• Grows up in provincial Estonia, notably Rakvere, initially under German occupation, then Stalin

• Close relatives are among tens of thousands deported to Siberia

• Mandatory military service in the Soviet Army (1954–56)

• Works as a sound engineer for Estonian Radio (1958-67)

• Student work Nekrolog (1960), Estonia’s first serial composition, turns dissonance into a weapon of protest 

• Collage über B-A-C-H (1964) journeys from transcription to destruction

• His angst-ridden Second Symphony (1966) ends by collapsing into a comforting spoonful of Tchaikovsky

• Pärt now leads a generation of innovative Estonian composers, to a growing reputation in the West, but predictable disapproval from the Soviet establishment

• Credo (1968) brings a stylistic crisis, while provocatively declaring religious faith in a then officially atheist state

• Soundtrack composition in the 1960s and 70s generates rubles for food (9 documentaries, 6 feature films, 20 puppet films)

• Eight years of outward creative silence (1968-76) generates ‘thousands and thousands of pages of notes,’ while Pärt digs deep into austere, measured Renaissance polyphony and the stark vocal lines of 13th century organum

• A ‘simple’ little piano piece, Für Alina (1976), becomes the fount of a radically new musical language which will drive the composer’s creativity through the coming four decades

• Music of the ‘little bells’, which Pärt calls ‘tintinnabuli’ is introduced to those willing to listen. In it, melody and triad are fused, expanding tonal and modal possibilities, distilling musical material to its essence and opening up creativity through a return
to first principles

• Für Alina is closely followed by Tabula Rasa, Fratres, Summa and the Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten, all in 1977, with Spiegel im Spiegel in 1978

• All will become the foundation of Pärt’s emerging immense popularity in the West. Pärt (now ‘a traitor of the fatherland’) and family are forced to leave Estonia in 1980, first for Vienna, then Berlin

• In 1984 Tabula Rasa launches Pärt’s music to the world via an on-going collaboration with the ECM New Series label

• Since 2010, Pärt has returned to live permanently in Estonia, creating new music, revising old, with no further creative gaps. Major international premieres of important new works have flowed from his pen. Honorary doctorates in music and theology, and many other prestigious awards, have been awarded from around the world

Arvo Pärt visits a sculpture of a boy on a bicycle, marking his 75th birthday, in his hometown of Rakvere. The young Arvo Pärt would regularly ride to the town square on Fridays to listen to a radio concert broadcast from a loudspeaker on top of a telephone post.