, Pärt has worked in a minimalist style that employs tintinnabuli, a compositional technique he invented. Pärt's music is in part inspired by Gregorian chant. His most performed works include '' Fratres'' (1977), '' Spiegel im Spiegel'' (1978), and '' Für Alina'' (1976). From 2011 to 2018, and again in 2022, Pärt was the most performed living composer in the world, and the second most performed in 2019, after

John Williams John Towner Williams (born February 8, 1932)Nylund, Rob (November 15, 2022)Classic Connection review, ''WBOI'' ("For the second time this year, the Fort Wayne Philharmonic honored American composer, conductor, and arranger John Williams, who w ...

. The Arvo Pärt Centre, in Laulasmaa, was opened to the public in 2018.

Early life, family and education

Pärt was born in Paide, Järva County, Estonia, and was raised by his mother and stepfather in

Rakvere Rakvere is the administrative center, or county seat, of Lääne-Viru County in northern Estonia, about 100 km southeast of Tallinn and 20 km south of the Gulf of Finland and the Baltic Sea. Rakvere boasts a distinctive architectural feature: th ...

in northern Estonia. He began to experiment with the top and bottom notes of the family's piano as the middle register was damaged. Pärt's musical education began at the age of seven when he began attending music school in Rakvere. By his early teenage years, Pärt was writing his own compositions. His first serious study came in 1954 at the Tallinn Music Middle School, but less than a year later he temporarily abandoned it to fulfill military service, playing

oboe The oboe ( ) is a type of double-reed woodwind instrument. Oboes are usually made of wood, but may also be made of synthetic materials, such as plastic, resin, or hybrid composites. The most common type of oboe, the soprano oboe pitched in C, ...

and percussion in the army band. After his military service he attended the Tallinn Conservatory, where he studied composition with Heino Eller and it was said of him, "he just seemed to shake his sleeves and the notes would fall out". During the 1950s, he also completed his first vocal composition, the

cantata A cantata (; ; literally "sung", past participle feminine singular of the Italian language, Italian verb ''cantare'', "to sing") is a vocal music, vocal Musical composition, composition with an musical instrument, instrumental accompaniment, ty ...

''Meie aed'' ('Our Garden') for children's choir and orchestra. He graduated in 1963.

Career

As a student, Pärt composed music for film and the stage, creating scores for over fifty movies. Although filmmaking and film music were not primary sources of inspiration for him, these compositions provided a medium for exploring serial and tonal techniques—an amalgamation that would later influence his collage works of the 1960s. From 1957 to 1967, he worked as a sound producer for the Estonian public radio broadcaster Eesti Rahvusringhääling. Tikhon Khrennikov criticized Pärt in 1962 for employing serialism in ''Nekrolog'' (1960), the first 12-tone music written in Estonia, which exhibited his "susceptibility to foreign influences". But nine months later Pärt won First Prize in a competition of 1,200 works, awarded by the all-''Union Society of Composers'', indicating the Soviet regime's inability to agree on what was permissible. His first overtly sacred piece, ''Credo'' (1968), was a turning point in his career and life; on a personal level he had reached a creative crisis that led him to renounce the techniques and means of expression used so far; on a social level the religious nature of this piece resulted in him being unofficially censured and his music disappearing from concert halls. For the next eight years he composed very little, focusing instead on study of

medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of World history (field), global history. It began with the fall of the West ...

and

Renaissance music Renaissance music is traditionally understood to cover European music of the 15th and 16th centuries, later than the Renaissance era as it is understood in other disciplines. Rather than starting from the early 14th-century ''ars nova'', the mus ...

to find his new musical language. In 1972 he converted from

Lutheranism Lutheranism is a major branch of Protestantism that emerged under the work of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German friar and Protestant Reformers, reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practices of the Catholic Church launched ...

to Orthodox Christianity. Pärt reemerged as a composer in 1976 with music in his new compositional style and technique, tintinnabuli. On 10 December 2011,

Pope Benedict XVI Pope BenedictXVI (born Joseph Alois Ratzinger; 16 April 1927 – 31 December 2022) was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 19 April 2005 until his resignation on 28 February 2013. Benedict's election as p ...

appointed Pärt a member of the Pontifical Council for Culture for a five-year renewable term. In 2014 ''

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a British daily broadsheet conservative newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed in the United Kingdom and internationally. It was found ...

'' described Pärt as possibly "the world's greatest living composer" and "by a long way, Estonia's most celebrated export". When asked how Estonian he felt his music to be, Pärt replied: "I don't know what is Estonian... I don't think about these things." Unlike many of his fellow Estonian composers, Pärt never found inspiration in the country's national epic, '' Kalevipoeg'', even in his early works. Pärt said, "My ''Kalevipoeg'' is Jesus Christ."

