Medieval Pärt

Supported by modernity’s desires, fantasies, and aversions toward the premodern past and a cultivated branding strategy, popular reception of Arvo Pärt commonly figures both man and music as embodiments of a kind of medieval mysticism. Taking this image as a cue for analysis, this chapter considers how the medieval, taken as a historical force that traverses chronological temporality, stands to expand our understanding of contemporary experiential encounters with Pärt’s music. The grounds of this analysis lie in the textuality and manuscript contexts of the writings of Richard Rolle of Hampole, Pärt’s musical and mystical counterpart of the English Middle Ages. Rolle’s mysticism encourages certain spiritualized styles of hearing sound and silence that, when applied to Pärt’s music in manuscript, edition, and performance, allow us recognize important qualities—medieval qualities—that otherwise go unnoticed in his music. Drawing on sound studies methodologies, the chapter thus asks not how Pärt is medieval, but what the medieval helps us hear in Pärt.