Arvo Pärt: Adam’s Lament

Arvo Pärt had been contemplating the writing of Adam’s Lament (2009) for more than 20 years when he finally found an occasion for composing it to be performed in Istanbul, a nexus of religions. The work was premiered at the Hagia Irene, the oldest church in the city, by Estonian and Turkish performers in June 2010.

Adam’s Lament sets a text by a Russian Orthodox monk, St Silouan of Mount Athos (1866–1938), published by his disciple Archimandrite Sofroni Sakharov (1896–1993) in the collection Staretz Silouan (1973). Silouan, who resided at the monastery of St Panteleimon in Greece, focused his teaching on loving one’s enemy, having compassion for humanity and feeling sorrow for the sins of humans. In Pärt’s setting, the mixed choir represents Silouan himself, the narrator, whose speech bookends the core of the piece, the setting for male choir of Adam’s outpouring of grief and despair on being banished from Paradise.

Pärt wrote: “For the holy man Silouan of Mount Athos, the name Adam is like a collective term which comprises humankind in its entirety and each individual person alike, irrespective of time, epochs, social strata and confession. But who is this banished Adam? We could say that he is all of us who bear his legacy. And this ‘Total Adam’ has been suffering and lamenting for thousands of years on earth. Adam himself, our primal father, foresaw the human tragedy and experienced it as his personal guilt. He has suffered all human cataclysms, unto the depths of despair.”