Creating Spiritual Spaces Through the Music of Arvo Pärt and Ljubica Marić

This chapter explores music as a spiritual experience outside the traditionally religious context of the liturgy. In doing so, it raises questions regarding the limitations of some modern conceptions of spirituality and suggests a new approach to how we might understand spirituality between the Church and the concert hall. This is studied through the compositional approaches of Ljubica Marić and Arvo Pärt, who synthesize elements deriving from Byzantine chant with modern expressions. Through exploring the idea of “spiritual spaces” sensed in Marić’s and Pärt’s music in the context of modernism and spirituality, this chapter will offer a new understanding of spirituality through music.