Arvo Pärt (11 September 1935) is an Estonian composer of classical and sacr… Read Full Bio ↴Arvo Pärt (11 September 1935) is an Estonian composer of classical and sacred music. Since the late 1970s, Pärt has worked in a minimalist style that employs his self-invented compositional technique, tintinnabuli. His music is in part inspired by Gregorian chant. Pärt has been the most performed living composer in the world for 5 consecutive years.
Arvo Pärt was born in Paide, Järva County, Estonia. His musical studies began in 1954 at the Tallinn Music Secondary School, interrupted less than a year later while he fulfilled his National Service obligation as oboist and side-drummer in an army band. He returned to Middle School for a year before joining the Tallinn Conservatory in 1957, where his composition teacher was Professor Heino Eller. Pärt started work as a recording engineer with Estonian Radio, wrote music for the stage and received numerous commissions for film scores so that, by the time he graduated from the Conservatory in 1963, he could already be considered a professional composer. A year before leaving, he won first prize in the All-Union Young Composers' Competition for a children's cantata, Our Garden, and an oratorio, Stride of the World.
Today Arvo Pärt is best known for his choral works, which he started to produce in the 1980s, after his emigration from the former Soviet Union to Germany, Berlin. Before that he had written his most recognised works from the 1970s, Fratres, Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten, and Tabula Rasa. In 1978 Pärt composed Spiegel im Spiegel (Mirror in Mirror).
Pärt's oeuvre is generally divided into two periods. His early works ranged from rather severe neo-classical styles influenced by Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Bartók. He then began to compose using Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique and serialism. This, however, not only earned the ire of the Soviet establishment, but also proved to be a creative dead-end. When early works were banned by Soviet censors, Pärt entered the first of several periods of contemplative silence, during which he studied choral music from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries.
The spirit of early European polyphony informed the composition of Pärt's transitional third symphony (1971); thereafter he immersed himself in early music, re-investigating the roots of western music. He studied plainsong, Gregorian chant, and the emergence of polyphony in the Renaissance. The music that began to emerge after this period was radically different. This period of new compositions included Fratres, Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten, and Tabula rasa.
Pärt describes it as tintinnabuli: like the ringing of bells. The music is characterised by simple harmonies, often single unadorned notes, or triad chords which form the basis of western harmony. These are reminiscent of ringing bells. Tintinnabuli works are rhythmically simple, and do not change tempo. The influence of early music is clear. Another characteristic of Pärt's later works is that they are frequently settings for sacred texts, although he mostly chooses Latin or the Church Slavonic language used in Orthodox liturgy instead of his native Estonian language. Large-scale works inspired by religious texts include St John Passion, Te Deum, and Litany. Choral works from this period include Magnificat and The Beatitudes.
A new composition, Für Lennart, written for the memory of the Estonian President Lennart Meri, was played at his funeral service on 2nd April 2006. In response to the murder of the Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya in Moscow on 7th October 2006, Pärt declared that all his works performed in 2006-2007 would be in commemoration of her death.
Pärt was honoured as the featured composer of the 2008 RTÉ Living Music Festival in Dublin, Ireland. He was also recently commissioned by Louth Contemporary Music Society to compose a new choral work based on St Patrick's Breastplate, to be premiered in 2008 in Louth, Ireland.
Arvo Pärt was born in Paide, Järva County, Estonia. His musical studies began in 1954 at the Tallinn Music Secondary School, interrupted less than a year later while he fulfilled his National Service obligation as oboist and side-drummer in an army band. He returned to Middle School for a year before joining the Tallinn Conservatory in 1957, where his composition teacher was Professor Heino Eller. Pärt started work as a recording engineer with Estonian Radio, wrote music for the stage and received numerous commissions for film scores so that, by the time he graduated from the Conservatory in 1963, he could already be considered a professional composer. A year before leaving, he won first prize in the All-Union Young Composers' Competition for a children's cantata, Our Garden, and an oratorio, Stride of the World.
Today Arvo Pärt is best known for his choral works, which he started to produce in the 1980s, after his emigration from the former Soviet Union to Germany, Berlin. Before that he had written his most recognised works from the 1970s, Fratres, Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten, and Tabula Rasa. In 1978 Pärt composed Spiegel im Spiegel (Mirror in Mirror).
Pärt's oeuvre is generally divided into two periods. His early works ranged from rather severe neo-classical styles influenced by Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Bartók. He then began to compose using Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique and serialism. This, however, not only earned the ire of the Soviet establishment, but also proved to be a creative dead-end. When early works were banned by Soviet censors, Pärt entered the first of several periods of contemplative silence, during which he studied choral music from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries.
