Arvo Pärt (Estonian pronunciation: [ˈɑrvo ˈpært]; born 11 September 1935) is an Estonian composer. Since the late 1970s, Pärt has used a minimalist style in his music, which includes a special way of composing called tintinnabuli that he created. His music is inspired by Gregorian chant. Some of his most performed works are Fratres (1977), Spiegel im Spiegel (1978), and Für Alina (1976). From 2011 to 2018, and again in 2022 and 2025, Pärt was the most performed living composer in the world. The Arvo Pärt Centre, located in Laulasmaa, opened to the public in 2018.
Early life, family and education
Arvo Pärt was born on September 11, 1935, in Paide, Järva County, Estonia. He was raised by his mother and stepfather in Rakvere, a town in northern Estonia. As a child, he used the highest and lowest notes on the family piano because the middle part was broken.
Pärt began his musical training at age seven when he started attending music school in Rakvere. By his early teenage years, he was writing his own music. His first serious study took place in 1954 at the Tallinn Music Middle School. However, he left the school for a short time to serve in the military, where he played the oboe and percussion in an army band. After completing his military service, he attended the Tallinn Conservatory, where he studied composition with Heino Eller. It was said that "he just seemed to shake his sleeves, and the notes would fall out." During the 1950s, he completed his first vocal composition, the cantata Meie aed ("Our Garden"), written for a children's choir and orchestra. He graduated from the conservatory in 1963.
Career
As a student, Pärt wrote music for films and plays, creating scores for more than fifty movies. Although filmmaking was not his main source of inspiration, these works allowed him to explore serial and tonal techniques, a mix that later influenced his compositions in the 1960s. From 1957 to 1967, he worked as a sound producer for the Estonian public radio broadcaster Eesti Rahvusringhääling.
In 1962, Tikhon Khrennikov criticized Pärt for using serialism in Nekrolog (1960), the first 12-tone music written in Estonia, calling it evidence of Pärt’s "susceptibility to foreign influences." However, nine months later, Pärt won First Prize in a competition with 1,200 entries, awarded by the all-Union Society of Composers. This showed the Soviet government could not agree on what music was allowed. His first clearly religious piece, Credo (1968), marked a major change in his career and life. Personally, he faced a creative crisis and stopped using the techniques he had used before. Socially, the religious nature of the piece led to unofficial criticism, and his music was no longer played in concerts. For the next eight years, he composed little, instead studying medieval and Renaissance music to develop a new style. In 1972, he converted from Lutheranism to Orthodox Christianity.
Pärt returned as a composer in 1976 with music in his new style, called tintinnabuli.
On December 10, 2011, Pope Benedict XVI named Pärt a member of the Pontifical Council for Culture for a five-year term that could be renewed.
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 his music was, Pärt said, "I don't know what is Estonian… I don't think about these things." Unlike many Estonian composers, Pärt never used the country’s national epic, Kalevipoeg, as inspiration, even in his early works. He said, "My Kalevipoeg is Jesus Christ."
Music
Arvo Pärt is known for works such as Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten for string orchestra and bell (1977) and the string quintet Fratres I (1977, revised 1983). He later adapted Fratres I for string orchestra and percussion, and created Fratres II for solo violin (1980) and Fratres III for cello ensemble (1980).
Pärt is often linked to the minimalist music style, specifically called "mystic minimalism" or "holy minimalism." He is considered one of the first composers to develop this style, along with Henryk Górecki and John Tavener. His early fame came from instrumental works like Tabula Rasa and Spiegel im Spiegel, but his choral compositions are now also widely appreciated.
During the time Pärt was creating music, Estonia was under Soviet control. Although Estonia had been independent when Pärt was born, the Soviet Union took over the country in 1940 due to an agreement between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. Estonia remained under Soviet rule for more than 50 years, except for a short period of German occupation during World War II.
Pärt’s music is usually divided into two periods. In his early years, he used styles influenced by composers like Shostakovich, Prokofiev, and Bartók. Later, he experimented with Schoenberg’s twelve-tone technique and serialism. However, this approach angered Soviet authorities and led to creative challenges. When Soviet censors banned his early works, Pärt entered a period of silence, during which he studied choral music from the 14th to 16th centuries. His biographer, Paul Hillier, noted that Pärt felt "completely desperate" and lacked the motivation to compose during this time.
In Credo (1968), written for solo piano, orchestra, and chorus, Pärt used avant-garde techniques. This work differed from his earlier atonal and tintinnabuli compositions. Inspired by 14th- and 16th-century religious music, he combined traditional styles with modern techniques to express his faith in God. The Soviet Union banned the piece because of its religious themes, even though it used modern methods.
Pärt’s Third Symphony (1971) was influenced by early European polyphony. After this, he focused on studying plainsong, Gregorian chant, and the development of polyphony in the Renaissance.
