Sleeping Beauty

As a student, Pärt earned pocket money by accompanying on piano the theatre club of the Tallinn Palace of the Pioneers (now the Kullo hobby centre). He came to the theatre at the invitation of Salme Lauren, who was then director of the theatre club and for whose translated, written, and staged plays Pärt composed a large amount of music in those years. Among those pieces are his earliest known works – composed more than half a century ago over the period 1956–1960, their exact dates unknown. 

Sleeping Beauty is written for Erika Tatsch’s children’s play The Lost Picture Book. Taking the stage in the play (emerging from the pages of a book that fell out of Santa Claus’ sack and into the woods) are well-known fairy-tale figures, including Hansel and Gretel, Pus…

As a student, Pärt earned pocket money by accompanying on piano the theatre club of the Tallinn Palace of the Pioneers (now the Kullo hobby centre). He came to the theatre at the invitation of Salme Lauren, who was then director of the theatre club and for whose translated, written, and staged plays Pärt composed a large amount of music in those years. Among those pieces are his earliest known works – composed more than half a century ago over the period 1956–1960, their exact dates unknown. 

Sleeping Beauty is written for Erika Tatsch’s children’s play The Lost Picture Book. Taking the stage in the play (emerging from the pages of a book that fell out of Santa Claus’ sack and into the woods) are well-known fairy-tale figures, including Hansel and Gretel, Puss in Boots, Sleeping Beauty, the wicked witch, and many others. Both the play The Lost Picture Book and Pärt’s music composed for it were published in the 1962 collection Christmas Selection I, and were afterwards frequently performed on stage, primarily as a part of school and theatre club New Year and Christmas party programmes.