Kurt L. Sander, D.M.   Northern Kentucky University

One of the most essential features of sacred experience is the awareness of what unites Creator and creation.  It is here in an attempt to foster a sense of oneness with God that the disparate worlds of aesthetics and metaphysics unite in a shared purpose. The effect of such a union, while difficult to articulate in words, is perhaps most vividly experienced in sound. Such is the case with the musical language of Arvo Pärt, a composer who speaks of his work much in the way that a theologian speaks of faith. His unremitting devotion to sacred themes and his ascetic application of prescribed compositional methodology has made him an unmistakable voice in the world of contemporary composition.  Pärt likens the experience of his music to a “memory of paradise that has not really disappeared yet.  How we retrieve that memory,” he adds, “remains a mystery that no craft or analysis can crack.”1  The adoption of the word mystery is particularly appropriate given that most analyses of Pärt’s work which neglect any substantive investigation of an author’s metaphysical inclinations.  In recognizing the mystical theological tradition upon which Pärt’s musical vision is founded, and by studying his compositonal methods under a wider lens, we might gain a better understanding of the composer’s music and how he is able to evoke such powerful reactions among listeners. 

To this end, we might benefit from first consulting the work of author Richard Heinberg who has dedicated an entire book to the study edenic themes entitled Memories and Visions of Paradise.  Here, Heinberg explains how various cultures share a common belief in a prior state of fulfillment and how it manifests itself as a transforming and guiding force in the worship and daily lives of its people.  Such memories, he notes, occupy the rites and religious experiences of numerous cultures throughout the world.  As such they reveal an “innate and universal longing for a state of being that is natural and utterly fulfilling, but from which we have somehow excluded ourselves."2   This central premise of loss speaks directly to the theme of longing that embodies much of Part’s music.  Composition titles like Miserere, Kanon Pojajanen, and Lamentate seem to embody the mournful tone which characterizes Heinberg’s understanding of loss. Yet a somber tone alone does not adaquately convey a sense of paradise lost.  There must be something more to this music than sadness.

This is a point that many critics have attempted to articulate.  In describing Pärt’s work, one critic comments that it is “imbued with a spirit of holiness. . . the soul is opened up and laid bare; nothing is held back, and the spirit of penitence is overwhelming.”3   Testamonials like these abound in reviews of Pärt’s work inviting numerous questions as to how this music is put together.  If we adopt a method of inquiry that establishes analogs in well-established theological sources, we might begin to understand more specifically how this “memory of paradise” manifests itself musically. More importantly, in probing Pärt’s ability to evoke a powerful sacred experience through music, we might gain a better insight into the nature of creativity itself and why it the arts are so essential to the experience of the sacred .

1.Robert Everett-Green, “Arvo Pärt Searches for Echoes of Eden,” Toronto Globe & Mail, 22 January 1996.

2. Richard Heinberg, Memories and Visions of Paradise: Exploring the Universal Myth of a Lost Golden Age, (Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher, Inc., 1989 ), 81.

3. Arved Ashby, Guide to Records: Pärt, American Record Guide, Nov/Dec 98 Vol. 61, Issue 6. p. 188.

©2005 Kurt Sander. All rights reserved.

for more information on this research paper, please contact me at sanderk@nku.edu