Silouan’s Song

• Silouan’s Song “My Soul Yearns after the Lord,” for strings, was composed in 1991.¹
• The work’s namesake is Russian mystic Father Silouan (1866-1938), whose writings focus on faith and humility. The piece is dedicated to Archimandritc Sophrony Sakharov, a Russian monastic leader who studies and translates the works of Father Silouan.²
• Pärt’s subtitle for this work a quote from Father Silouan. The work’s introduction (from the publisher’s catalog) also offers this longer Silouan quote:

“The humble soul lives before God in fear and Iove: in fear, lest it offend God in some way, in Iove for the soul has learned how the Lord loves us… The best thing is to surrender oneself to God and to endure sorrows with hope. The Lord seeing our sorrows never adds more. If sorrows seem to us overwhelming, it means that we have not surrendered ourselves to the divine will.” 

Father Silouan³

1. Paul D. Hillier, “Pärt, Arvo,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed November 19, 2019,  https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000020964.
2.  “Arvo Pärt: Silouan’s Song,” Universal Edition, accessed December 11, 2019, https://www.universaledition.com/arvo-part-534/works/silouan-s-song-4666. 
3. Quoted in “Arvo Pärt: Silouan’s Song,” Universal Edition.