Sublime Frequencies: Metaphysics of Resonance in Arvo Pärt, Cecilia Vicuña, and M.R. Bawa Muhaiyaddeen

Abstract

Through an inter-disciplinary and comparative study of the acoustic phenomenon of resonance—i.e., the synchronous vibration between two or more sounds—this dissertation thinks through a socially-engaged “sonic metaphysics” and phenomenology of sound in the field of religious studies, in three case studies of contemporary aesthetic and mystical works: Eastern Orthodox Estonian composer Arvo Pärt’s (1935-present) selected works from his early tintinnabuli period of composition; Mestizo Indigenous Chilean poet and artist Cecilia Vicuña’s (1948-present) selected Précario and Quipu works; and transnational Sri Lankan Sufi Shaikh M.R. Bawa Muhaiyaddeen’s (?-1986) The Resonance of Allah: Resplendent Explanations Arising from the Nūr, Allāh’s Wisdom of Grace. Critically, the study discovers how these three contemporary forms and dimensions of sonic religiosity act formally (through their content, form, and reception) to open up within and beyond established discourses of mysticism, animism, and aesthetics, to speak in new and socially-engaged ways about actual human and environmental relations and transformations. Each case study traces clear, detailed connections between metaphysical ideas about resonance and the impact of resonance on concerns such as self-realization and healing, social and environmental justice, humanitarian aid, medical care, and inter-religious tolerance, while examining the capacity of resonance to express continuities between metaphysics and the phenomenology of lived religious experience; to convey meaning across religious, political, and aesthetic categories of belonging; and to expand our capacity for listening and ethical action. Each case study likewise contributes both theoretical and ethnographic insights into how resonance, and sound more generally, convey roles as prayer, as presence, and as mode(s) of attunement that enact the creation of the cosmos and dialogue with the divine. The dissertation also uncovers the psychoacoustics of the listener’s embodied relationship with sound and presence and the capacity of resonance to elucidate commonalities in intersubjective experience (relational ontologies). The study contributes methodologically to the study of religion by situating resonance as a vital concept of contemporary interdisciplinary and comparative inquiry and positioning the listening subject and their experience at the center of the unfurling of sound within complex multi-religious and secular global spaces. More broadly, the study addresses how developing an account of the metaphysics of resonance in religion helps us to hear differently, with and for each other.