Onutė Narbutaitė

Onutė Narbutaitė is one of only a small number of composers today whose music bears the mark of exceptional individuality and is recognisable from the very first bars of all her compositions. Besides the wide spectrum of various emotional states and feelings in Narbutaitė’s creative work what is also palpable is the sense of aristocratic moderation and a strong compositional discipline which only serve to enhance the emotional impact of the music. However, the constructive origin manifests itself not by systems of organisation of various musical parameters borrowed from others or created by her. Narbutaitė’s intellectual opuses do not remind one of ‘machine production’ but ‘hand work’ carried out with great precision. The rationality of her composition reveals itself through meticulously detailed textures, the precise proportions of smaller or larger sections and the overall form, as well as the not immediately perceptible interplay of the most minor details. At the same time the abstract musical narrative is extremely expressive, coming into clear relief and often reminiscent of ‘something familiar.’ Perhaps the most apt description of her present work has been provided by the American musicologist Richard Taruskin: ‘Not “tonal”. Not “romantic”. Not “retro”. Consonant.’ Onutė Narbutaitė (b. 1956) is Lithuania’s best-known female composer. She learned the basics of composition from Bronius Kutavičius, graduating in 1979 from the Lithuanian State Conservatory (now the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre) where she studied composition under Prof. Julius Juzeliūnas. From 1979 to 1982 she taught music theory and history at the Klaipėda Faculty of the Lithuanian State Conservatory. From 1982 she has concentrated solely on her creative work and lives in Vilnius. In 1997 the composer was awarded the Lithuanian National Culture and Art Prize for her oratorio Centones meae urbi , termed by the Polish musicologist Andrzej Chłopecki a ‘historiosophic composition about Vilnius and the spirituality of that city.’ The cycle of symphonies Tres Dei Matris Symphoniae and the symphonic composition La barca were recognised as the best symphonic words in the 2004 and 2005 competitions organised by the Lithuanian Composers’ Union. In 2008 in the same competition in the vocal-choral music category her work Lapides, flores, nomina et sidera was chosen as the best (this All Souls’ Day’s project, commissioned for the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) World Music Days in Vilnius, was performed by seven Vilnius choirs in various Vilnius churches and at the Bernardine Cemetery). In 2015, again in the same competition, Narbutaitė was chosen as Composer of the Year for her opera Kornetas (The Cornet) and the composition for chamber orchestra Was There a Butterfly? . Onutė Narbutaitė’s works, a large number of which has been specially commissioned, have been performed at various festivals: Gaida, the Vilnius Festival (1999, 2001, 2008), Warsaw Autumn (1994, 1997, 2007, 2013), Musica viva (Munich, 2005), MaerzMusik (Berlin, 2003), Klangspuren (Schwaz, 2004), ISCM World Music Days (Berne, 2004, Vilnius, 2008), Icebreaker II: Baltic Voices (Seattle, 2004), Pan Music Festival (Seoul, 2004, 2005), Est-Ovest (Turin, 2006), 22 Festival de Música (Alicante, 2006) Ars musica (Brussels, 2009), Frau musica nova (Cologne, 1998), Artgenda (Copenhagen, 1996), De Suite Muziekweek (Amsterdam, 1995), the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival (1992), the Helsinki Festival (1992), Music Harvest (Odense, 1992), the Czesław Miłosz centennial festival in Kraków (2011), the El universo musical de Paul Klee series of concerts as part of the exhibition Paul Klee: maestro de la Bauhaus (Madrid, 2013), as well as many other festivals and concerts in Europe, the USA, and Canada. Her music, as the featured composer, has been more widely presented at some festivals, namely: Aboa musica (Turku, 2003), Kaustinen XX Chamber Music Week (1998), Europäisches Musikfest Mün