Location
Performers
Organiser
Description
On October 17–18, 2025, the Arvo Pärt Centre in Laulasmaa, Estonia will host the international research conference Arvo Pärt: Ideascapes. With its intentionally broad thematic scope, we invite scholars from various disciplines to explore and share ideas related to the musical and intellectual legacy of the Estonian composer, who celebrates his 90th birthday this year.
Arvo Pärt’s unique compositional style and music—bridging generations, cultural experiences, and social strata around the globe—provides fertile ground for diverse academic interpretations. Modernism and cultural memory, artistic creation and (auto)communication, and the creative process as translation are just some of the “ideascapes” reflected in Pärt’s work that continue to attract the attention not only of musicologists, creativity psychologists, and cultural historians, but increasingly also of philosophers, theologians, and cultural semioticians.
Scholars from Estonia, Finland, Austria, Sweden, France, and the United States will present at the two-day conference. The first day will focus on Arvo Pärt’s modernist and early tintinnabuli works, exploring questions related to stylistic history and cultural memory, Pärt’s dialogues with the music of Bach and Mozart, as well as his approach to text, and early reception of tintinnabuli music. The keynote speaker will be Christoph Wolff, one of the most esteemed scholars on Bach and Mozart and Professor Emeritus at Harvard University, with a lecture titled “Cultural Memory in Music: Reflections on Arvo Pärt’s Concertino Wenn Bach Bienen gezüchtet hätte…” Other speakers include musicologists Leopold Brauneiss (University of Vienna), Mark Tatlow (University of Gothenburg), Kerri Kotta (Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre (EAMT)), Anu Veenre (EAMT), Maarja Tyler (EAMT, Arvo Pärt Centre), and Toomas Siitan (EAMT, Arvo Pärt Centre).
The second day of the conference will delve into the philosophical, semiotic, and theological dimensions of Pärt’s oeuvre and, more broadly, of creativity and the creative process. Topics include the possible modalities of the sacred in music, the dynamics of textual creation, the translational nature of artistic work, and reflections on the resonances between Pärt’s artistic vision and the ideascapes of John Tavener and Juri Lotman. The keynote speaker will be Eero Tarasti, professor at the University of Helsinki, a distinguished musicologist and founder of existential semiotics, who will speak on “Arvo Pärt – philosophical and music historical approach to his music”. The programme also features presentations by theologian Peter Bouteneff (St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, New York), cultural semiotician Peeter Torop (University of Tartu), cultural historian Marek Tamm (Tallinn University, Estonian Academy of Sciences), cultural journalist and essayist Joonas Hellerma (Estonian Public Broadcasting), and musicologists Marie Antunes Serra (University of Strasbourg) and Kristina Kõrver (University of Tartu, Arvo Pärt Centre).
Programme
October 18
9.45 – 10.15 Gathering and coffee
10.15 – 11.30 Eero Tarasti (keynote speaker), University of Helsinki
Arvo Pärt – Philosophical and Music Historical Approach to His Music
11.30 – 12.00 Coffee break
Presentations III
12.00 Peter Bouteneff, St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, NY
1 + 1 = 1: Reflections from Theology on Tintinnabuli
12.40 Marie Antunes Serra, University of Strasbourg
Modalities of Expressions of the Sacred in Arvo Pärt’s and John Tavener’s Vocal Music in the Late 1990s and Early 2000s
13.20 Joonas Hellerma, Estonian Public Broadcasting
Blossoms from a Broken Spirit: Reflections on the Philosophy of Modernist Music and the Work of Arvo Pärt
14.00 – 15.00 Lunch (at the Centre)
Presentations IV
15.00 Peeter Torop, University of Tartu
Semiotics of Creativity: ante factum and post factum Dynamics
15.40 Kristina Kõrver, Arvo Pärt Centre, University of Tartu
Arvo Pärt’s musical diaries as intersemiotic ideascapes in sound, word and image
16.20 Marek Tamm, Tallinn University, Estonian Academy of Sciences
One Line, Infinite Meanings: Holistic Thinking in Arvo Pärt and Juri Lotman
17.00 – 18.00 Closing and farewell drinks
See the full programme HERE.
The conference will be held in English and is open to all interested participants. Registration is open until October 10. The participation fee includes coffee breaks and lunches as well.
Registration:
• Two-day attendance – €60
• One-day attendance – €40
The first day of the conference will conclude with a chamber concert at the Arvo Pärt Centre. Tickets will be available via Fienta.
Registration HERE
*** A free shuttle bus will take guests to the conference, leaving from Tallinn city centre in the morning and returning from the Arvo Pärt Centre car park.
October 18
8:45 a.m. – departure from the Mere Kultuurikesus (Mere pst 5)
9:00 a.m. – stop at Haabersti Circle K parking lot (Paldiski mnt 106)
6:15 p.m. – Arvo Pärt Centre parking lot – Mere Kultuurikesus
Organizing team: Toomas Siitan, Anna Gustafson, Kristina Kõrver, Maarja Tyler, Kai Kutman, Anu Kivilo, Nele Kivisild, Kristel Karu-Kletter.
The conference is supported by the Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne and Anna Gustafson.
