Arvo Part

At 88 years old, Arvo Part physical status not available right now. We will update Arvo Part's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

As a student, Pärt produced music for film and the stage. From 1957 to 1967, he worked as a sound producer for the Estonian public radio broadcaster Eesti Rahvusringhääling.

Tikhon Khrennikov criticized Pärt in 1962 for employing serialism in Nekrolog (1960), the first 12-tone music written in Estonia, which exhibited his "susceptibility to foreign influences". But nine months later Pärt won First Prize in a competition of 1,200 works, awarded by the all-Union Society of Composers, indicating the Soviet regime's inability to agree on what was permissible. His first overtly sacred piece, Credo (1968), was a turning point in his career and life; on a personal level he had reached a creative crisis that led him to renounce the techniques and means of expression used so far; on a social level the religious nature of this piece resulted in him being unofficially censured and his music disappearing from concert halls. For the next eight years he composed very little, focusing instead on study of medieval and Renaissance music to find his new musical language. In 1972 he converted from Lutheranism to Orthodox Christianity.

Pärt reemerged as a composer in 1976 with music in his new compositional style and technique, tintinnabuli.

On 10 December 2011, Pope Benedict XVI appointed Pärt a member of the Pontifical Council for Culture for a five-year renewable term.

In 2014 The Daily Telegraph described Pärt as possibly "the world's greatest living composer" and "by a long way, Estonia's most celebrated export". When asked how Estonian he felt his music to be, Pärt replied: "I don't know what is Estonian... I don't think about these things." Unlike many of his fellow Estonian composers, Pärt never found inspiration in the country's epic poem, Kalevipoeg, even in his early works. Pärt said, "My Kalevipoeg is Jesus Christ."

Source

• 1996 – American Academy of Arts and Letters Department of Music
• 1996 – Honorary Doctor of Music, University of Sydney
• 1998 – Honorary Doctor of Arts, University of Tartu
• 2003 – Honorary Doctor of Music, Durham University
• 2006 – Order of the National Coat of Arms 1st Class
• 2007 – Brückepreis
• 2008 – Léonie Sonning Music Prize, Denmark
• 2008 – Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, First Class
• 2009 – Foreign Member, Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts
• 2010 – Honorary Doctor of Music, University of St Andrews
• 2011 – Chevalier (Knight) of Légion d'honneur, France
• 2011 – Membership of the Pontifical Council for Culture
• 2013 – Archon of the Ecumenical Patriarchate
• 2014 – Recipient of the Praemium Imperiale award, Japan
• 2014 – Honorary Doctor of Sacred Music, Saint Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary
• 2016 – Honorary Doctor of Music, University of Oxford
• 2017 – Ratzinger Prize, Germany
• 2018 – Gold Medal for Merit to Culture – Gloria Artis, Poland
• 2018 – Honorary Doctor of Music, Fryderyk Chopin University of Music
• 2019 – Cross of Recognition, 2nd Class, Latvia
• 2020 – Frontiers of Knowledge Award, BBVA Foundation, Spain
• 2021 – Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
• 2022 – Officer of the Order of the Oak Crown, Luxembourg