Estonia, a state in the Baltic region of Northern Europe, is an important part of Pärt's development as a composer. His experimentation and musical formation took place there, and it is where he went through the most significant changes in his output before emigrating to the West. Tintinnabuli music was born in Tallinn, the capital city. In a small apartment, Pärt composed such well-known works as Für Alina, Tabula rasa, Fratres, Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten, and Spiegel im Spiegel.

It is important to analyze the beginning of an artist's creative path to analyze in light of what follows. During the period of artistic maturing, discoveries, and emergence, every new detail can potentially have an influence that becomes decisive and long-lasting. Exploring the circumstances and conditions in which a composer most intensely develops his musical language gives us an opportunity to see the many crossroads at which he had to choose a path, and to understand how his choices determined the rest of his life and, for our purposes, the music he wrote.

Arvo Pärt lived in Estonia during a time when the country was under four different political regimes. He was born in 1935 during the first period of Estonian independence (independence was declared in 1918); he started elementary school when the German military had seized power; his musical career started under Soviet rule. Currently, he lives in Estonia, which restored its independence in 1991.