Aesthetic transformation of Chorale in new Lithuanian organ music

Abstract

The article aims at revealing a specific ultimate relation of the Baltic New Sacrality with chorale. Its subject-matter is chorale transformations through the ruination of architectonics of sanctum’s chorale, turning it into a horizontal and spreading space or “tower ruins” – inspiring a rise of vertical accordics to the transcendental “other space”. Examples can be three works of the Lithuanian composers for the organs: Mykolas Natalevičius’s “LA” dedicated to Loreta Asanavičiūtė (2014) and “Psalmus 150” (2017), also Algirdas Martinaitis’s “The Messenger from Heaven”, the prayer to St. