Scholarly writing on the music of Arvo Pärt is situated primarily in the fields of musicology, cultural and media studies, and, more recently, in terms of theology/spirituality. Arvo Pärt: Sounding the Sacred focuses on the representational dimensions of Pärt's music (including the trope of silence), writing and listening past the fact that its storied effects and affects are carried first and foremost as vibrations through air, impressing themselves on the human body. In response, this ambitiously interdisciplinary volume asks: What of sound and materiality as embodiments of the sacred, as historically specific artifacts, and as elements of creation deeply linked to the human sensorium in Pärt studies? In taking up these questions, the book "de-Platonizes" Pärt studies by demystifying the notion of a single "Pärt sound." It offers innovative, critical analyses of the historical contexts of Pärt's experimentation, medievalism, and diverse creative work; it re-sounds the acoustic, theological, and representational grounds of silence in Pärt's music; it listens with critical openness to the intersections of theology, sacred texts, and spirituality in Pärt's music; and it positions sensing, performing bodies at the center of musical experience. Building on the conventional score-, biography-, and media-based approaches, this volume reframes Pärt studies around the materiality of sound, its sacredness, and its embodied resonances within secular spaces.

I. Introduction1. Arvo Pärt and the Art of Embodiment | 3Peter C. Bouteneff, Jeffers Engelhardt, and Robert Saler2. The Sound-and Hearing-of Arvo Pärt | 8Peter C. BouteneffII. History and Context3. Sounding Structure, Structured Sound | 25Toomas Siitan4. Colorful Dreams: Exploring Pärt's Soviet Film Music | 36Christopher J. May5. Arvo Pärt's Tintinnabuli and the 1970s Soviet Underground | 68Kevin C. KarnesIII. Performance6. The Pärt Sound | 89Paul Hillier, in conversation with Peter Bouteneff7. The Rest Is Silence | 107Andrew ShentonIV. Materiality and Phenomenology8. Vibrating, and Silent: Listening to the Material Acoustics of Tintinnabulation | 129Jeffers Engelhardt9. Medieval Pärt | 154Andrew Albin10. The Piano and the Performing Body in the Music of Arvo Pärt: Phenomenological Perspectives | 177Maria Cizmic and Adriana HelbigV. Theology11. Presence, Absence, and the Ambiguities of Ambiance:Theological Discourse and the Move to Sound in Pärt Studies | 197Robert Saler12. The Materiality of Sound and the Theology of the Incarnation in the Music of Arvo Pärt | 208Ivan Moody13. Christian Liturgical Chant and the Musical Reorientation of Arvo Pärt | 220Alexander Lingas14. In the Beginning There Was Sound: Hearing, Tintinnabuli, and Musical Meaning in Sufism | 232Sevin Huriye YaramanList of Contributors | 243Index of Terms | 247Index of Persons | 252Works by Other Composers | 256Works by Arvo Pärt | 257