Music

Overview

Familiar works by Pärt are '' Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten'' for string orchestra and bell (1977) and the string quintet '' Fratres I'' (1977, revised 1983), which he transcribed for string orchestra and percussion, the solo violin "Fratres II" and the cello ensemble "Fratres III" (both 1980). Pärt is often identified with the school of minimalism and, more specifically, that of mystic minimalism or holy minimalism. He is considered a pioneer of the latter style, along with contemporaries Henryk Górecki and

John Tavener Sir John Kenneth Tavener (28 January 1944 – 12 November 2013) was an English composer, known for his extensive output of choral religious music, religious works. Among his best known works are ''The Lamb (Tavener), The Lamb'' (1982), ''The ...

. Although his fame initially rested on instrumental works such as '' Tabula Rasa'' and '' Spiegel im Spiegel'', his choral works have also come to be widely appreciated. In this period of Estonian history, Pärt was unable to encounter many musical influences from outside the Soviet Union except for a few illegal tapes and scores. Although Estonia had been an independent state at the time of Pärt's birth, the Soviet Union occupied it in 1940 as a result of the Soviet–

Nazi Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During H ...

Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact; and the country would then remain under Soviet domination—except for the three-year period of German wartime occupation—for the next 51 years.

Development

Pärt's works are generally divided into two periods. He composed his early works using a range of neo-classical styles influenced by Shostakovich, Prokofiev, and Bartók. He then began to compose using Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique and serialism. This, however, not only earned the ire of the Soviet establishment but also proved to be a creative dead-end. When Soviet censors banned early works, Pärt entered the first of several periods of contemplative silence, during which he studied choral music from the 14th to 16th centuries. In this context, Pärt's biographer, Paul Hillier, observed that "he had reached a position of complete despair in which the composition of music appeared to be the most futile of gestures, and he lacked the musical faith and willpower to write even a single note." In his work ''Credo'' (1968), written for solo piano, orchestra, and chorus, he employed

avant-garde In the arts and literature, the term ''avant-garde'' ( meaning or ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art, and the artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable ...

techniques. This work differed in its forms and context from his earlier atonal and tintinnabula works. Inspired by 14th and 16th century liturgical music, he used a poly-stylistic compositional technique to express his faith in God while incorporating avant-garde techniques of the 20th century. By definition, a credo expresses beliefs and guides religious action, and in his work it represents his faith in God. The Soviets eventually banned the work due to its clear religious context, even though it incorporated avant-garde and a constructivist procedure. The spirit of early European

polyphony Polyphony ( ) is a type of musical texture consisting of two or more simultaneous lines of independent melody, as opposed to a musical texture with just one voice ( monophony) or a texture with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chord ...

informed the composition of Pärt's transitional Third Symphony (1971); after that, he immersed himself in early music, reinvestigating the roots of Western music. He studied plainsong, Gregorian chant, and the emergence of

in the European

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) is a Periodization, period of history and a European cultural movement covering the 15th and 16th centuries. It marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and was characterized by an effort to revive and sur ...

. The music that began to emerge after this period was radically different. This period of new compositions included the 1977 works '' Fratres'', '' Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten'' and '' Tabula Rasa''. Pärt describes the music of this period as " tintinnabuli"—like the ringing of bells. '' Spiegel im Spiegel'' (1978) is a well-known example used in many films. The music is characterised by simple harmonies, often single unadorned notes, or triads, which form the basis of Western harmony. These are reminiscent of ringing bells. Tintinnabuli works are rhythmically simple and do not change tempo. In this technique, each syllable of a word is assigned to a pitch and a duration. Once two or three words have been connected, a phrase has been made. Another characteristic of Pärt's later works is that they are frequently settings for sacred texts, although he mostly chooses

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

or the Church Slavonic language used in Orthodox liturgy instead of his native

Estonian language Estonian ( ) is a Finnic language and the official language of Estonia. It is written in the Latin script and is the first language of the majority of the country's population; it is also an official language of the European Union. Estonian is sp ...

. Large-scale works inspired by religious texts include '' Berliner Messe'', '' St. John Passion'' and '' Te Deum''; the author of the famous text of ''Litany'' is the 4th-century theologian John Chrysostom. Choral works from this period include ''Magnificat'' and ''The Beatitudes''.