The music Pärt created after this period was very different. Works from 1977, such as Fratres, Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten, and Tabula Rasa, reflect his "tintinnabuli" style, which he described as "like the ringing of bells." Spiegel im Spiegel (1978) is a famous example used in films. This style uses simple harmonies, often single notes or triads, and has a rhythm that does not change tempo. Each word in a text is assigned a specific pitch and duration, and phrases are formed by connecting words. Many of Pärt’s later works use sacred texts in Latin or Church Slavonic, rather than Estonian. Large-scale religious works include Berliner Messe, St. John Passion, and Te Deum. The Litany text was written by the 4th-century theologian John Chrysostom. Choral works from this time include Magnificat and The Beatitudes. While these works are religious in nature, some scholars, like Andreas Dorschel, suggest that Pärt’s music may have influenced audiences’ views of religion in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Reception and later compositions
From 2011 to 2018, 2022, and 2025, Arvo Pärt was the most performed living composer in the world. Between 2019 and 2021, 2023, and 2024, he was the second-most performed composer, following film composer John Williams. In 2025, which marked Pärt’s 90th birthday, the most performed contemporary works were Fratres, Da pacem Domine, Magnificat, and Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten.
Steve Reich has noted that Pärt’s music became widely known in the West largely due to Manfred Eicher, who began recording Pärt’s compositions for ECM Records in 1984. Pärt composed Cecilia, vergine romana, based on an Italian text about the life and martyrdom of Saint Cecilia, the patron saint of music, for choir and orchestra. It was commissioned for the Great Jubilee in Rome and performed near Saint Cecilia’s feast day on November 22 by the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, conducted by Myung-whun Chung.
In 2005, Pärt was invited by Walter Fink to be the 15th composer featured in the Rheingau Musik Festival’s annual Komponistenporträt, with four concerts. His chamber music includes Für Alina for piano, performed by Pärt himself, Spiegel im Spiegel, and Psalom for string quartet. The Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra’s chamber ensemble performed Trisagion, Fratres, and Cantus, along with works by 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 alongside 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, performed Pärt’s organ music and vocal works, including Pari intervallo, De profundis, and Miserere. Pärt’s Für Lennart, written in memory of Estonian President Lennart Meri, was played at Meri’s funeral on March 26, 2006.
In response to the murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya in Moscow on October 7, 2006, Pärt stated that all of his works performed in 2006 and 2007 would honor her memory. He said, “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.”
Pärt was honored as the featured composer of the 2008 Raidió Teilifís Éireann Living Music Festival in Dublin, Ireland. He also composed a new choral work based on “Saint Patrick’s Breastplate” for the Louth Contemporary Music Society, which premiered in 2008 in County Louth, Ireland. The piece, The Deer’s Cry, was his first Irish commission and debuted in Drogheda and Dundalk in February 2008.
Pärt’s 2008 Fourth Symphony, titled Los Angeles, was dedicated to Mikhail Khodorkovsky. It was his first symphony since the 1971 Third Symphony. The symphony premiered in Los Angeles, California, at the Walt Disney Concert Hall on January 10, 2009, and was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Classical Contemporary Composition in 2010.
On January 26, 2014, Tõnu Kaljuste conducted the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, the Sinfonietta Riga, the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra, the Latvian Radio Choir, and the Vox Clamantis ensemble in a performance of Pärt’s Adam’s Lament, which won a Grammy for Best Choral Performance. Estonian musicologist Kerri Kotta described Pärt’s music as “glocal,” meaning it blends global and local influences. She noted that Pärt has “been able to translate something very human into sound that crosses the borders normally separating people.”
Personal life
In 1972, Pärt converted to Orthodox Christianity after marrying his second wife, Nora. Their son, Michael Pärt, born in 1977, is a music producer and music editor.
In 1980, after a long struggle with Soviet officials, he was allowed to move to another country with his wife and their two sons. He first lived in Vienna, where he became an Austrian citizen, and then moved to Berlin in 1981. He returned to Estonia around the start of the 21st century and lived in Berlin and Tallinn for a time. He now lives in Laulasmaa, about 35 kilometers (22 miles) from Tallinn. He speaks fluent German because he has lived in German-speaking countries since 1980.
In 2010, the Pärt family created the Arvo Pärt Centre, an institution that manages his personal archive, in the village of Laulasmaa. A new building for the centre opened to visitors on October 17, 2018. It includes a concert hall, a library, and research areas. The centre also provides educational programs for children and serves as an international information hub about Pärt’s life and work.
In April 2020, Pärt gave a rare interview to the Spanish newspaper ABC about the COVID-19 pandemic. He described it as a "mega fast" and said it reminded him to follow the example of John Updike, who once said he tried to work with the same calm as the masters of the Middle Ages, who carved church pews in places where they could not be seen.
On September 11, 2025, he celebrated his 90th birthday.
Citations and references
Hillier, Paul. (1997). Arvo Pärt. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-816616-0 (paper)