Arvo Pärt was born in 1935 in Paide, Estonia. After studies with Heino Eller’s composition class in Tallinn, he worked from 1958 to 1967 as a sound engineer for Estonian Radio. In 1980 he emigrated with his family to Vienna and then, one year later, travelled on a DAAD scholarship to Berlin.

As one of the most radical representatives of the so-called ‘Soviet Avant-garde’, Pärt’s work passed through a profound evolutionary process. His first creative period began with neo-classical piano music. Then followed ten years in which he made his own individual use of the most important compositional techniques of the avant-garde: dodecaphony, composition with sound masses, aleatoricism, collage technique. Nekrolog (1960), the first piece of dodecaphonic music written in Estonia, and Perpetuum mobile (1963) gained the composer his first recognition by the West. In his collage works ‘avant-garde’ and ‘early’ music confront each other boldly and irreconcilably, a confrontation which attains its most extreme expression in his last collage piece Credo (1968). But by this time all the compositional devices Pärt had employed to date had lost all their former fascination and begun to seem pointless to him. The search for his own voice drove him into a withdrawal from creative work lasting nearly eight years, during which he engaged with the study of Gregorian Chant, the Notre Dame school and classical vocal polyphony.

In 1976 music emerged from this silence – the little piano piece Für Alina. It is obvious that with this work Pärt had discovered his own path. The new compositional principle used here for the first time, which he called tintinnabuli (Latin for ‘little bells’), has defined his work right up to today. The ‘tintinnabuli principle’ does not strive towards a progressive inrease in complexity, but rather towards an extreme reduction of sound materials and a limitation to the essential.

Creative Periods

I. 1958-1968

Neoclassicism – Avant-garde
As befits one of the most radical exponents of the so-called Soviet Avant-garde, Pärt’s oeuvre bears witness to the composer’s own deep-reaching musical evolution. His first period of creativity began with neo-classicist piano music (Two Sonatinas op. 1 and Partita op. 2), with the next ten years being given over to the most important compositional techniques of the avant-garde – twelve tone serialism, sonic fields, indeterminism, collage technique – all of which saw highly original use in his music.         
Nekrolog (1960) was the young composer’s first important work and, at the same time, the first twelve-tone work of Estonian provenance. It was both his first success and his first scandal, provoking official accusations of “western decadence”.
Perpetuum Mobile (1963) is one single, pulsing, powerful wave of sound, which is constructed from variously pulsating individual parts. The piece is characterized by its serial structure, which is reduced to radically simple formulae. Both works, Nekrolog and Perpetuum Mobile, garnered the composer initial recognition in the West.
Symphony No. 1 (1963) – the composition with which he earned his diploma. Arvo Pärt left the academy as an experienced and mature composer.

Collage Technique
Collage sur B-A-C-H (1964). Pro et Contra, Symphony Nr. 2 (1966). The composer’s further stylistic development led him to experiment with collage technique. In the works of this period, Pärt juxtaposed two highly discrepant ideas of sound: avant-garde passages alternate with direct quotations or imitations of earlier musical styles. His own music suddenly took on the nature of arena, playing host to battles between the stylistic means of modernity (Pärt’s music) and the simple, transcendental beauty on which he had set his sights (the musical quotations). New and old music stood opposite one another, irreconcilably at odds.  This sort of confrontation experienced its ultimate, unsurpassed climax in his last collage work, Credo.
Credo (1968). With this work, in which the composer took on Bach’s Prelude in C Major (WTC 1), Pärt intensified and hardened his musical language to an extreme degree – “an amassment of violent power, straining at its own limits like an avalanche” (Part). This battle between the two musical worlds is concluded by Bach’s victory over the modernistic cataclysms in Pärt’s own music.

II. 1968 to the present

Crisis: 1968-1976
The 'triumph' of the musical quotations in Credo marked a decisive turning-point in Pärt’s development. From that point on, he regarded all his previous compositional techniques as meaningless. Pärt’s quest for his own musical voice drove him into a creative crisis that dragged on for eight years, with the composer unable to predict when he might once again emerge. During this period, Pärt had to “learn how to walk all over again” (Pärt). In the wake of this artistic turning point, Pärt withdrew completely and stopped composing. In search of a new musical language, he studied Gregorian chant, the Notre Dame School and classic vocal polyphony. Pärt’s intensive study of these eras was essential to his new outlook on music, a fact best illustrated by his statement that “…hidden behind the art of connecting two or three notes lies a cosmic mystery.” The composer’s eight years of silence were steeped in the intense desire to comprehend precisely this. Pärt’s long silence was broken only by the Symphony No. 3 (1971), his sole authorized transitional work from this period.

1976: Tintinnabuli
In 1976, the long silence finally gave birth to music – to the piano miniature Für Alina. It is clear that, with this piece, Pärt had found himself, and the compositional technique he used then for the first time inspires his oeuvre to this day. The technique, upon which Pärt has bestowed the name Tintinnabuli (Latin for 'little bells'), is achieved not through a progressive increase in complexity, but much rather results from an extreme reduction of the sonic material and from the discipline of limiting oneself solely to that which is essential.
The Tintinnabuli technique of composition is a process by which a form of polyphony is built out of tonal material drawn from beyond the paradigms of functional harmony. In vocal works, structure and form are additionally subject to all parameters of the text (syllables, words, accents, grammar, punctuation).
At the style’s core lies a 'duality', a new sort of 'basic structure': two parts join to form an inseparable whole. One of the two is the omnipresent major/minor triad, the notes of which are bound to the other – the so-called 'melodic voice' – by strict rules. This 'duality' of two juxtaposed parts, which exist only in connection with one another, joins to form the smallest and most important building block of the Tintinnabuli style.
The combination of this compositional style’s formal logic and its starkly reduced sonic material inevitably results in an extremely dense musical texture. The focus on the basic musical unit remains Pärt’s foremost concern. Thanks to his ascetic compositional approach, his music leaves the listener with an impression of concentration and objectivity. "Music,” says Pärt, “must exist in and of itself … the mystery must be present, independent of any particular instrument … the highest value of music lies beyond its mere tone colour.” This, the composer’s aesthetic credo, has resulted in many hitherto unusual performance practice characteristics. A case in point is the work Fratres. It was originally composed as music in three parts – without, however, being connected to any specific tone colour. Consequently, Fratres can play host to various constellations of tone colours, a fact which has led to versions for various types of ensembles.
The birth of the Tintinnabuli style is rooted firmly in the history of European music. One might view this style as a synthesis of old and new, with classic vocal polyphony on the one hand and serial music on the other. Far from copying either style, the composer has internalized the essences of both and combined them with his compositional technique, which one might call a sort of 'new austerity' (quite literally: 'punctus contra punctum'). The result is an extremely individual world of sound marked by both the impersonal and the personal, by both discipline and subjectivity.
By now, there have been several attempts to label the Tintinnabuli style such as “new simplicity”, “minimal music”, etc. Tintinnabuli is a new phenomenon which is difficult to analyse and classify by way of existing musicological standards. With his compositions, Pärt has brought about a paradigm-shift in modern music, and the attempt to analyse this shift has in turn given rise to its own process of creative discovery.

Nora Pärt, Saale Kareda

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* The Credo scandal – At the time of its première, Pärt’s open affirmation of his Christian faith (the sung text 'Credo in Jesum Christum') amounted to an additional political provocation, and it was viewed as an attack on the regime. This scandal was part of the wild, incessant back-and-forth between approval and outright rejection, which had begun with Nekrolog in 1960 and finally culminated in Pärt’s emigration: in 1980, Estonia’s communist government encouraged him to leave the country.