Pärt

Pärt was born in Paide, Estonia in 1935. In 1957 he studied composition with Heino Eller at the Tallinn Conservatory.

Pärt started work as a recording engineer with Estonian Radio, wrote music for the stage and received numerous commisions for film scores so that, by the time he graduated from the Conservatory in 1963, he could already be considered a professional composer.

In the early 1960s  Pärt used serial techniques. His Nekrolog of 1960 is the first Estonian serial composition. In the late sixties Pärt experimented with collage techniques.

In the beginning of 1970’s Pärt took time to study French and Franco-Flemish choral part music from the 14th to 16th centuries – Machaut, Ockeghem, Obrecht, Josquin. At the very beginning of the '70's, he wrote a few transitional compositions in the spirit of early European polyphony, the 3rd Symphony of 1971 being an example: "a joyous piece of music" but not yet "the end of my despair and search."

After that he didn’t compose till 1976. He invented (or discovered) the tintinabuli-technique. Tintinnabuli means little bells in latin. Pärt's tintinnabular music is characterized by two types of voices, the first of which (dubbed the "tintinnabular voice") arpeggiates the tonic triad, and the second of which moves diatonically in stepwise motion. Für Alina is the first tintinabuli-piece he wrote. In 1977 he wrote his well-known Fratres, Cantus In Memoriam Benjamin Britten and Tabula Rasa. In the eighties Pärt leaved Estonia and settled in Vienna and later in Berlin. He has concentrated then on setting religious texts. He wrote St. John Passion (1982), Magnificat (1989), Te Deum (1984-86) and many more.