Arvo Pärt

"Pärt" redirects here. For the Estonian handballer, see Armi Pärt. For the Estonian music producer, see Michael Pärt.

Arvo Pärt (Estonian pronunciation: [ˈɑrʋo ˈpært]; born 11 September 1935) is an Estonian composer of contemporary classical music. 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, Pärt was the most performed living composer in the world, and the second most performed in 2019—after John Williams. The Arvo Pärt Centre, in Laulasmaa, was opened to the public in 2018.

Arvo Pärt
Pärt at Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, 2008
Born	(1935-09-11) 11 September 1935 (age 87) Paide, Järva County, Estonia
Nationality	Estonian
Alma mater	Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre
Occupation	Composer
Works	List of compositions
Spouse	Nora Pärt
Awards	American Academy of Arts and Letters Order of the National Coat of Arms Brückepreis Léonie Sonning Music Prize Légion d'honneur

Early life, family and education

Pärt was born in Paide, Järva County, Estonia, and was raised by his mother and stepfather in Rakvere in northern Estonia.^[1] He began to experiment with the top and bottom notes of the family's piano as the middle register was damaged.^[2]

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 and percussion in the army band.^[3] After his military service he attended the Tallinn Conservatory, where he studied composition with Heino Eller^[4] and it was said of him, "he just seemed to shake his sleeves and the notes would fall out".^[5] During the 1950s, he also completed his first vocal composition, the cantata Meie aed ('Our Garden') for children's choir and orchestra. He graduated in 1963.

Career

As a student, Pärt produced music for film and the stage. 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,^[6] 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.^[7] 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 and Renaissance music to find his new musical language. In 1972 he converted from Lutheranism to Orthodox Christianity.^[8][9]

Pärt reemerged as a composer in 1976 with music in his new compositional style and technique, tintinnabuli.^[9]

On 10 December 2011, Pope Benedict XVI appointed Pärt a member of the Pontifical Council for Culture for a five-year renewable term.^[10]

In 2014 The Daily Telegraph 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 epic poem, Kalevipoeg, even in his early works. Pärt said, "My Kalevipoeg is Jesus Christ."^[6]

Music

See also: List of compositions by Arvo Pärt

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.^[11] He is considered a pioneer of the latter style, along with contemporaries Henryk Górecki and John Tavener.^[12] 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 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 at the Estonian Foreign Ministry in 2011

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 early works were banned by Soviet censors, Pärt entered the first of several periods of contemplative silence, during which he studied choral music from the 14th to 16th centuries.^[4] 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."^[13]

In his work Credo (1968), written for solo piano, orchestra, and chorus, he employed avant-garde techniques. This work differed from his earlier atonal and tintinnabula works in its forms and context. 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.^[14]

The spirit of early European Polyphony informed the composition of Pärt's transitional Third Symphony (1971); thereafter he immersed himself in early music, reinvestigating the roots of Western music. He studied plainsong, Gregorian chant and the emergence of polyphony in the European Renaissance.

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.^[4] Pärt describes the music of this period as "tintinnabuli"—like the ringing of bells. Spiegel im Spiegel (1978) is a well-known example that has been 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. Another characteristic of Pärt's later works is that they are frequently settings for sacred texts, although he mostly chooses Latin or the Church Slavonic language used in Orthodox liturgy instead of his native Estonian language. 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.^[15] Choral works from this period include Magnificat and The Beatitudes.^[4]

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 John Williams.^[16] In 2022, Avro was back to the top in Bachtrack.Of Pärt's popularity, Steve Reich has written:

Even in Estonia, Arvo was getting the same feeling that we were all getting... I love his music, and I love the fact that he is such a brave, talented man… He's completely out of step with the zeitgeist and yet he's enormously popular, which is so inspiring. His music fulfills a deep human need that has nothing to do with fashion.^[17]

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, 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 Markus Johannes Langer [de], 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.^[18]

 

Pärt with his wife Nora in 2012

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."^[19]

