Psalm arvo part biography

The instrumental miniature Psalom was initially composed as two-part music without specific instrumentation and was completed on the composer's 50th.
Pärt was born in Paide, in Järva County, Estonia.
Although composed in Estonia in 1977, it premiered in Germany in 1984.

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Pärt, Arvo

There can’t be too many composers whose music has directly inspired the creation of a new record label, but it was hearing Pärt’s modal and pared down music on the radio that prompted Manfred Eicher, head of the Munich-based ECM records, to create his New Series label in 1984. Pärt has since established himself as not only one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary music, but also among the most performed and recorded.

Born on 11 September 1935 in Paide, Estonia, he studied composition at the Tallinn Conservatoire under the influential teacher Heino Eller. Although Pärt’s current standing rests almost exclusively on the works he has composed since the unveiling of the tintinnabuli style in 1976, announced by the crystalline beauty of his piano miniature Für Alina, during the 1960s he had already become something of an enfant terrible in Soviet musical circles. His first mature work, the darkly expressive orchestral piece Nekrolog (1960), was also the first Estonian work to employ serialism. This provoked the wrath of the all-powerful head of the Soviet C

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Arvo Pärt Special 2: 'If you want to understand my music read this'

Playing through this quiet piano miniature I was dumbstruck by its crystalline beauty. The piece was Pärt’s Für Alina. I was hooked.

This was 25 years ago when I was an undergraduate at Goldsmiths, University of London. Pärt at that time was virtually unknown in the West. Since then, he has become one of the most widely performed, recorded and fêted contemporary composers, one of a select few who make their living solely through composition.

The difficulty that Simon Broughton faced when trying to get Pärt to talk about his music on camera chimes entirely with my own experience when I came to write my PhD on the composer. I had the good fortune of meeting Pärt several times during my research, including the slightly terrifying experience of giving a paper on his Credo in the composer's presence at the Royal Academy of Music. One particularly memorable afternoon was spent with Arvo and his wife, Nora, at the Orthodox Monastery of St John the Baptist in Tolleshunt Knights, Essex (the Pärts owned a propert

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‘De profundis’ –Arvo Pärt (Paul Hillier, Theater of Voices)

‘Cantate Domino’–Arvo Pärt (Paul Hillier, Theater of Voices)

II don’t consider myself to be a very spiritual person. I’m empirical, skeptical and cynical, dwelling in the here and now. If pressed, I define myself as ‘observant’, rather than ‘religious’. But Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is upon us, and some sort self-reckoning is enescapable.

Last week we snuck outside the synagogue for a spiritual boost from Brother Ray and Sister Aretha’s Southern Baptist fervor. This week, as the gates creak slowly closed, we’re traveling all the way to the Baltic Sea for musical inspiration from a contemporary classical composition of Psalm 130, a central prayer in these Days of Repentence:

שִׁיר הַמַּעֲלוֹת: מִמַּעֲמַקִּים קְרָאתִיךָ ה’.

1 Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee, O Lord.

אֲדֹנָי, שִׁמְעָה בְקוֹלִי: תִּהְיֶינָה אָזְנֶיךָ, קַשֻּׁבוֹת – לְקוֹל, תַּחֲנוּנָי.

2 Lord, hear my voice: let Thine ears be attentive to the voice o