This is an essay I wrote for Masterpieces of Western Music, which I took in Spring 2025. The prompt for the essay was to propose an introduction to the syllabus of the class, and I chose to write about Arvo Pärt.
A common sentiment expressed about the pieces and traditions covered towards the end of Masterpieces of Western Music (starting with Modernism and proceeding through American Modernism and Minimalism) is how radically different they sound from most of what is covered earlier in the course. Many of these later, highly cerebral techniques seem quite difficult to reconcile with—and indeed have no intention of according to—music that sounds traditionally beautiful, that is satisfying for the layman with no knowledge of whole-tone-scales and music theory in general. This, at least, is the impression that one might get from the current Music Humanities syllabus; it is not, in fact, universally true of 20th-century music that employs avant-garde techniques, and we can see this specifically in the music of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, in what is sometimes dubbed “holy minimalism.” This Holy Minimalism, and specifically the music of Arvo Pärt, deserves a place on the syllabus for Music Humanities because, through its blending of modernist techniques with sacred medieval music, it challenges the notion of 20th-century musical techniques as being necessarily a divergence from traditional Western music.
As a composer, Pärt is quite difficult to pin down. On the one hand, he employs minimalist procedural techniques that are reminiscent of Steve Reich and Laurie Anderson. On the other hand, the timbre and subject of his music is deeply influenced by Gregorian chant. To illustrate, let us compare Pärt’s 1990 choral rendition of The Beatitudes with Steve Reich’s Violin Phase and Laurie Anderson’s O Superman. Both Pärt’s The Beatitudes and Reich’s Violin Phase are procedural in the minimalist sense expounded by Reich. In Violin Phase, 4 violins play roughly the same melody throughout the entire 15 minutes of the piece. The only progression is that the violins are slowly shifted such that they become syncopated, causing the resulting melody to be quite different throughout the piece. O Superman’s primary minimalist gimmick is a very simple and repetitive melody on the vocoder, accompanied by a main melody sung (and spoken) by Anderson, also on the vocoder. This main melody is quite slow, with many pauses between phrases.
Meanwhile, in Pärt’s Beatitudes, a musical setting of the beginning of Christ’s Sermon on the Mount, the initial phrase—corresponding to “blessed are the poor in spirit”— is taken and then for each subsequent clause, simply has the pitch shifted up a chromatic step (Judd). Like Reich’s Violin Phase, this is procedural—very much in the same sense that Reich expresses—in that it is a musical procedure that we can hear playing out in the music itself, rather than being improvised or having been applied beforehand. Like Violin Phase, we can hear the process of the chromatic ascent playing out in the piece. Like O Superman, the melody is simple, not modified significantly throughout, largely unaccompanied, with silent gaps between phrases.
In principle, the procedural technique is not at all different from Reich’s ideas of minimalism. In his short 1968 essay “Music as a Gradual Process,” Reich describes his aim of depicting “musical processes”—that is, he wishes to take some musical idea and filter it through a set process, like the gradual syncopation of Violin Phase. Reich also remarks that he wishes to orient his reader away from he or she, and instead towards it. The effect, however, is extremely different from Violin Phase. Rather than the invocation of an impersonal it, the chromatic ascent of The Beatitudes imitates a sort of divine ascent, culminating in a grand climax at the end of the piece with a booming organ. This is sacred music, with a very specific intention—to be used in the Liturgy.
Pärt’s stated relationship with music is indeed much closer to Hildegard von Bingen than it is to Reich. During his 2014 acceptance speech of an honorary degree from St. Vladimir’s Seminary, Pärt remarked: “the [second most sensitive instrument] is the human voice. One must purify the soul until it begins to sound… The instrument has to be in order to produce sound. One must start with that, not with the music.” (Speech from Musical Diaries) This greatly resembles some of Hildegard von Bingen’s remarks in her epistle to the Prelate of Mainz, when she writes about Adam’s voice in Paradise, saying that “in [Adam’s] voice, before he fell, resided the sound of all harmony and the sweetness of the entire musical art.” By implying that Adam’s voice was most perfect before he sinned, Hildegard is really expressing the exact same sentiment as Pärt, that the purity of one’s soul is directly correlated to the capacity of the human voice to express beauty.
