A special connection regarding Pärt, has been my country and city of origin. Born and raised in Istanbul, it is very common to encounter a multitude of different cultures, religions and practices. A very common image is to see a couple centuries old mosque next to an Orthodox church. The city being transferred as a center of multiple religious and cultural backgrounds and has very unique inspirations throughout the entire city. A call of a Muslim prayer followed by church bells has been very inspiring since my teenage years and always made me think about spiritual elements when it came to everything. Sometimes a piece of music, a location, a moment of silence could evoke certain feelings. One of these locations has been Hagia Irene, also known as Saint Irene, is an Eastern Orthodox church located in the outer courtyard of Topkapi Palace, which has served as an administrative center for the Ottoman Sultans. One important fact about Hagia Irene is that it was never converted to a mosque and kept intact and it is known to be the oldest church in the city. Currently it is being used as a musem and a concert hall. I always wanted to hear music of Pärt in either at Hagia Irene or Basilica Cistern (is the largest of several hundred ancient cisterns that lie beneath the city, built in the 6th century.) and through my discoveries during this research, his piece Adam's Lament, actually had its premiere in Hagia Irene, in 2011, with a collective of Estonian and Turkish musicians. Commisioned by both governments, it helped me realise the value of certain spaces, designing compositions for the energy and space of that specific place and taking inspiration from the area itself. This led to an exploration of this feeling that you get from certain places, sounds or a moment of silence and the concept of space. (Arvo Pärt Centre 2025)

 

His music possesses various features;

- A contemporary tonality ( tonal gravitation. Variation in the absence of functional harmony) it does not mean modernist or dissonance harmony, quite the opposite. He uses very traditional major and minor diatonic harmony in his works in the way it is completely divorced from functional harmony.

- Permutations are a major part in his works. Coming up with numerous variations from a very limited material is one of his signatures.

- Balance and structure in his forms. Although a lot of musical information sounds very much floating or somehow improvised, there is always a well structured form and idea behind every. Single note.

- Multiplication and mirror forms. some of his works are almost naively simple but with elaborate structures and mirrored forms, they gain a new level of depth. Structurally, his works can be thought of self completing, in most cases the listener connects the dots without even realising. ( this is also in negative space, and wabi wabi principles) With this openness, when gets the ‘infinite’ behind his compositions, they could continue on forever.

- Maximal expression with a very limited material in most cases, ever-growing. 

Arvo Pärt 


 First and foremost, although I would have loved to, this thesis is not about the life of Arvo Pärt. There are many great books written that covers his life and music in detail and they have been a reference source for this thesis. This thesis is primaraly focused after the his hiatus, the period after Credo1(1968), his discovery of Tintinnabuli (which has a dedicated chapter explaining it), my analysis of selected work and my personal interpretations in my compositions. 

 

 The Estonian composer, coming from a Neo-classical and a serialist background, in the middle of his career, decided on a self-imposed creative exile. Precisely after Credo (1968).He spent this period studying medieval music, early church music and minimalistic structures. Focusing more on Gregorian chant, harmonic simplicity, and his Russian Orthodox faith, he emerged from the exile with distinctive and unique compositional voice: the music of “little bells”, or “tintinnabuli”, heard for the first time in his piano miniature Für Alina. His main body of works consists of Choral works where he implemented the techniques of church bells, plainchant and old compositional studies like the fugue or canons. His usage of space, silence, texture with the combination of minimalist elements in his music created a very unique and strong compositional style of the late 20th century and 21st century. There are numerous approaches he adapted into his compositions and I will be giving examples of certain works that I believe could prove useful in many ways.

 

Arvo Pärt is one of those composers in the world, whose creative output has significantly changed the way we understand the nature of music. In 1976, he created a unique musical language called tintinnabuli, that has reached a vast audience of various listeners and that has defined his work right up to today. There is no compositional school that follows Pärt, nor does he teach, nevertheless, a large part of the contemporary music has been influenced by his tintinnabuli compositions.  

He was born on 11 September 1935 in Paide, Estonia. After studies in Heino Eller’s composition class at the Tallinn State Conservatory, he worked as a sound engineer for Estonian Radio. Since the late 1960s, Pärt has been a freelance composer.

Both the avant-garde spirit of Pärt’s early works as well as the religious aspect of the music he composed in 1970s led to controversial reviews and confrontations with Soviet officials. In 1980, Arvo Pärt and his family were forced to emigrate – first to Vienna and then to Berlin, where they stayed for almost 30 years.

The year 1984 marks the beginning of his creative collaboration with the distinguished CD label ECM Records and the producer Manfred Eicher, and the first recording of Tabula rasa. Since then his music has been performed and recorded by the best orchestras and interpreters of our time.

In 2010, Pärt returned to Estonia where he resides today. (Arvo Part Centre 2025)

Arvo Pärt gained recognition already in 1960s, when he became one of the leading figures of the so-called Soviet avant-garde. Several significant modernist composition techniques entered in Estonian music scene namely with Pärt’s works – Nekrolog, Perpetuum mobile, Pro et contra, among others.

His dramatic collage piece Credo (1968) turned out to be a turning point in his ouvre as well as his life – Pärt withdrew and renounced the techniques and means of expression used so far. Pärt’s quest for his own musical voice drove him into a creative crisis that dragged on for eight years. During these years he joined the Orthodox Church and studied Gregorian chant, the Notre Dame School and classic vocal polyphony.

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Tintinnabuli I. Fundamentals