Peter J. Schmelz (keynote)
Arizona State University, USA
Nikita Andrejev
Deacon, Nõmme Orthodox Church of St. John the Baptist in Tallinn, Estonia
Peter Bouteneff
St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, USA
Leopold Brauneiss
Institute of Musicology of the University of Vienna, Austria
Jeffers Engelhardt
Amherst College, USA
Mart Humal
Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre, Estonia
Kevin C. Karnes
Emory University, USA
Chris May
independent researcher, Sydney, Australia
Toomas Siitan
Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre, Estonia
Tauri Tölpt
University of Tartu, The Institute of Theology of the Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church, Estonia
Andreas Waczkat
Georg-August University of Göttingen, Germany
Deacon Nikita Andrejev is an icon painter and ecclesiastic, who heads the Tallinn studio of the Prosopon School of Iconology and paints both icons and murals, conducts master classes and gives lectures throughout Europe and North America. In 2017, he was ordained a deacon in the Estonian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate and he currently serves at the St. John the Baptist Church in Nõmme. He is also a founding and council member of St. John’s School in Tallinn and a member of the church renovation and restoration committee of the Tallinn Eparchy.
Nikita Andrejev was exposed to icon painting already in his childhood, working as an apprentice, assistant and interpreter for his father, iconographer Vladislav Andrejev. From him he learned the technique of Byzantine icon painting in the Russian style, as well as fundamental insights into the theology of the Orthodox icon and Christian world-view. Simultaneously, he gained experience as an instructor of icon painting.
Nikita Andrejev received his BA in Classics with a focus on ancient Greek from Yale University (1997). He received his licentiate in theology from the Saint Sergius Orthodox Theological Institute in Paris (2005) and defended his master’s degree on the theology of St. Irenaeus at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary in New York (2015).
Deacon Nikita Andrejev’s presentation The Theology of the Word Underlying the Creativity of Arvo Pärt
Peter Bouteneff teaches courses in ancient and modern theology and spirituality at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Seminary (SVOTS), where he is professor of Systematic Theology. He has earned his Bachelor’s degree in music from the New England Conservatory of Music, Boston, and his Master’s degree in Theology from SVOTS (1990), and defended another Master’s degree (1992) and his Doctor’s degree (1997) in Theology at Oxford University, where he studied under Bishop Kallistos Ware. In 1995–2000 he worked as Executive Secretary for the Commission on Faith and Order at the World Council of Churches, and has written extensively on Orthodox relations with other churches.
Bouteneff is the initiator and editor of the Foundations Series published by St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press. He is the author of five books (in one of these, co-author), the most recent of which, How to Be a Sinner (2018), has become one of the best-selling books by SVS Press.
Peter Bouteneff is committed to exploring the connections between theology and culture. He is the initiator and director of the Arvo Pärt Project at St. Vladimir’s Seminary, an in-depth endeavour involving concerts, lectures and publications. His book Arvo Pärt: Out of Silence (2015) explores the relationship between Orthodox Theology and Arvo Pärt’s music. Peter Bouteneff is also the founder and director of The Institute of Sacred Arts at SVOTS and a member of the Creative Council of the Arvo Pärt Centre.
Peter Bouteneff’s presentation Case Studies in Pärt’s Textual Settings: Silent and Sounded
Leopold Brauneiss studied musicology at the University of Vienna and musical education and piano at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. In 1988, he received his Doctor’s degree in musicology from the University of Vienna. Since 1990, Brauneiss has been teaching theory of music and piano at the J. M. Hauer-Musikschule, Wiener Neustadt; since 2004, he has worked as a lecturer for harmony and counterpoint at the Institute of Musicology of the University of Vienna. He has held a lectureship in subjects on musicology at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater “Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy” in Leipzig since 2006.
Leopold Brauneiss is also active as a composer. His works have been performed by renowned artists and ensembles, with Gidon Kremer, Kremerata Baltica and Tonkünstlerorchester Niederösterreich amongst others. Since 1997, he has focused in his research and writings on Arvo Pärt’s tintinnabuli style and has published several articles and given presentations on Pärt’s music at conferences in Europe and the USA. The Arvo Pärt Centre has also published a collection of his articles in Estonian, entitled Arvo Pärdi tintinnabuli-stiil: arhetüübid ja geomeetria.
Leopold Brauneiss’ presentation Characteristics of the Compositional Process in Arvo Pärt’s Tintinnabuli Technique
Jeffers Engelhardt is Professor of Ethnomusicology at Amherst College. He teaches courses in ethnomusicology focusing on community-based ethnography, music and religion, voice, and analytical approaches to music and sound. His research deals broadly with music, religion, European identity, and media.
His books include Singing the Right Way: Orthodox Christians and Secular Enchantment in Estonia (Oxford, 2015) and the co-edited volumes Resounding Transcendence: Transitions in Music, Religion, and Ritual (Oxford, 2016) and Arvo Pärt: Sounding the Sacred (Fordham, 2020). His current book project is Music and Religion (under contract with Oxford University Press), and he is Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Journal of Music and Religion and Digital and Multimedia Editor of the Journal of the American Musicological Society.
Jeffers Engelhardt’s presentation Tintinnabuli’s Materiality (or, Listening to Pärt like a Piano Technician)
Mart Humal is presently a professor of music theory at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre in Tallinn. His research interests include Estonian music and general problems of music theory. He is the author of the books Heino Elleri harmooniast (On the Harmony of Heino Eller, Tallinn, 1984), All-Interval Twelve-Tone Rows and Their Transformations (Tallinn, 2005) and Studies on Tonal Structures: Introduction and Fourteen Analytical Studies (Tallinn, 2007), and the editor of the seven collections of articles A Composition as a Problem [1]–7 (Tallinn, 1997–2016).
