Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, a resident of Berlin, has often expressed himself on the fundamental principle of his musical creativity, called the “Tintinnabuli Style” (from the Latin tintinnabulum): “Tintinnabuli is an astonishing process – an escape to voluntary poverty: the holy men left all their wealth behind and went into the wasteland. In this sense the composer would also like to leave the whole arsenal behind and rescue himself through naked solitude, possessing only the barest necessities – simply and solely the triad.” A conscious reduction of musical means and asceticism are the identifying marks attributed to Pärt´s style, however these concepts mostly describe the outer characteristics of the compositions and hardly do justice to their effect on the listener. With their archaic sound patterns and the triad surfaces moving within themselves, Arvo Pärt´s music possesses the property of putting the listener into trance-like states, and, in this effect æsthetic, returns to a kind of archaic understanding of music. Since the 1980´s, Pärt has largely concentrated his attentions on the creation of sacred music.
Born on September 11, 1935 in Paide, Estonia