Arvo Pärt was born in Paide, Estonia, in 1935, and studied composition at the Tallinn Conservatory with Heino Eller. The occupation of Estonia by the Soviet Union would have a profound effect on his life and music. Although Pärt had little access to what was happening in contemporary Western music, the early 1960s in Estonia saw many new methods of composition being brought into use and Pärt was at the forefront of the new movement. His
Nekrolog was the first Estonian composition to employ serial technique. He continued with serialism through to the mid ‘60s in pieces such as
Symphony No. 1, Symphony No. 2 and
Perpetuum Mobile, but later moved on to experiment, in works such as
Collage über BACH, with collage techniques. Official judgment of Pärt's music veered between extremes, with certain works being praised and others, like the
Credo of 1968, being banned.
Credo would prove to be the last of his collage pieces and after its composition, Pärt chose to enter the first of several periods of contemplative silence. He used the time to study French and Franco-Flemish choral music from the 14th to 16th centuries. At the very beginning of the 1970s, he wrote a few transitional compositions in the spirit of early European polyphony, such as his
Symphony No. 3 from 1971.
Pärt turned again to self-imposed silence, but re-emerged in 1976 after a radical transformation. He invented a technique he calls "tintinnabuli" (from the Latin, “little bells”), which he describes thus: "I have discovered that it is enough when a single note is beautifully played. This one note, or a silent beat, or a moment of silence, comforts me. I work with very few elements—with one voice, two voices. I build with primitive materials—with the triad, with one specific tonality. The three notes of a triad are like bells and that is why I call it tintinnabulation."
There followed a rush of new works, and three of the 1977 pieces—
Fratres, Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten and
Tabula Rasa—are still amongst Pärt’s most highly regarded. As Pärt's music began to be performed in the West and he continued to struggle against Soviet officialdom, his frustration ultimately forced him, his wife Nora, and their two sons to emigrate in 1980. They settled initially in Vienna, where he took Austrian citizenship, and one year later, with a scholarship from the German Academic Exchange, moved to West Berlin where he still lives.
Pärt’s 1990 setting of
The Beatitudes actually begins with the blessing of the “poor in spirit,” and as the Sermon on the Mount continues, with its familiar address to pacifists, troublemakers, and outcasts, Pärt’s music follows every twist and turn of the biblical English text, the first the composer had ever set. The musical technique squeezes shocking beauty out of the simplest musical means: the vocal lines are derived from the basic materials of tonal music, simple diatonic scales and chords. The art is in the combination, and in the surprisingly dense and luscious sonorities that arise from strict musical logic, each at exactly the right expressive moment. The work builds to an inexorable climax (“Rejoice, and be exceeding glad”), followed by a beautiful and mysterious surprise: an elaborate cadenza for the pipe organ, whose function up to that point has been the provision of humble underpinning for the choir. The last becomes first as the energy of the work slowly runs back to ground.
Since leaving Estonia, Pärt has concentrated on setting religious texts, which have proved popular with choirs and ensembles around the world. Pärt's achievements were honored in his 61st year by his election to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He was nominated as 14th International Composer for the year 2000 by the Royal Academy of Music in London. In May 2003, he also received the "Contemporary Music Award" at the Classical Brit Awards ceremony at the Royal Albert Hall in London.
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