Björk interviews classical music composer Arvo Pärt
Arvo Pärt is an Estonian composer of classical and sacred music. Since the late 1970s, Pärt has worked in a minimalist style that employs his self-invented compositional technique, tintinnabuli. Pärt’s music is in part inspired by Gregorian chant. His most performed works include Fratres (1977), Spiegel im Spiegel (1978), and Für Alina (1976). Pärt was the most performed living composer in the world between 2011 and 2018.
According to the classical music event database, Bachtrack, the most performed contemporary composers in the world in 2019 were John Williams, Arvo Pärt, James MacMillan, Philip Glass, John Adams, György Kurtág, Eric Whitacre, John Rutter, Thomas Adès and Steve Reich. The most performed composers overall were Beethoven, Mozart, J.S. Bach, Brahms, Schubert, Tchaikovsky, Schumann, Haydn, Chopin and Mendelssohn.
In 1997, at the peak of her global fame, the Icelandic artist, Björk, made an appearance on a BBC documentary called “Modern Minimalists”, which includes the people she believed changed the direction of music making at that time.
Björk Guðmundsdóttir, born and raised in Reykjavík, began her music career at the age of 11 and first gained international recognition as the lead singer of the alternative rock band, The Sugarcubes. After the band’s 1992 breakup, Björk embarked on a successful solo career, coming to prominence with solo albums such as “Debut” (1993), “Post” (1995), and “Homogenic” (1997), while collaborating with a range of artists.
Dialogue
Björk: Arvo Pärt was born in Estonia and now lives in Berlin. He is a composer who has the whole battle of the twentieth century inside him. His notes are lush, and they resonate. You don’t need five hundred billion notes. He is one of the minimalists.
I like your music very, very much, because you give space to the listener. He can go inside, and live there. But with a lot of music from the last few centuries, you just have to sit and listen.
Arvo Pärt: Maybe it is because I need space for myself. Even if I’m working. I think that ‘sound’ is a very interesting phenomenon. Why do people like music? Why are they so influenced by music? They don’t know how strongly music influences us. For good and bad. You can kill people with sound. And, if you can kill, then maybe there is also the sound which is something like the opposite of killing.
B: Yeah.
AP: And the distance between these two points, is very big. And, you are free. You can choose. In art, everything is possible. But everything that is made, is not necessary.
B: There is question and answer – the different voices inside your music. It’s almost like Pinocchio. And the little cricket. One is human, and always making mistakes or feeling pain, or giving pain to others. And the little cricket is comforting him, or telling him off. Do you feel it? Is this inside your music? Or maybe I’m imagining it.
AP: I am very happy that you talk about it. It’s really so. This new style consists of two sides, so that one line is my sins. And another line is forgiveness of these sins. Mostly the music has two voices; one is more complicated, and subjective. But the other is simple, clear, and objective. But Pinocchio is a good thing.
B: Arvo Pärt really, truly believes in such a thing as a divine state. A place of pure ecstasy. Love. What is so brilliant about his music is not how he got there, or why. It’s universal, it’s for everyone.
James Neophytou
