Music, literature and theater: While the respective disciplines of this year's recipients of the Goethe Medal differ, what unites them is the conviction that their work can contribute to cultural understanding and that culture can forge connections.  "Their lives and work offer interpretations to migration, displacement and social transformations that shaped Europe in the 20th and 21st centuries. They offer a new language and deeper understanding of our present," said jury chair Thomas Oberender. Arvo Pärt: In search of his own musical language Born in Estonia in 1935, Arvo Pärt ranks among the most frequently performed living composers of contemporary music worldwide. With a technique Pärt developed in the 1970s known as the "tintinnabuli" method, he crafted a musical language that is distinctive, minimalist and deeply spiritual.…