To mark the composer’s 90th birthday, the Arvo Pärt Centre has published an extraordinary book-album. Titled Gratefully. Heartfelt. With Love. Musical Greetings from Arvo Pärt, it reveals a previously unknown and humorous side of Arvo Pärt’s creative work.
These musical greetings are a unique unique shortformat pieces that Pärt has written for friends, close acquaintances and collaborators over the years. He has used them to congratulate, thank or greet people. Over nearly 50 years, Pärt has written more than 80 of these pieces, 78 of which are featured in this volume.
The recipients have included many musicians and cultural figures close to the composer, as well as officials, lawyers and others with whom he has crossed paths. Among those honoured are conductor Tõnu Kaljuste, music producer Manfred Eicher, conductor and pianist Dennis Russell Davies, countertenor David James and former Estonian presidents Toomas Hendrik Ilves and Kersti Kaljulaid. Several of the more musically distinctive and complete miniatures were composed as farewell gifts to former colleagues at the Centre.
The musical greetings bring out Arvo Pärt’s warmth, humour and sensitivity to language. Alongside musical notation, they often feature wordplay, drawings and graphic elements. In many cases, Pärt has used the recipient’s initials as a compositional tool, reinterpreting them as musical pitches.
“In addition to beauty, seriousness, structure and concentration, these pieces bring out other qualities – humour, imagination, surprise, sincerity, lyricism and more. The composer’s distinctive sense of humour shapes their sound, language and visual style,” says Maarja Tyler, one of the book’s authors.
“In birthday and wedding greetings, he makes playful use of well-known melodies like ‘Happy Birthday’ and Mendelssohn’s ‘Wedding March’. At the same time, those based on a person’s initials feel especially personal and one-of-a-kind,” Tyler adds.
Though these pieces are not on the same scale as Pärt’s concert works and were never intended for performance, the majority have been recorded specially for the publication, offering a unique insight into their musical character. The recordings are available on the Arvo Pärt Centre’s website.
The book was compiled and edited by Maarja Tyler, Karin Rõngelep and Ardo Västrik, with design by Angelika Schneider.
Publication of the book was supported by the Estonian Ministry of Culture and the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.
The launch took place on 3 September, at 15:00 at the Arvo Pärt Centre.