The spirit of early European polyphony informed the composition of Pärt's transitional third symphony (1971); thereafter he immersed himself in early music, re-investigating the roots of western music. He studied plainsong, Gregorian chant, and the emergence of polyphony in the Renaissance. The music that began to emerge after this period was radically different. This period of new compositions included Fratres, Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten, and Tabula rasa.
Pärt describes it as tintinnabuli: like the ringing of bells. The music is characterised by simple harmonies, often single unadorned notes, or triad chords which form the basis of western harmony. These are reminiscent of ringing bells. Tintinnabuli works are rhythmically simple, and do not change tempo. The influence of early music is clear. Another characteristic of Pärt's later works is that they are frequently settings for sacred texts, although he mostly chooses Latin or the Church Slavonic language used in Orthodox liturgy instead of his native Estonian language. Large-scale works inspired by religious texts include St John Passion, Te Deum, and Litany. Choral works from this period include Magnificat and The Beatitudes.
A new composition, Für Lennart, written for the memory of the Estonian President Lennart Meri, was played at his funeral service on 2nd April 2006. In response to the murder of the Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya in Moscow on 7th October 2006, Pärt declared that all his works performed in 2006-2007 would be in commemoration of her death.
Pärt was honoured as the featured composer of the 2008 RTÉ Living Music Festival in Dublin, Ireland. He was also recently commissioned by Louth Contemporary Music Society to compose a new choral work based on St Patrick's Breastplate, to be premiered in 2008 in Louth, Ireland.
Spiegel Im Spiegel
Arvo Pärt Lyrics
We have lyrics for 'Spiegel Im Spiegel' by these artists:
O-PARTS Das Letze was du siehst Ist meine Spiegelreflexion Die Mensc…
We have lyrics for these tracks by Arvo Pärt:
Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten (Instrumental)…
Credo Credo Credo in unum deum, Patrem omnipotentem, Factorem cael…
De Profundis De profundis clamavi ad te Domine Domine exaudi vocem meam f…
Es sang vor langen Jahren Es sang vor langen Jahren (Clemens Maria Brentano) Es sang …
Magnificat Magnificat anima mea Dominum. My soul doth magnify the Lord,…
Nunc Dimittis Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine, secundum verbum tuum in p…
Procedentem sponsum Procedentem sponsum Procedentem sponsum de thalamo; Laude di…
Sanctus Sanctus Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus. Dominus deus Sabaoth. P…
Summa Credo in unum Deum. Patrem omnipotentem, Factorem caeli et t…
The lyrics are frequently found in the comments by searching or by filtering for lyric videos
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@christopherceja5340
I hope you are okay. How is family life now?
I also want to leave my abusive family but im unsure a bit how and when.
I hope we can confort eachother knowing our struggles are the same
Would love to talk, chris. I just turned 18 in June. Hope this doesnt turn you off, lol.
Im a very gentle person, well i try to lol.
Hope to hear from you, bye chris. peace and love
@ehabs07
To me, this evokes images of somehow being able to travel thousands of miles and enter my beautiful but war-torn country of Syria, traversing invincibly through the bullets, shells, rubble, and bodies to reach my childhood home, and the long demolished house of my grandmother, in a world where she is somehow alive again, in a world when I can still smell the beautiful aroma of her jasmine tree and her morning coffee, and hear the wind whistle through her tree-filled backyard in the star-filled night sky. Embarking on this journey through time is impossible except in my dreams, as I keep waking up to the realization that things have changed. They always do...
This piece simply but perfectly portrays the mystical realization, through an out-of-body experience, of somehow glancing at your own physical being as well as your surroundings and the whole world, with an almost impossible paradoxical dichotomy of simultaneous attachment and detachment. That beautiful dichotomy state that draws you to observe, through a bird's eye view, the oddly sad irony of our world's randomness, makes you also deeply appreciate the ephemeral nature life as a whole, the briefness of episodes in our lives of that we thought will never end, the transient physical being, and the omnipresence of what is left behind, after we are physically gone...
You can be a believer in a supreme being and believe that, after we depart our physical bodies, we will be ultimately souls that will traverse our boundless universe on a trip to the heavens, like a feather that the wind carries far away. You can also be a skeptic and believe that we are but atoms that will someday become part of a tree or otherwise aimlessly travel the deep ends of space on a haphazard quest to a planet far away, where we will be part of a new physical body in an alien world.
That dichotomy leads to other dichotomies, those of hope and despair, those of fear and comfort, those begging to know the whys of the complexity of being human and those realizing that being human is simply about living in voluntary and involuntary dichotomies, after all. Amid all the randomness emerges a common theme, that of entropy and the constancy of change. It makes me peacefully cope with the fact that I will likely no longer be able to enjoy those poignant evenings at my family's peaceful summer house, which is now illegally occupied by foreign fighters and their families. It makes me more steadfast in planting my roots and leaving my footprints all over again, in a different place, at a different time, never looking back for fear of crying.
