Arvo Pärt Essentials

By combining icy instrumental textures, such as brittle bells or scraping violins, with instantly memorable melodic fragments and strange harmonies, this Estonian composer created that rarest of things: a popular and experimental body of work. His style of “tintinnabuli”—which calls to mind those bells again—was introduced on early works such as “Für Alina” and “Spiegel im Spiegel.” Informed by his Eastern Orthodox Christianity and a wealth of western music styles (including minimalism), Pärt's catalog has also been influential in the world of film-scoring—just as you might expect from a composer with striking pieces like “Fratres” and “Tabula Rasa” in his oeuvre.