Reception and later compositions

Pärt was the most performed living composer in the world from 2011 to 2018, but then the second-most performed composer, after

. In 2022, Arvo was back to the top in Bachtrack. Of Pärt's popularity, Steve Reich has written: Pärt's music came to public attention in the West largely thanks to Manfred Eicher who recorded several of Pärt's compositions for ECM Records starting in 1984. Pärt wrote '' Cecilia, vergine romana'' on an Italian text about life and martyrdom of

Saint Cecilia Saint Cecilia (), also spelled Cecelia, was a Roman Christian virgin martyr, who is venerated in Catholic, Eastern Orthodox Church, Orthodox, Anglican Communion, Anglican, and some Lutheran churches, such as the Church of Sweden. She became the ...

, the patron saint of music, for choir and orchestra on a commission for the Great Jubilee in Rome, where it was performed, close to her feast day on 22 November, by the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia conducted by Myung-whun Chung. Invited by Walter Fink, Pärt was the 15th composer featured in the annual Komponistenporträt of the Rheingau Musik Festival in 2005 in four concerts. Chamber music included '' Für Alina'' for piano, played by himself, '' Spiegel im Spiegel'' and ''Psalom'' for string quartet. The chamber orchestra of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra played his ''Trisagion'', '' Fratres'' and '' Cantus'' along with works of J.S. Bach. The Windsbach Boys Choir and soloists Sibylla Rubens, Ingeborg Danz, Markus Schäfer and Klaus Mertens performed '' Magnificat'' and '' Collage über B-A-C-H'' together with two Bach cantatas and one by Mendelssohn. The Hilliard Ensemble, organist Christopher Bowers-Broadbent, the Rostock Motet Choir and the Hilliard instrumental ensemble, conducted by , performed a program of Pärt's organ music and works for voices (some ''a cappella''), including '' Pari intervallo'', De profundis, and Miserere. A composition, ''Für Lennart'', written for the memory of the Estonian President, Lennart Meri, was played at Meri's funeral service on 26 March 2006. In response to the murder of the Russian investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya in Moscow on 7 October 2006, Pärt declared that all of his works performed in 2006 and 2007 would be in honour of her death, issuing the following statement: "Anna Politkovskaya staked her entire talent, energy and—in the end—even her life on saving people who had become victims of the abuses prevailing in Russia." Pärt was honoured as the featured composer of the 2008 Raidió Teilifís Éireann Living Music Festival in Dublin, Ireland. He was also commissioned by Louth Contemporary Music Society to compose a new choral work based on " Saint Patrick's Breastplate", which premiered in 2008 in

County Louth County Louth ( ; ) is a coastal Counties of Ireland, county in the Eastern and Midland Region of Republic of Ireland, Ireland, within the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster. Louth is bordered by the counties of County Meath, Meath to the ...

, Ireland. The new work, '' The Deer's Cry'', is his first Irish commission, and received its debut in

Drogheda Drogheda ( , ; , meaning "bridge at the ford") is an industrial and port town in County Louth on the east coast of Ireland, north of Dublin. It is located on the Dublin–Belfast corridor on the east coast of Ireland, mostly in County Louth ...

and

Dundalk Dundalk ( ; ) is the county town of County Louth, Ireland. The town is situated on the Castletown River, which flows into Dundalk Bay on the north-east coast of Ireland, and is halfway between Dublin and Belfast, close to and south of the bor ...

in February 2008. Pärt's 2008 Fourth Symphony is named ''Los Angeles'' and was dedicated to Mikhail Khodorkovsky. It was Pärt's first symphony written since his Third Symphony of 1971. It premiered in

Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

, California, at the Walt Disney Concert Hall on 10 January 2009, and was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Classical Contemporary Composition in 2010. On 26 January 2014, Tõnu Kaljuste, conducting the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, the Sinfonietta Riga, the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra, the Latvian Radio Choir and the Vox Clamantis ensemble, won a Grammy for Best Choral Performance for a performance of Pärt's '' Adam's Lament''. Describing aspects of Pärt's music as " glocal" in approach, Estonian musicologist Kerri Kotta noted that the composer "has been able to translate something very human into sound that crosses the borders normally separating people."

Awards

* 1996 – American Academy of Arts and Letters Department of Music * 1996 – Honorary Doctor of Music,

University of Sydney The University of Sydney (USYD) is a public university, public research university in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in both Australia and Oceania. One of Australia's six sandstone universities, it was one of the ...

* 1998 – Honorary Doctor of Arts, University of Tartu * 2003 – Honorary Doctor of Music,

Durham University Durham University (legally the University of Durham) is a collegiate university, collegiate public university, public research university in Durham, England, founded by an Act of Parliament (UK), Act of Parliament in 1832 and incorporated by r ...