Only a genius like Arvo Pärt can take you on this trip through the powerful simplicity of his piano notes. And only a transformative artist can make one piece mean something different to each of us.
@avacantmind3394
Please do not listen to this voice kehv.
It is not you.
This might not work everytime, but most of the time :
Have you ever noticed that you can feel Love simultaneously to this darkness ?
Isn`t that a beautiful miracle ?
This Love, my friend, is what YOU really are.
This is the truth.
So everytime this voice sounds convincing, put your Hand on your Heart and just tell it :
"I am not you. I AM LOVE. I hear you. But i love life. So i will not do what you want. Instead i will love you. Thank you for coming to me so that i can give you what you are longing for".
Continue to feel both without feeding the need to escape this.
This will do miracles.
Just Love what is everytime you can and when you are not able to;
ask that you be filled with Love from whatever you believe in and open up to receive.
Love my friend.
Just Love.
💛
@kevinmccoy3653
I laid down upon the shore
And dreamed a little space
I heard the great waves break and roar
The sun was on my face
My idle hands and fingers brown
Played with the pebbles grey
The waves came up, the waves went down
Most thundering and gay
The pebbles, they were smooth and round
And warm upon my hands
Like little people I had found
Sitting among the sands
The grains of sand, so shining small
Soft through my fingers ran
The sun shone down upon it all
And so my dream began
How all of this had been before
How ages far away
I lay on some forgotten shore
As here I lie today
The waves came shining up the sands
As here today they shine
And in my pre-Pelasgian hands
The sand was warm and fine
I have forgotten whence I came
Or what my home might be
Or by what strange and savage name
I called that thundering sea
I only know the sun shone down
As still it shines today
And in my fingers long and brown
The little pebbles play.
Pre-existence-- By Francis Cornford
@Anton-cn4mk
Yesterday at a concert in a church in Sweden they played Arvo Pärts music in a setting with candles all over the church. When Spiegel im Spiegel was playing i looked around and could see people with their eyes closed, someone cried, someone layed down, someone looked up. It made me feel that we were all connected. We are all in need of support and everyone is carrying their unique luggage. It is a beautiful song that really brings a lot of feelings. Simplicity from a master composer who understands that less is more.
@user-jz4vt8wm8e
Though we are one with God, He allows us our spiritual individuality
@welshriver
I work at a coffee shop. We usually play jazz and folk music throughout the day. One day, after I told everyone that we were closing up and that they had to go, I put on this song. Everone shuffled out the door and there was only one woman left. She was cleaning up a stack of papers that she was reading and she told me she would be on her way out. I told her to take her time. As I was counting the till she came up to the counter and asked if she could stay until this song was over. I told her that would be fine. Ten minutes later she came up to the counter, with small tears on her cheeks and said, "Thank you, I needed that." I've always felt a profound attachment to this song. A kind of solace, a place to go to think; just about anything. I still wonder what was going on inside of her listening to this. It seemed important. More important than what goes on inside of me while listening to this, although both are puzzling. I still keep coming back to this song trying to figure out what it's all about.
@ajpdeschenes
My wife and I have some discs of Arvo Pärt and we sometimes listen to them while driving. One day we stopped at a church, in front of the sea while this piece was playing. I couldn't stop the car, just stopped the engine but let the music playing. Something was happening. The music, the movement of the waves, the light, the moment, us... everything was connected in this second and whe kept listening to the music, without a word. It's beautiful how none of us had to talk, we just stopped everything at the same moment and stayed silent. It was almost religious. I think it was in some way. Or we can call it an "aesthetic moment".
@F_the_T
Jdt Walters perhaps you are feeling what the composer felt, or the sense of the muse that compelled him to write
@Rugerfred
@Jdt Walters Thank you for sharing this. Your comment was heartwarming in a way I forgot the Internet could be. Thanks.
@syriraqi
One of my best friends committed suicide one month ago , this masterpiece music by Arvo Pärt helped me a lot to grief and ease my aching soul.
@conradclipper
U a good writer brodan
@stuartmcdonald2974
My daughter suffered a massive heart attack when she was two weeks old. She spent 6 weeks in ICU hooked up to machines. The doctors said she would die but she lived, the doctors don't really know why. I played this tune over and over in her room in the ICU. Thank you Arvo Part. Thank you everyone and everything, I love you. Especially those who know what this music does. It is a blessing. Peace.
@babasteTe
i hope your baby is doing fine. Wish you all the best