Arvo Pärt Essentials

2025 marks the 90th birthday of Arvo Pärt, of the great prophets of contemporary sacred music. The outward minimalist simplicity and timeless, almost static beauty of his most celebrated works stem from two fundamentals: a deep love of Gregorian chant and his own profound faith which intensified in the face of Soviet cultural oppression. The Estonian composer was born in 1935 and studied at the Tallinn Conservatory. His modernist credentials were first displayed in scores such as the edgy, collage work Credo (1968) for choir and orchestra, inspired by verses from St Matthew’s Gospel. The work, however, upset Soviet authorities who assumed that the largely atonal work had a “political aim”. Pärt was interrogated, and the piece banned soon after its premiere. It was a watershed moment for the composer who made the decision to embark on a new musical chapter, leaving serialism behind for a new style of composition. The resulting “tintinnabuli” works, named for their bell-like sonorities, began with Für Alina in 1976 and mushroomed the following year with a surge of essential pieces, including Fratres, Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten, Summa and Tabula Rasa. “I have discovered that it is enough when a single note is beautifully played,” Pärt once said of his stripped-back composing style. “This one note, or a silent beat, or a moment of silence, comforts me. I build with the most 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.” After leaving the Soviet Union in 1980 and settling in West Berlin, the composer captured a cult following thanks to Manfred Eicher’s ECM Records. “More than 40 years ago, I heard music of Arvo Pärt for the first time,” Eicher tells Apple Music Classical. “The encounter was unexpected and formative. The luminous soundscape, with its gesture of quietude, was unique and unheard-of, and awakened in me the desire to meet the composer and record his music.” Works such as Kanon Pokajanen, Passio, The Deer’s Cry and Adam’s Lament found a mass audience hungry for spiritual experiences yet alienated from religion, leading Pärt to become one of the world’s most frequently performed composers.