Arvo Pärt
composer
Arvo Pärt underwent an astonishing transformation as a composer: initially writing in the Neoclassical style, in 1960 he produced his [Nekrolog], Estonia’s first twelve-tone composition. At the end of the 1970s, he finally found his way to meditative music based on triads and melodic lines, whose structure is reduced to the extreme. Pärt himself called this style “Tintinnabuli”, after the Latin word for bells: in the same way as monks leave their riches behind on their spiritual path, he had saved himself with “naked monophony”, possessing only the bare essentials – “the triad alone”.
