Out with the Old and in with the New: Arvo Pärt's ‘Credo’

Extract

The current standing of the Estonian-born composer Arvo Pärt (b.1935) rests almost exclusively on the works he has composed since 1976, the year the composer unveiled the first fruits of his newly-discovered modal formulae, or what has now become known as the ‘tintinnabuli’ style. There is, however, a large, important and up until now relatively unexplored series of experimental works that predate this seemingly radical change of style. For example, Pärt's first orchestral piece, Nekrolog (1960), was the very first piece of Estonian music to employ the 12-note technique, incurring the wrath of no less a person than Tikhon Khrennikov, the all-powerful general secretary of the Soviet Composers’ Union. Indeed at the Third All– Union Congress of Soviet Composers held in Moscow in March 1962 Khrennikov singled out Pärt for criticism.