Arvo Pärt: Ideascapes
October 17–18, 2025 at the Arvo Pärt Centre
Friday, 17 October
9.30 Registration and coffee
10.00 Opening
10.15 – 11.30 Keynote Speech: Christoph Wolff (Harvard University) – Cultural Memory in Music: Reflections on Arvo Pärt’s Concertino Wenn Bach Bienen gezüchtet hätte…
11.30 – 12.00 Coffee break
Presentations I
12.00 Maarja Tyler (Arvo Pärt Centre, Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre) – Expressionistic Nekrolog (1960) in the Context of Arvo Pärt’s Work
12.40 Anu Veenre (EAMT) – Discussing Pärt: Colleagues’ Views on Arvo Pärt’s Music at the Working Meetings of the Estonian SSR Composers’ Union in the Late 1970s
13.20 Toomas Siitan (EAMT, Arvo Pärt Centre) – Arvo Pärt and Shifting Modernisms
14.00 – 15.00 Lunch (at the Centre)
Presentations II
15.00 Leopold Brauneiss (University of Vienna) – Accent as an Element of the Musical Embodiment of the Word in Arvo Pärt’s Works
15.40 Mark Tatlow (University of Gothenburg) – Arvo Pärt’s Mozart-Adagio as Musical Timescape
16.20 Kerri Kotta (EAMT) – Theosis as a Development of Style and a Formal-Rhetorical Journey in the Works of Arvo Pärt
17.00 – 18.00 Coffee break
18.00 Concert “Dialogues in Music” (ca 75 min): Robert Traksmann (violin), Marcel Johannes Kits (cello), Sten Heinoja (piano). Works by Bach, Eller, Pärt, Brauneiss.
* The concert is open to everyone, admission by ticket.
** 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 after the evening concert.
October 17
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)
7:45 p.m. – Arvo Pärt Centre parking lot – Tallinn Mere Kultuurikeskus
Saturday, 18 October
9.45 – 10.15 Gathering and coffee
10.15 – 11.30 Keynote: Eero Tarasti (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
*** 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 Kultuurikeskus