Arvo Pärt's Tribute to Caesar was composed in 1997 in commemoration of the 350th anniversary of the Karistad, Sweden diocese, and was premiered, along with the companion piece The Woman with the Alabaster Box, in the Karistad Cathedral in October of that year. Characteristic of the composer's numerous a cappella choral works from the 1990s, Tribute to Caesar executes Pärt's rather rigorous harmonic/melodic processes with surprisingly engaging and accessible effect; his strict compositional procedures aspire not to modernist austerity, but rather to prayerful musical devotion.

The text of the piece is taken from the the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 22. The excerpted passage recounts the Pharisees' attempt to ensnare Jesus by asking him whether paying taxes to Caesar was an offense to God; their expectation, of course, was that any response he offered would be heretical, either politically or theologically. Jesus' answer sent5 them away disappointed: "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things which are God's."

Pärt sets this exchange in his trademark "tintinnabuli" style, with some voices moving in stepwise melodic motion while others move between tonic chord tones, giving the piece a tonic stasis elaborated by shimmering dissonances. The melodic lines take their shape from the length of the text phrases, moving away from the tonal center syllable by syllable. While these characteristics are fairly familiar in Pärt's work, his treatment of texture in Tribute to Caesar has unique features. The composer delineates the two perspectives in the passage—the Pharisees' and Jesus'—by altering his vocal scoring. The opening lines of the text are delivered in straightforward homorhythmic declamation. At the point of Jesus' response, however, Pärt introduces a series of sustained consonant tones, spanning the length of a text phrase, in some of the voices. Perhaps there is a symbolic significance to this gesture: according to Pärt, the constant dichotomy between consonance and dissonance that his musical processes create is meant to reflect the relationship of the earthly to the heavenly.

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