Arvo Pärt

Born 1935

If not exactly from the sublime to the ridiculous, it felt appropriate to follow yesterday’s intensely spiritual piece by Hildegard of Bingen with another ultra modern take on the same theme by Estonian composer, Arvo Pärt.

Silentium (try and not be put off by the first minute of the video which isn’t part of the work) feels to me like an instrumental homage to Hildegard.

Early in his life, especially after graduating from the Music Conservatory in Tallinn he composed works based around Schoenburg’s tonal system using it for most of his composition sup to 1968.

There followed a hiatus in his composing career where he immersed himself in studying both Gregorian and Eastern Orthodox liturgical music.

What emerges is a series of slow and methodical works, deeply spiritual and in a style which he has made his own. Silentium being typical: