from crisis to creation

Pärt’s music was not immediately embraced by the public. Early on, he wrote highly modernist, experimental works. The complexity of this style, combined with the restrictions of the Soviet regime, led him into an existential crisis. Inspired by Gregorian chant and Renaissance polyphony, after a decade of silence he emerged with the stripped-down musical language that would become his signature. Everything accelerated when he emigrated from Estonia to Berlin in 1980, where he could develop his style free of restrictions.

“To move forward after a crisis, one must break through the wall. For me, this happened through a series of discoveries—often by chance. One, which later proved decisive, was hearing a few seconds of a Gregorian chant in a record shop. In it, I discovered a world I had never known: a world without harmony, meter, timbre, instrumentation, without anything. At that moment I understood the path I must take, and a long journey began in my unconscious mind.”

Music for the Soviet Screen

Still in the Soviet Union, Pärt composed scores for numerous radio plays, films, and documentaries. Between 1962 and 1974, he wrote music for nineteen stop-motion animations for Tallinnfilm. These projects offered him a way to experiment with serial and tonal techniques. In total, he produced around fifty such scores, which do not appear in his official catalogue.

A Key Ally

British conductor and singer Paul Hillier played a key role in Pärt’s international breakthrough. Deeply drawn to the spiritual intensity of the tintinnabuli works, Hillier and his Hilliard Ensemble championed Pärt’s music from the early 1980s onwards. As thanks, Pärt dedicated Miserere to Hillier and the ensemble, who premiered it on 17 June 1989 at the Abbey of Saint-Georges de Boscherville in Rouen.

across the world

Another milestone was Pärt’s collaboration with producer Manfred Eicher and the label ECM (Edition of Contemporary Music). Known mainly for avant-garde jazz, ECM launched its New Series for classical music in the mid-1980s. Beginning in 1984, Pärt’s works were released under this banner, with Tabula Rasa (featuring Gidon Kremer) becoming a landmark success. Through ECM, Pärt reached audiences who would not normally listen to classical or sacred music, making his name known worldwide.

Pärt today

Today, Pärt is the most frequently performed living composer. His works are often used in films—Spiegel im Spiegel and Fratres appear in productions by directors such as Terrence Malick (The Tree of Life) and Paolo Sorrentino (La Grande Bellezza)—further cementing his global fame.