Another Paradise, Fairer than the Old

This essay explores the influence of Saints Silouan and Sophrony the Athonites on Arvo Pärt, arguing that Pärt’s setting of Silouan’s Adam’s Lament offers significant insight into the composer’s spiritual and musical development. It begins by reviewing characteristics of the Orthodox liturgical hymnography for the Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise. It proceeds to examine the meditation Adam’s Lament by St Silouan the Athonite, which seems to be drawing on the liturgical themes, featuring both mourning and hope. It subsequently considers the composition by Arvo Pärt. Pärt sets only a portion of Silouan’s text, which skews its spiritual content in the direction of mourning. Pärt’s Adam’s Lament—somewhat unusually within his oeuvre—follows and emphasizes the emotional shape of Silouan’s text, in ways that this essay brings out.