Editing Arvo Pärt (section)

==Career==
As a student, Pärt composed music for film and the stage, creating scores for over fifty movies. Although filmmaking and film music were not primary sources of inspiration for him, these compositions provided a medium for exploring serial and tonal techniques—an amalgamation that would later influence his collage works of the 1960s.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Cizmic |first=Maria |url=https://academic.oup.com/book/12039 |title=Performing PainMusic and Trauma in Eastern Europe |date=2011-12-05 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-973460-3 |page=110 |language=en |doi=10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199734603.001.0001}}</ref> 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,<ref name=Allison/> 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.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Misiunas |first1=Romuald J.|last2=Rein |first2=Taagepera |year=1983 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FJejwedGesMC&pg=PA170 |title=The Baltic States, Years of Dependence, 1940–1980 |publisher=University of California Press |isbn=978-0-520-04625-2 |page=170}}</ref> 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 music|medieval]] and [[Renaissance music]] to find his new musical language. In 1972 he converted from [[Lutheranism]] to [[Eastern Orthodox Church|Orthodox Christianity]].<ref name="NYT Robin">{{cite web |last=Robin |first=William |date=18 May 2014 |title=His Music, Entwined With His Faith |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/arts/music/at-heart-of-arvo-parts-works-eastern-orthodox-christianity.html |access-date=15 December 2019 |work=[[The New York Times]]}}</ref><ref name= "APC biography">{{cite web |url=https://www.arvopart.ee/en/arvo-part/ |title=Arvo Pärt Biography |work=[[Arvo Pärt Centre]] |access-date=15 December 2019}}</ref>

Pärt reemerged as a composer in 1976 with music in his new compositional style and technique, tintinnabuli.<ref name= "APC biography"/>

On 10 December 2011, [[Pope Benedict XVI]] appointed Pärt a member of the [[Pontifical Council for Culture]] for a five-year renewable term.<ref>{{cite web| url= http://press.catholica.va/news_services/bulletin/news/28516.php?index=28516&lang=en |title= Nomina di Membris del Pontifico Consiglio Della Cultura| website= press.catholica.va| publisher= |url-status=dead |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20121107142020/http://press.catholica.va/news_services/bulletin/news/28516.php?index=28516&lang=en |archive-date=7 November 2012 | trans-title= Appointment of Members of the Pontifical Council for Culture| language= Italian| access-date= 9 February 2021}}</ref>

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."<ref name=Allison>{{cite news |url= https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/classicalmusic/11273603/Arvo-Part-interview-music-says-what-I-need-to-say.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220112/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/classicalmusic/11273603/Arvo-Part-interview-music-says-what-I-need-to-say.html |archive-date=12 January 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |first=John |last=Allison |title=Arvo Pärt interview: 'music says what I need to say'|work=[[The Daily Telegraph]] |date=12 December 2014|access-date=23 August 2017}}{{cbignore}}</ref>