Pärt’s explicitly stated ideas about music are still in some ways similar to John Cage or Reich—Reich speaks of procedural music as being a ritual, while Cage employed Indian and Zen philosophy into his compositions—in that, compared to most music from the 18th–20th centuries, it is quite spiritual. He has described his signature tintinnabuli style as “spiritual fasting”, and “an escape into voluntary poverty.” (Arvo Pärt Centre) Rather, though, than being a digression from the earlier music covered in the Music Humanities syllabus, Pärt returns to its roots in a rather radical way—whether intentionally or not—through his thought about music which bears a striking resemblance to Hildegard von Bingen. This is not surprising, as, according to a biography of Pärt from the Arvo Pärt Centre, he had spent years studying Gregorian chant. (Arvo Pärt Centre)
All of this is particularly interesting in the light of Kyle Gann’s comments on John Cage’s 4'33". Gann writes that “…indirectly 4'33” led to the developments from which grew the simpler and more accessible new style of minimalism. As a locus of historical hermeneutics, 4'33" can be seen as a result of the exhaustion of the overgrown classical tradition that preceded it, a clearing of the ground that allowed a new musical era to start from scratch." It is quite apparent that Pärt’s music is greatly confounding to this sentiment expressed by Gann. If Cage allowed the minimalists to start from scratch, after having cleared the way from the overgrown Western classical tradition, how can we fit Pärt into minimalism? His use of minimalist technique is apparent from our earlier discussion on The Beatitudes, and yet the sound that he produces is much more reminiscent of Gregorian chant (though The Beatitudes is homophonic, unlike plainchant) than any 20th century music. Perhaps, then, if Cage was indeed the clearing of the musical ground that Gann describes, it was not so much to the end of a clean slate. If Western music was overgrown, perhaps the clean slate given by Cage is instead to the end of a recovery of the roots of Western classical music, embodied foremost by Pärt but also in other so-called Holy Minimalists.
Pärt’s music is not only beautiful, but his blending of minimalism with sacred music is totally unique with respect to every other composer on the syllabus. What is most exciting about his music is that he is not some sort of radical traditionalist, a reactionary crying out against musical degeneracy and composing in a strictly antiquated style. Rather, he beautifully integrates 20th century music with something ancient, showing how the minimalist composition style need not be at odds with the tradition, but instead can revive it and even reveal a new side of it. There is no other composer on the syllabus who achieves this. It is for this reason, in this writer’s estimation, that Pärt deserves a place on the Music Humanities syllabus. This is best summed up by the Arvo Part Centre’s article on the tintinnabuli style: “Tintinnabuli music brings together seemingly incompatible things: the all-encompassing rationality of the modern avant-garde and the breath of early polyphonic melos, altering these qualities with a new method of composition based on formulas.” (Arvo Pärt Centre)
Works Cited
“Arvo Pärt: The New Strict Style of Tintinnabuli – Arvo Pärt Centre.” Www.arvopart.ee, www.arvopart.ee/en/arvo-part-the-new-strict-style-of-tintinnabuli/.
“Biography – Arvo Pärt Centre.” Www.arvopart.ee, www.arvopart.ee/en/arvo-part/biography/.
“Arvo Pärt’s Speech from His Musical Diaries.” YouTube, 29 Jan. 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qh-kjp2hLCw.
Judd, Timothy. “Arvo Pärt’s “the Beatitudes”: Meditative Minimalism.” The Listeners’ Club, 17 Apr. 2020, www.thelistenersclub.com/2020/04/17/arvo-parts-the-beatitudes-meditative-minimalism/. Accessed 12 May 2025.