This unaccompanied choral work, six and a half minutes long, was composed in 1997. The text comes from the biblical Book of Matthew (chapter 26, verse 7 and following), concerning a woman with an alabaster box filled with costly ointment which she pours upon the head of Christ. (The disciples reprimand the woman for wastefulness, telling her that she should have sold the ointment and given the proceeds to the poor—but Christ retorts that "you have the poor with you always, but Me you do not have always.") The world premiere recording of The Woman with the Alabaster Box came on the Theatre of Voices' 1999 I Am the True Vine CD, a grouping of several of Pärt's unaccompanied choral works. The work perhaps hints at a new harmonic complexity in Pärt's output; for much of its duration, the composer's characteristic limpid triads and parallels give way to extended harmony that generates considerable dissonance.

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