Arvo Pärt is generally recognized as being the most performed living composer.* Moreover, this has not only been for a single year, but for every year since 2010.
Born in Estonia in 1935, Pärt showed an early interest in music. In 1958, after completing his mandatory military service, he enrolled at the music conservatory in Tallinn. In 1980, after a prolonged struggle with the repressive Russian bureaucracy that controlled Estonia at that time, he was finally allowed to emigrate and eventually acquired German citizenship.
In recent decades he has composed in a self-invented minimalist style referred to as tintinnabuli, which was influenced by the his mystical experiences with Gregorian chants. It is characterized by the simultaneous use of two different types of voices, and the works often have a slow and meditative tempo. This style is exemplified by his 1977 Fratres, a three-part composition without fixed instrumentation and that consists of a set of multiple chord sequences separated by a repeating percussion motif.
Pärt's most performed composition is Nunc dimittis (2001), performed by a mixed choir and based on a Christian religious story. His other particularly frequently performed works, in addition to Fratres, include Spiegel im Spiegel (1978), and Für Alina (1976).
Spiegel im Spiegel [Mirror(s) in the Mirror], composed just before his departure from Estonia, is a minimalist work that employs his tintinnabuli style, with a melodic voice, operating over diatonic scales, and a tintinnabular voice, operating within a triad on the tonic, accompanying each other. It was originally written for a single piano and violin, although the violin is now sometimes replaced with a cello or viola. Spiegel im Spiegel has been used in more than two dozen films and about 15 television programs as well as in theater and dance performances.
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*The most frequently performed of all composers is Beethoven, and the most performed work of any composer is Beethoven's 5th Symphony.