Pärt was honoured as the featured composer of the 2008 Raidió Teilifís Éireann Living Music Festival^[20] in Dublin, Ireland. He was also commissioned by Louth Contemporary Music Society^[21] to compose a new choral work based on "Saint Patrick's Breastplate", which premiered in 2008 in Louth, Ireland. The new work, The Deer's Cry, is his first Irish commission, and received its debut in Drogheda and Dundalk in February 2008.^[22]

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, California, at the Walt Disney Concert Hall on 10 January 2009,^[23] and was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Classical Contemporary Composition in 2010.^[24]

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.^[25] 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."^[26]

Awards

• 1996 – American Academy of Arts and Letters Department of Music^[27]
• 1996 – Honorary Doctor of Music, University of Sydney^[28]
• 1998 – Honorary Doctor of Arts, University of Tartu^[29]
• 2003 – Honorary Doctor of Music, Durham University^[30]
• 2006 – Order of the National Coat of Arms 1st Class^[31]
• 2007 – Brückepreis^[32]
• 2008 – Léonie Sonning Music Prize, Denmark^[33]
• 2008 – Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, First Class^[34]
• 2009 – Foreign Member, Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts^[35]
• 2010 – Honorary Doctor of Music, University of St Andrews^[36]
• 2011 – Chevalier (Knight) of Légion d'honneur, France^[37]
• 2011 – Membership of the Pontifical Council for Culture^[38]
• 2013 – Archon of the Ecumenical Patriarchate^[39]
• 2014 – Recipient of the Praemium Imperiale award, Japan^[40]
• 2014 – Honorary Doctor of Sacred Music, Saint Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary^[41]
• 2016 – Honorary Doctor of Music, University of Oxford^[42]
• 2017 – Ratzinger Prize, Germany^[43]
• 2018 – Gold Medal for Merit to Culture – Gloria Artis, Poland^[44]
• 2018 – Honorary Doctor of Music, Fryderyk Chopin University of Music^[45]
• 2019 – Cross of Recognition, 2nd Class, Latvia^[46]
• 2020 – Frontiers of Knowledge Award, BBVA Foundation, Spain^[47]
• 2021 – Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany^[48]
• 2022 – Officer of the Order of the Oak Crown, Luxembourg^[49]

Personal life

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, where he took Austrian citizenship, and then relocated to Berlin in 1981. He returned to Estonia around the turn of the 21st century and for a while lived alternately in Berlin^[50] and Tallinn.^[4] He now resides in Laulasmaa, about 35 kilometres (22 mi) from Tallinn.^[51] He speaks fluent German as a result of living in Germany from 1981.^[52][53][54]

He converted to Orthodox Christianity in 1972 upon marrying his second wife, Nora.^[8]

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.^[55]

In April 2020, although Pärt rarely gives interviews, he spoke to the Spanish newspaper ABC about the coronavirus crisis.^[56]

