The Virgin Mary and the Musician

In 2017, an 82-year-old Estonian Orthodox composer was one of the three winners of the Ratzinger Prize, together with the German theologians Theodor Dieter and Karl-Heinz Menke. For the first time, the "Nobel of Theology" went to a musician, Arvo Pärt. During a “spell in the wilderness” that lasted 8 years, Pärt studied Gregorian plain-chant, and left Lutheranism for the Orthodox Church.

Pärt's music is entirely spiritual, as Bach's music was in his time, both his sacred music and his famous non-religious pieces. It has been said, rightly, that his compositions evoke the silence of the Virgin Mary at the foot of the Cross, something evident in his Stabat Mater. But it is also the silence of the Virgin welcoming the Word made flesh.

There is a mysterious presence in the music of Pärt, which comes to dwell in the soul of the listener; an encounter between the infinitely great and our humanity marked by finitude. This presence, following the example of Mary at the Annunciation, fosters a sort of availability without which the encounter with God cannot take place.

In this sense, the music of Pärt predisposes to interiority. And we know since Augustine that it is within our heart, in the silent space that we maintain there, that we can meet God who is waiting for us.

Source: France Culture