Chorals of Light and Darkness: Multiple Identities in the World of Contemporary Lithuanian Music

Abstract

Lithuanian composers in their own way fulfil M. K. Čiurlionis’s (1875–1911) visionary oath: the creation of the world through the synthesis of arts initiated by waves of imagination, i.e., their works show a tendency to create an organic whole or universe that embodies the utopia of the eternal existence as the forgotten world of light of archaic myths and the fullness of its Baltic nature. An example of this is the universe of sutartinės (multipart polyphonic songs) created by Ričardas Kabelis (*1957) – the embodiment of Baltic mythology within the circle of eternity of musical sounds – the chorale of light of sutartinės, a vision of the endless humming sound of canon. This is the line of Baltic identity (“Sutartinė of the Mountain”, 2011–2016), deeply embedded in the perception of Lithuanian music. Meanwhile, as a counterbalance, we can identify the identity line of European historical drama by Kabelis’s former student Mykolas Natalevičius (*1985) through the Christian rising from darkness chorale, its variations, the interactions of hymns, and their dramatic development, which flow into images of historicism and sacredness. Here, we consistently move from early Christianity to the theme of Ukraine, which is deeply rooted in the modern thinking of Lithuanian intellectuals, complementing the European line – a new turn in the struggle between the shadows of darkness and light (Natalevičius’s chorale of the “Chorale of the Vanishing Light”, 2023). In this context, another expression of identity emerges in the works of Algirdas Martinaitis (*1950) as an exploration of ideas of the era, exemplified by his premiere of the work “Gija”, dedicated to Sakartvelo’s European journey, which is closely connected to Lithuania, and linking it to the musical significance of the name of the most distinguished Georgian composer of the 20th century, Giya Kancheli (1935–2019). “Gija” is also a meaningful Lithuanian word (Martinaitis is also a master of language), meaning a connection, a bond, a line of fabric – a leitmotif and a deeply penetrating paradigm of Ukrainian suffering into the existential depths of the Baltic and Caucasian origins. In this way, the multifunctional fabric of Lithuanian musical creation, revived in the current struggle of identities, unfolds with its ornamental lines, restoring to radiance the spaces of Europe that were once obscured by barbaric darkness.