See also

• List of Estonian composers

Citations and references

1. "Sounds emanating love – the story of Arvo pärt". EstonianWorld.com. 11 September 2015. Retrieved 22 August 2017.
2. . sinfinimusic.com. Sinfini Music. Archived from the original on 4 September 2013.
3. "Arvo Pärt – Biography & History". AllMusic. Retrieved 24 October 2017.
4. "Program Notes". Playbill. New York City Ballet. January 2008.
5. Hillier, P. (1997). Arvo Pärt. p. 27.
6. Allison, John (12 December 2014). "Arvo Pärt interview: 'music says what I need to say'". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 12 January 2022. Retrieved 23 August 2017.
7. Misiunas, Romuald J.; Rein, Taagepera (1983). The Baltic States, Years of Dependence, 1940–1980. University of California Press. p. 170. ISBN 978-0-520-04625-2.
8. Robin, William (18 May 2014). "His Music, Entwined With His Faith". The New York Times. Retrieved 15 December 2019.
9. "Arvo Pärt Biography". Arvo Pärt Centre. Retrieved 15 December 2019.
10. [Appointment of Members of the Pontifical Council for Culture]. press.catholica.va (in Italian). Archived from the original on 7 November 2012. Retrieved 9 February 2021.
11. For example, in an essay by Christopher Norris called "Post-modernism: a guide for the perplexed," found in Gary K. Browning, Abigail Halcli, Frank Webster, Understanding Contemporary Society: Theories of the Present, 2000.
12. Thomas, Adrian (1997). Górecki. Oxford: Clarendon Press. p. 135. ISBN 978-0-19-816393-0.
13. P. Hillier, Arvo Pärt, 1997, p. 64.
14. Medić, Ivana (2010). "I Believe… in What? Arvo Pärt's and Alfred Schnittke's Polystylistic Credos". Slavonica. 16 (2): 96–111. doi:10.1179/136174210X12814458213727. ISSN 1361-7427. S2CID 159776256.
15. "Litany". arvopart.ee. Retrieved 18 July 2020.
16. "Arvo Pärt was the world's second most performed living composer in 2019". Estonian world. 7 January 2020. Retrieved 10 March 2020.
17. Hodgkinson, Will. "The Reich stuff". The Guardian, 2 January 2004. Retrieved, 18 February 2011.
18. "Für Lennart in memoriam – Arvo Pärt Centre". www.arvopart.ee. Retrieved 7 April 2022.
19. "Arvo Pärt commemorates Politkovskaja" (PDF). Universal Edition Newsletter. Universal Edition (Winter 2006/2007): 13. 2007. (PDF) from the original on 17 July 2011. Retrieved 19 February 2011.
20. "Arvo Pärt describes RTÉ Living Music Festival as 'best festival of my life'" (Press release). Raidió Teilifís Éireann.
21. "Baltic Voices in Ireland: Arvo Pärt's World Premiere – Louth Contemporary Music Society". Retrieved 12 October 2018.^{[permanent dead link]}
22. "Premiere of "The Deer's Cry" by Arvo Pärt in Ireland". Music News. Retrieved 7 April 2022.
23. In Detail: Arvo Pärt's Symphony No. 4 'Los Angeles'. Retrieved 27 January 2009.
24. "Arvo Part". 22 May 2018. Retrieved 12 October 2018.
25. Arvo Pärt's "Adam's Lament" wins Grammy Award in the Best Choral Performance category!. Retrieved 26 January 2014.
26. Kotta, Kerri (2018). Mixed identities in Arvo Pärt's Adam's Lament. In David G. Hebert & Mikolaj Rykowski, eds., Music Glocalization: Heritage and Innovation in a Digital Age. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, p.133.
27. "Arvo Pärt – Estonian composer". britannica.com. Retrieved 15 October 2018.
28. "Honorary Awards: University of Sydney". from the original on 4 December 2008. Retrieved 12 January 2009.
29. Shenton, Andrew (17 May 2012). The Cambridge Companion to Arvo Pärt. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-49566-1.
30. (PDF). 15 October 2003. Archived from the original (PDF) on 19 October 2012. Retrieved 31 May 2008.
31. "President Arnold Rüütel jagab heldelt üliharuldast ordenit". Postimees. 12 January 2006. Retrieved 25 September 2014.
32. "Internationaler Brückepreis geht an: / 2007 – Arvo Pärt / Estnischer Komponist" [International Brückepreis goes to: / 2007 – Arvo Pärt/ Estonian composer] (in German). 2007. Retrieved 17 August 2017.
33. "Arvo Pärt". Léonie Sonnings Musikpris. 2 May 2008. Retrieved 12 July 2021.
34. "DiePresse.com". 9 May 2008. Retrieved 31 March 2014.
35. "Endre Süli elected Foreign Member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts". Mathematical Institute. 10 May 2021. Retrieved 12 July 2021.
36. . 17 June 2009. Archived from the original on 24 June 2009. Retrieved 18 June 2009.
37. "Le compositeur Arvo Pärt décoré de l'ordre de la Légion d'Honneur". ambafrance-ee.org. Retrieved 3 November 2011.
38. "Vatican information service". 12 December 2011. Retrieved 12 December 2011.
39. "Arvo Pärt Receives Distinction from Patriarch Bartholomew". 9 September 2013. Retrieved 9 September 2013.
40. "Arvo Pärt, Athol Fugard among recipients of Praemium Imperiale awards". Los Angeles Times. 16 July 2014. Retrieved 18 July 2013.
41. "Honorary Degrees May 2014" (PDF). svots.edu. 31 May 2014. (PDF) from the original on 6 June 2014. Retrieved 7 August 2014. Alt URL 15 August 2014 at the Wayback Machine
42. "Oxford announces honorary degrees for 2016". ox.ac.uk. 25 February 2016. Retrieved 22 June 2016.
43. "An Orthodox, a Lutheran, and a Catholic win the 2017 Ratzinger Prize". 26 September 2017. Retrieved 27 September 2017.
44. Łozińska, Olga (26 November 2018). "Kompozytor Arvo Part uhonorowany Złotym Medalem Zasłużony Kulturze Gloria Artis". dzieje.pl (in Polish). Retrieved 27 November 2018.
45. "Two eminent prizes to Arvo Pärt from Poland". 25 November 2018. Retrieved 27 November 2018.
46. "Estonian composer Arvo Part decorated with Latvia's Cross of Recognition, 2nd Class". The Baltic Course. 11 March 2019. Retrieved 14 March 2019.
47. "Arvo Pärt receives Frontiers of Knowledge Award". Arvo Pärt Centre. 31 March 2020. Retrieved 7 May 2020.
48. "Bundesverdienstkreuz für Arvo Pärt". Deutschlandfunk Kultur (in German). 13 November 2021. Retrieved 13 November 2021.
49. "Arvo Pärt awarded the state order of Luxembourg".
50. (PDF). SWR.de. Archived from the original (PDF) on 23 August 2017. Retrieved 25 September 2014.
51. Clements, Andrew (19 April 2018). "Arvo Pärt: The Symphonies review – the Parts that make the whole". The Guardian. Retrieved 21 October 2018.
52. Hillier, P. (1997). Arvo Pärt. p. 33.
53. "Arvo Pärt Special 1: How Sacred Music Scooped an Interview". theartsdesk.com. Retrieved 25 September 2014.
54. Bohlman, P. The Music of European Nationalism: Cultural Identity and Modern History. p. 75.
55. "About the Centre". Arvo Pärt Centre. Retrieved 14 December 2019.
56. Rodrigo, Inés Martín (7 April 2020). "Arvo Pärt: 'El virus demuestra que somos un único organismo'" [Arvo Pärt: 'The virus shows that we are a single organism'] (in Spanish).

