Arvo Prt

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Arvo Prt in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, 2008

Arvo Prt (Estonian pronunciation: [rvo prt]; born 11 September 1935) is an Estonian composer of classical and sacred music.[1] Since the late 1970s, Prt has worked in a minimalist style that employs his self-invented compositional technique, tintinnabuli. His music is in part inspired by Gregorian chant. As of 2013, Prt has been the most performed contemporary composer in the world for three years in a row.[2]
Contents [hide] 1 Life 2 Musical development o 2.1 Compositions

3 Works 4 Awards 5 International centre 6 References 7 Sources 8 Further reading 9 External links

Life[edit]

Prt was born in Paide, Jrva County, Estonia, and was raised by his mother and stepfather in Rakvere in northern Estonia. He began to experiment with the top and bottom notes as the family's piano's middle register was damaged.[3] His first serious study came in 1954 at the Tallinn Music Middle School, but less than a year later he temporarily abandoned it to fulfill military service, playing oboe and percussion in the army band. While at the Tallinn Conservatory, he studied composition with Heino Eller. As a student, he produced music for film and the stage. During the 1950s, he also completed his first vocal composition, the cantata Meie aed ('Our Garden') for children's choir and orchestra. He graduated in 1963. From 1957 to 1967, he worked as a sound producer for Estonian radio. Although criticized by Tikhon Khrennikov in 1962, for employing serialism in Nekrolog (1960), because of his "susceptibility to foreign influences", nine months later he won First Prize in a competition of 1,200 works, awarded by the allUnion Society of Composers, indicating the inability of the Soviet regime to agree consistently on what was permissible.[4]In the 1970s, he studied medieval and Renaissance music rather than to focus on his own music. About this same time, he converted from Lutheranism to the Russian Orthodoxfaith.[5] In 1980, after a prolonged struggle with Soviet officials, he was allowed to emigrate with his wife and their two sons. He lived first in Vienna, where he took Austrian citizenship and then relocated to Berlin, Germany, in 1981. He returned to Estonia around the turn of the 21st century and now lives alternately in Berlin[6] and Tallinn.[7] He speaks fluent German and has German citizenship as a result of living in Germany since 1981.[8][9][10]

Musical development[edit]
Familiar works by Prt are Cantus In Memoriam Benjamin Britten for string orchestra and bell (1977) and the string quintet "Fratres I" (1977, revised 1983), which he transcribed for string orchestra and percussion, the solo violin "Fratres II" and the cello ensemble "Fratres III" (both 1980). Prt is often identified with the school of minimalism and, more specifically, that of mystic minimalism or holy minimalism.[11] He is considered a pioneer of the latter style, along with contemporaries Henryk Grecki and John Tavener.[12] Although his fame initially rested on instrumental works such as Tabula Rasa and Spiegel im Spiegel, his choral works have also come to be widely appreciated. Prt's musical education began at age seven. He began attending music school in Rakvere, where his family lived. By the time he reached his early teenage years, Prt was writing his own compositions. While studying composition with Heino Eller at the Tallinn Conservatory in 1957,[7] it was said of him that "he just seemed to shake his sleeves and the notes would fall out".[13] In this period of Estonian history, Prt was unable to encounter many musical influences from outside the Soviet Union except for a few illegal tapes and scores. Although Estonia

had been an independent Baltic state at the time of Prt's birth, the Soviet Union occupied it in 1940 as a result of the Soviet-Nazi Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact; and the country would then remain under Soviet dominationexcept for the three-year period of German wartime occupationfor the next 51 years.

