“...one of the most physically involving contemporary composers”
– Andrew McGregor, BBC
Erkki-Sven Tüür, who was born in Estonia in 1959, is among the most original and significant composers of his generation. Having studied percussion and flute, he developed his skills in composition at the Tallinn Conservatoire (1980–4) and subsequently pursued an interest in electronic music in Karlsruhe. In 1979, Tüür founded the progressive rock band, In Spe, in which he was active as composer, instrumentalist, and vocalist. By the late 1980s Tüür had embarked wholeheartedly on his path as a composer; his musical development has been charted in a series of ECM releases which began with “Crystallisatio” (1996).
Tüür’s early works explore a variety of techniques polystylistically, among them Gregorian chant and minimalism, linear polyphony and microtonality, twelve-tone music and sound-field technique. A transition in his musical language can be heard in his Symphony No. [...]
“...one of the most physically involving contemporary composers”
– Andrew McGregor, BBC
Erkki-Sven Tüür, who was born in Estonia in 1959, is among the most original and significant composers of his generation. Having studied percussion and flute, he developed his skills in composition at the Tallinn Conservatoire (1980–4) and subsequently pursued an interest in electronic music in Karlsruhe. In 1979, Tüür founded the progressive rock band, In Spe, in which he was active as composer, instrumentalist, and vocalist. By the late 1980s Tüür had embarked wholeheartedly on his path as a composer; his musical development has been charted in a series of ECM releases which began with “Crystallisatio” (1996).
Tüür’s early works explore a variety of techniques polystylistically, among them Gregorian chant and minimalism, linear polyphony and microtonality, twelve-tone music and sound-field technique. A transition in his musical language can be heard in his Symphony No. 4 (Magma) and Ardor, and in Oxymoron Tüür first employed what he calls his "vectorial writing method", a means of developing pieces from "a source code – a gene which, as it mutates and grows, connects the dots in the fabric of the whole composition".
Tüür's 21st-century music eschews "unnecessary eclecticism" in favour of organic coherence. Barry Witherden, writing in BBC Music Magazine captured something of the essence of Tüür’s recent music in describing the 2014 recording of his Piano Concerto and Seventh Symphony as “dense, complex, mysterious, passionate, spellbinding, sometimes strange and always original”. Of his art Tüür has said: “One of my goals is to reach the creative energy of the listener. Music as an abstract form of art is able to create different visions for each of us, for each and every individual being, as we are all unique.”
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