Mart Humal’s presentation Arvo Pärt’s Second Symphony and XJI-Invariant Twelve-Tone Rows
Kevin C. Karnes is a historical musicologist who studies sounding expressions of identity, difference, and belonging in Eastern and Central Europe from the nineteenth century to the present. His newest research studies the coalescence of new wave music and culture, engaging sounds, technologies and oral histories from both sides of the former Iron Curtain. He holds a PhD from Brandeis University (2001).
Currently he is professor of music history and Associate Dean for the Arts at Emory University. He also works as the editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American Musicological Society. Karnes is the author of four books, among them two treatises on Arvo Pärt’s music: Arvo Pärt’s Tabula Rasa (Oxford University Press, 2017) and Sounds Beyond: Arvo Pärt and the 1970s Soviet Underground (University of Chicago Press, 2021).
Kevin C. Karnes’ presentation Tintinnabuli and the Sacred: A View from the Archives, 1976–1977
Chris May completed his doctorate in musicology at Oxford University in 2016. His dissertation examined a number of prominent critical frameworks for Arvo Pärt’s music and sought especially to reconcile analytical and experiential accounts of tintinnabuli. In 2015 and 2016 he was the recipient of visiting studentships at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre. He has published several articles and book chapters on Pärt and other research topics including music copyright law.
Chris May also holds a law degree from the University of Sydney, Australia. He currently works as a government lawyer, drafting legislation for the Parliament of New South Wales.
Cris May`s presentation Cyclical Structure and Dramatic Technique in Litany.
Peter J. Schmelz is a professor of musicology at Arizona State University. He has previously taught at the University at Buffalo (SUNY), and at Washington University in St. Louis, where he also worked as the Head of the Music Department. Schmelz defended his doctoral thesis at the University of California, Berkeley, entitled Listening, Memory, and the Thaw: Unofficial Music and Society in the Soviet Union, 1956–1974. His areas of expertise have become 20th and 21st century music, Russian, Ukrainian and Soviet music, particularly Shostakovich, Silvestrov and Schnittke, music from the time of the Cold War, popular and experimental music, film music, music and politics, and sound studies.
He has published three monographs on Soviet-era avant-garde music, all by Oxford University Press: Such Freedom, If Only Musical: Unofficial Soviet Music during the Thaw (2009), Alfred Schnittke’s Concerto Grosso No. 1 (2019), and Sonic Overload: Alfred Schnittke, Valentin Silvestrov, and Polystylism in the Late USSR (2021), with three more books waiting to be published. Schmelz is also the editor (with Simon Morrison) of the Russian Music Studies series published by Indiana University Press. From 2014 until 2018 he edited the Journal of Musicology by University of California Press.
Peter J. Schmelz’s presentation Arvo Pärt and Valentin Silvestrov: Creative Parallels from Experimentation to Sensation
Toomas Siitan graduated as a composer from Tallinn State Conservatoire in 1981 and received his PhD in musicology from the University of Lund. Since 1986, he has been teaching music history at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre (since 2004 as a professor). In 2013, he became the Head of the Department of Musicology (since 2018 he is the Head of Musicology Studies).
Siitan’s main areas of research are history and the aesthetics of early Western music and music life in Estonia until the 20th century as well as music by Arvo Pärt. He has taught courses on Pärt’s music at the University of Tartu and the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre.
For many years, Toomas Siitan was the Chair of the Board of the Estonian Musicological Society (1992–1997, 2003–2013), Vice-Chairman of the Board of the Estonian Music Council (1999–2017) and board member of the International Fellowship for Research in Hymnology (1993–2005). Since 2019, he has been a member of the Artistic Advisory Board of the Arvo Pärt Centre. He is also active as a conductor and serves as the artistic director of the Haapsalu Early Music Festival, held since 1994.
Toomas Siitan’s presentation Pärt, Bach and the Bees
Tauri Tölpt is currently a PhD student in the Faculty of Theology at the University of Tartu. He completed his Bachelor studies at the Faculty of Theology of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece and his Master’s studies at the theological faculties of the University of Fribourg, University of Geneva and the Institute of Postgraduate Studies of Orthodox Theology in Chambèsy, Switzerland. His main field of interest is Orthodox-Byzantine patristic and systematic theology. In his doctoral thesis, currently in progress, he researches the notion of motion and change according St. John of Damascus.
Tauri Tölpt is the Head of the Chair of Orthodox Theology at the Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Institute of Theology, where he also gives lectures on Orthodox dogmatic and systematic theology. In addition, he has given lectures on Orthodox theology in the Faculty of Theology at the University of Tartu and at the Arvo Pärt Centre in Laulasmaa.
Tauri Tölpt’s presentation The Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed in the works of Arvo Pärt
Andreas Waczkat is a historical musicologist whose main research interests are music and cultural history of the 16th–18th centuries, historical musicology and new media, musica Baltica, and music and musicology in post-totalitarian contexts. He received his PhD from the University of Rostock in 1997 with a dissertation on German parody masses of the 17th century. He has published four monographs, the last of which, Georg Friedrich Händel: The Messiah, was published in 2008. Waczkat is also the compiler and editor of numerous books.
He has worked as a lecturer at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hanover, as a temporary professor at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster and at the University of Lüneburg, and has also given lectures in several universities around Europe, including the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre. Currently he is professor for historical musicology at the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen. In 2019, he was awarded an honorary degree (Doctor honoris causa) from the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre. Since 2002, Andreas Waczkat has been Chair of the Musicology and Music Education specialist group in the German Society for Musicological Research (Gesellschaft für Musikforschung). Since 2004 he has also been editor of the Cöthener Bach-Hefte series.
Andreas Waczkat’s presentation The Sound(s) of Silence: Presence of the Unhearable in Arvo Pärt’s Silentium