* 2006 – Order of the National Coat of Arms 1st Class * 2007 – Brückepreis * 2008 – Léonie Sonning Music Prize, Denmark * 2008 – Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, First Class * 2009 – Foreign Member, Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts * 2010 – Honorary Doctor of Music, University of St Andrews * 2011 – Chevalier (Knight) of Légion d'honneur, France * 2011 – Membership of the Pontifical Council for Culture * 2013 – Archon of the Ecumenical Patriarchate * 2014 – Recipient of the Praemium Imperiale award, Japan * 2014 – Honorary Doctor of Sacred Music, Saint Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary * 2016 – Honorary Doctor of Music,

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

* 2017 – Ratzinger Prize, Germany *2018 – Gold Medal for Merit to Culture – Gloria Artis, Poland * 2018 – Honorary Doctor of Music, Fryderyk Chopin University of Music * 2019 – Cross of Recognition, 2nd Class, Latvia * 2020 – Frontiers of Knowledge Award, BBVA Foundation, Spain * 2021 – Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany * 2022 – Officer of the Order of the Oak Crown, Luxembourg * 2023 – Polar Music Prize, Sweden * 2024 – Gold Medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society

Personal life

He converted to Orthodox Christianity in 1972 upon marrying his second wife, Nora. In 1980, after a prolonged struggle with Soviet officials, he was allowed to emigrate with his wife and their two sons. He lived first in

Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

, where he took Austrian citizenship, and then relocated to

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

in 1981. He returned to Estonia around the turn of the 21st century and for a while lived alternately in Berlin and

Tallinn Tallinn is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Estonia, most populous city of Estonia. Situated on a Tallinn Bay, bay in north Estonia, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland of the Baltic Sea, it has a population of (as of 2025) and ...

. He now resides in Laulasmaa, about from Tallinn. He speaks fluent German as a result of living in Germany from 1981. In 2010, the Pärt family established the Arvo Pärt Centre, an institution responsible for maintaining his personal archive, in the village of Laulasmaa. A new building of the centre opened to the visitors on 17 October 2018, containing a concert hall, a library, and research facilities. The centre also offers educational programmes for children and operates as an international information centre on Pärt's life and work. In April 2020, although Pärt rarely gives interviews, he spoke to the Spanish newspaper ''ABC'' about the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

, stating that it was a "mega fast" and reminded him to follow the example of

John Updike John Hoyer Updike (March 18, 1932 – January 27, 2009) was an American novelist, poet, short-story writer, art critic, and literary critic. One of only four writers to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once (the others being Booth Tar ...

, who "once said that he tried to work with the same calm as the masters of the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and ...

, who carved the church pews in places where it was impossible to see them".

Citations and references

Cited sources

* Hillier, Paul. (1997). ''Arvo Pärt''. Oxford :

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the publishing house of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world. Its first book was printed in Oxford in 1478, with the Press officially granted the legal right to print books ...

. (paper)

External links

Arvo Pärt
biography and works on the UE website (publisher)
Arvo Pärt discography at Classical Net

Arvo Pärt Conference at Boston University

Arvo Pärt
– extensive site *
Between Two Sounds
': Graphic novel about Arvo Pärt's life and musical journey.
Biography in MUSICMATCH Guide
– small biography and list of works.

– article by Bill McGlaughlin, with audio selections
Steve Reich about Arvo Pärt, in an interview with Richard Williams, ''The Guardian'', 2 January 2004

Spike Magazine Interview

(archived) * ttp://www.arvopart.ee/en Arvo Pärt Centre– most up-to-date info and more * {{DEFAULTSORT:Part, Arvo 1935 births 20th-century Estonian classical composers 21st-century Estonian classical composers ECM Records artists Composers for pipe organ Eastern Orthodox Christians from Estonia Estonian film score composers Male film score composers Living people Minimalist composers People from Paide Postmodern composers Estonian male classical composers Postminimalist composers Benjamin Britten Recipients of the Order of the National Coat of Arms, 1st Class Recipients of the Order of the National Coat of Arms, 2nd Class Recipients of the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre alumni Converts to Eastern Orthodoxy from Lutheranism Members of the Pontifical Council for Culture Classical composers of church music Estonian expatriates in Germany Estonian expatriates in Austria Recipients of the Léonie Sonning Music Prize Recipients of the Gold Medal for Merit to Culture – Gloria Artis Herder Prize recipients Recipients of the Praemium Imperiale 20th-century Estonian composers Ratzinger Prize laureates Foreign members of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music Choral composers