Arvo Pärt and the Art of Embodiment

Chapter 1, written by the book’s three co-editors, serves as the book’s introduction. It sets out the book’s genesis, its interest in sound studies, and its main themes—chiefly surrounding the function that music plays in the embodiment of ideas, dispositions, and spirituality. More specifically, it points out how several chapters of this book entail a rethinking of Arvo Pärt’s compositional odyssey, grounding (or again, embodying) it in history and in his context as an Eastern European composer of the 1960s. It also summarizes all the book’s chapters, in the manner of a typical introduction to an edited volume.