Compositions[edit]

Arvo Prt in 2011

Prt's works are generally divided into two periods. He composed his early works using a range of neo-classical styles influenced byShostakovich, Prokofiev, and Bartk. 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 deadend. When early works were banned by Soviet censors, Prt entered the first of several periods of contemplative silence, during which he studied choral music from the 14th to 16th centuries.[7] In this context, Prt's biographer, Paul Hillier, observed that "He had reached a position of complete despair in which the composition of music appeared to be the most futile of gestures, and he lacked the musical faith and willpower to write even a single note."[14] The spirit of early European polyphony informed the composition of Prt's transitional Third Symphony (1971); thereafter he immersed himself in early music, reinvestigating the roots of Western music. He studied plainsong, Gregorian chant and the emergence ofpolyphony in the European 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.[7] Prt describes the music of this period as tintinnabulilike the ringing of bells. Spiegel im Spiegel (1978) is a well-known example which has been used in many films. The music is characterised by simple harmonies, often single unadorned notes, or triads, which form the basis of Western harmony. These are reminiscent of ringing bells. Tintinnabuli works are rhythmically simple and do not change tempo. Another characteristic of Prt'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.[7] Of Prt's popularity, Steve Reich has written: "Even in Estonia, Arvo was getting the same feeling that we were all getting ... I love his music, and I love the fact that he is such a brave, talented man ... He's completely out of step with the zeitgeist and yet he's enormously popular, which is so inspiring. His music fulfills a deep human need that has nothing to do with fashion."[15] Prt's music came to public attention in the West largely thanks to Manfred Eicher who recorded several of Prt's compositions for ECM Records starting in 1984. Invited by Walter Fink, Prt was the 15th composer featured in the annual Komponistenportrt of the Rheingau Musik Festival in 2005 in four concerts. Chamber music includedFr Alina for piano, played by himself, Spiegel im Spiegel and Psalom for string quartet. The chamber orchestra of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra played his Trisagion,Fratres and Cantus along with works of J.S. Bach. The Windsbach Boys Choir and soloists Sibylla Rubens, Ingeborg Danz, Markus Schfer and Klaus Mertens performedMagnificat and Collage ber B-A-C-H together with two cantatas of Bach and one of Mendelssohn. The Hilliard Ensemble, organist Christopher Bowers-Broadbent, the Rostock Motet Choir and the Hilliard instrumental ensemble, conducted by Markus Johannes Langer, performed a program of Prt's organ music and works for voices (some a cappella), including Pari Intervallo, De profundis, and Miserere. A new composition, Fr Lennart, written for the memory of the Estonian President, Lennart Meri, was played at Meri's funeral service on 2 April 2006. In response to the murder of the Russian investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya in Moscow on 7 October 2006, Prt declared that all of his works performed in 2006 and 2007 would be in honour of her death, issuing the following statement: "Anna Politkovskaya staked her entire talent, energy andin the endeven her life on saving people who had become victims of the abuses prevailing in Russia."[16]

Arvo Prt and Nora Prt in 2012

Prt was honoured as the featured composer of the 2008 RT Living Music Festival[17] in Dublin, Ireland. He was also commissioned by Louth Contemporary Music Society[18] to compose a new choral work based on "St. Patrick's Breastplate", which premiered in 2008 in Louth, Ireland. The new work is called The Deers Cry. This is his first Irish commission, having its debut in Drogheda and Dundalk in February 2008. Prt's 2008 Symphony No. 4 is named "Los Angeles" and was dedicated to Mikhail Khodorkovsky. It was Prt's first symphony written since his Symphony No. 3 written in 1971. It premiered in Los Angeles, California, at the Walt Disney Concert Hall on 10 January 2009,[19]and has been nominated for a GRAMMY for Best Classical Contemporary Composition. On 10 December 2011, Prt was appointed a member of the Pontifical Council for Culture for a five-year renewable term by Pope Benedict XVI.[20] On 26 January 2014, Prt's Adam's Lament won a Grammy for Best Choral Performance.[21]

Works[edit]
Main article: List of compositions by Arvo Prt

Awards[edit]

1996 American Academy of Arts and Letters Department of Music 1996 Honorary Doctor of Music, University of Sydney[22]

1998 Honorary Doctor of Arts, University of Tartu 2003 Honorary Doctor of Music, University of Durham[23] 2008 Lonie Sonning Music Prize 2008 Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, First Class[24] 2009 Foreign Member, Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts 2010 Honorary Doctor of Music, University of St Andrews[25] 2011 Chevalier (Knight) of Lgion d'honneur[26] 2011 Membership of the Pontifical Council for Culture[27] 2013 Archon of the Ecumenical Patriarchate[28]

International centre[edit]