Lithuanian modernisms: Alternative paradigms in contemporary Baltic art music
In her PhD thesis Lithuanian modernisms: Alternative paradigms in contemporary Baltic art music at University of York, Claire McGinn (2021) discusses “the modernist-leaning heterogeneities of Lithuanian contemporary art music, and the roots and consequences of a narrow aesthetic and conceptual template common to dominant paradigms of Baltic art music“.
In Leaving Lithuania Part II: Justina Repečkaitė and Albertas Navickas — Circles, science, and spectra, Claire McGinn, is tracing the potential influence of their teacher at LMTA Osvaldas Balakauskas. They both share interests in spectral and timbral approaches to music and discuss their relationships with ideas of national belonging.
“These two composers, both born around the late 1980s, also left Lithuania and subsequently live and work elsewhere, but have different and individual relationships to this departure and to the idea of what it means to be (seen as) a Lithuanian composer, or not. ”
Leaving Lithuania pages 215-216
“Repečkaitė’s relationship with Lithuanian modernisms can be understood through connections to Balakauskas, and to some extent also Ričardas Kabelis – but her work is also characterised by quite significant departures from many of the trends already discussed here, which in turn could be seen as related to Repečkaitė’s long-term emigration to France and her interest in timbre (which, she has explained, is not typically perceived as a very ‘Lithuanian’ musical trait). Of all the work discussed in this thesis, Repečkaitė’s music sits possibly on the furthest edge of a broad Venn diagram of combinations of characteristics – but is still a vital piece of the picture, illustrating the variety of directions taken by composers influenced by major twentieth-century Lithuanian figures like Balakauskas, Bronius Kutavičius, Mažulis and Ričardas Kabelis. ”
7.1 Justina Repečkaitė (b. 1989): ‘Drawn with the sharpest pencil’ pages 217 - 220.
“Still, Repečkaitė’s works (particularly more explicitly ‘geometrical’ pieces like Chartres and Cosmatesque) strongly evoke a certain kind of grid axiom or fixed two- dimensional structure, in that both works rely conceptually on the image of a delimited structural shape, inside which there is a predefined amount of space and proportional relationships are fairly rigidly restricted <…>.”
“Some of the ways in which Repečkaitė’s approach could be viewed as different from other Lithuanian composers of her generation is in her exacting focus on modernist preoccupations like refining the fixed architectural form of a work based on an abstract structural ideal — and descriptions of her music as ‘sharp’, ‘hard’ or ‘geometric’ — which contrasts with the more postmodern conceptual terrain that may be associated with contemporaries <..>.”
7.3.1 Cosmatesque (Repečkaitė, 2017), pages 225 - 229.
7.3.2 Chartres (Repečkaitė, 2012), pages 230 - 234.
“Repečkaitė’s Chartres and (particularly) Cosmatesque are characterised by a teeming, voluminous density and near-constant forte dynamic that in some ways creates a much stronger impression of homogeneity. ”
Pages 243-245 from 7.3.4 ‘Music of a single state’: Blanche t’a vu (Navickas, 2006) .
“Cosmatesque and Chartres both depict immense, impersonal, two-dimensional geometric artworks made up from hundreds or thousands of tiny pieces, each not necessarily expressing a meaningful distinctness from all of its immediate neighbours but playing a part in the shimmering texture of the totality. In this sense, it could be said that Repečkaitė’s music more closely resembles a single state or architectural object — a physical totality with fixed internal patterns, like a stained glass window. <…> In the kinds of objects that often form an impulse for Repečkaitė’s work, the discrete pieces of the puzzle, window or elaborately tiled floor must tesselate precisely in order to create the integrity of the whole. ”
“Harmonically, Repečkaitė’s work is perhaps the most distantly related repertoire discussed in this thesis – connecting conceptually to Mažulis but eschewing some of the qualities that allow his output to be received as hybrid, postmodern, minimalist-like, and holding popular appeal.”
