Arvo Pärt: Stabat Mater

critic: Wong Kin-ting

Estonian Arvo Pärt (born 1935) has succeeded in bringing sacred music back to the attention of a larger audience. Because of its meditative character and its return to the simplest basic musical forms, his music gives us an insight into key spiritual moments. To this end, even before his emigration from the Soviet Union, Pärt invented what he referred to as the ""tintinnabuli style"" (Latin for “little bells”) of composing. In 1977 he delivered one of the first significant examples of this style with the first version of FRATRES (Brothers), which still has no fixed and prescribed instrumentation. In its ascetic austerity and almost liturgical solemnity, the work is reminiscent of a communal prayer or a spiritual act.