One in All: Arvo Pärt and Juri Lotman in Search of Wholeness

Speaker: Marek Tamm

Introduction

Marek Tamm has said of the lecture: “Arvo Pärt and Juri Lotman lived and worked for decades in the same small cultural space, but, as far as is known, they never met or commented on each other’s work. Yet surprising similarities can be found in their thinking. The lecture stages a meeting that never actually took place and asks how Lotman’s cultural theory might help us better understand Pärt’s world of thought and the ideas underlying his musical work. Drawing on Pärt’s musical diaries and interviews, as well as Lotman’s writings, the lecture examines Pärt’s understanding of the relationship between part and whole against the background of Lotman’s cultural theory. In the thinking of both, we can recognise the conviction that the smallest element—a note or a sign—acquires meaning only within a larger whole; that creativity arises from the tension between differences and opposites; and that the past, present and eternity can converge in a single moment. Finally, this leads to the question of whether such a way of thinking about the whole also has an ethical dimension: what does it mean to live in a world where no part truly exists apart from the others?”

Marek Tamm is Professor of Cultural History at Tallinn University and Vice President of the Estonian Academy of Sciences. His research focuses on the cultural history of medieval Europe, theory and methodology of history, and cultural memory studies. His recent book publications include: “Breakthroughs in Cultural Psychology” (co-editor with Jaan Valsiner; Tallinn University Press, 2024), “The Fabric of Historical Time” (co-authored with Zoltán Boldizsár Simon; Cambridge University Press, 2023), “The Companion to Juri Lotman: A Semiotic Theory of Culture” (co-editor with Peeter Torop; Bloomsbury, 2022), “A Cultural History of Memory in the Early Modern Age” (co-editor with Alessandro Arcangeli; Bloomsbury, 2020), “Making Livonia: Actors and Networks in the Medieval Baltic Sea Region” (co-editor with Anu Mänd; Routledge, 2019), “Rethinking Historical Time: New Approaches to Presentism” (co-editor with Laurent Olivier; Bloomsbury, 2019), and “Debating New Approaches to History” (co-editor with Peter Burke; Bloomsbury, 2018).

Ticket information
Admission: €12/8/25

Transfer: Tallinn–Arvo Pärt Centre–Tallinn

Book a transfer from Tallinn to Laulasmaa. The vehicle leaves Tallinn at 13:45 from the car park next to Solaris, at Teatri väljak 1 (https://maps.app.goo.gl/hZtKVPPjfFL3dj3q6), and stops at 14:00 at the Haabersti Cirkle K car park (Paldiski mnt 106)*. It arrives at the Arvo Pärt Centre 25 minutes before the event begins. The return journey leaves the Centre’s car park 15 minutes after the event ends and takes you back to the original meeting point. The round-trip fare is €20 per person. Sales close 48 hours before the event begins. The service is provided by PremiumTaxi.

*Another pick-up point may be arranged by writing to info@arvopart.ee.

Tickets are non-refundable and cannot be exchanged.