Arvo and Nora Pärt and the Arvo Pärt Centre mourn the passing of the versatile and brilliant musicologist, Professor Emeritus of the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre, and a dear friend and colleague of Arvo Pärt, Academician Jaan Ross (1957-2026).
According to Ross himself, his first encounter with Arvo Pärt’s music was as a schoolboy, singing Pärt’s cantata Our Garden at a youth song festival. Later, as a student and scholar of musicology, he was a contemporary and open-minded listener at the birth of Pärt’s new musical language, tintinnabuli. When Ross graduated from the Tallinn Conservatoire in the spring of 1980, he chose Pärt’s Variations for the Healing of Arinushka as his final piano examination piece – at a time when Pärt had already emigrated to the West and attitudes towards him were anything but favourable.
Although Pärt’s music was not among Ross’s main research topics as a musicologist, he followed its development with sincere interest. During the years when the Pärt family lived in Berlin, he visited them whenever possible. Ross supervised research on Arvo Pärt’s music and also wrote a review of the collection of articles Arvo Pärt’s Tintinnabuli Style: Archetypes and Geometry by Leopold Brauneiss, published by the Arvo Pärt Centre.
We extend our deepest condolences to Jaan Ross’s family, friends and colleagues.
Arvo and Nora Pärt and the Arvo Pärt Centre
Photo: Jaan Ross in 2005 at the presentation of the book Arvo Pärt peeglis (Arvo Pärt in the Mirror) at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre.