2002: Arvo's Year

If you went to an art house at any point that year, the odds of you hearing Arvo Pärt's Spiegel im Spiegel were pretty high. The piece was 24 years old at that point, but in the same creative synchronicity that leads to two Robin Hood movies being made at the same time, Spiegel im Spiegel was used in at least 3 films in 2002: Tykwer's Heaven; van Sant's Gerry and Ritchie's Swept Away. Gus van Sant's use of it in his trailer set off a slew of imitators who copped the piece for their own previews. Spiegel im Spiegel was unquestionably the idée fixe of 2002's "independent cinema".

Pärt is most well-known for another violin piece, but it was his choral music which first caught my attention: "Credo" from Berliner Messe (1991, revision)