Cited sources

• Hillier, Paul. (1997). Arvo Pärt. Oxford : Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-816616-0 (paper)

Further reading

• Chikinda, Michael (2011). "Pärt's Evolving Tintinnabuli Style". Perspectives of New Music 49, no. 1 (Winter): pp. 182–206
• Pärt, Arvo; Enzo Restagno; Leopold Brauneiss; Saala Kareda (2012). Arvo Pärt in Conversation, translated from the German by Robert Crow. Estonian Literature Series. Champaign, IL: Dalkey Archive Press ISBN 978-1-56478-786-6
• Shenton, Andrew (ed.) (2012). The Cambridge Companion to Arvo Pärt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press ISBN 978-0-511-84256-6
• Shenton, Andrew (2018). Arvo Pärt's Resonant Texts: Choral and Organ Music 1956–2015. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
• Dolp, Laura (ed.) (2019). Arvo Pärt's White Light: Media, Culture, Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
• Bouteneff, Peter; Jeffers Engelhardt; Robert Saler (eds.) (2020). Arvo Pärt: Sounding the Sacred. New York: Fordham University Press

External links

 

Wikiquote has quotations related to Arvo Pärt.

 

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Arvo Pärt.

• 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
• – small biography and list of works.
• Arvo Pärt and the New Simplicity 22 October 2003 at the Wayback Machine – 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)
• Arvo Pärt Centre – most up-to-date info and more
• Arvo Pärt at IMDb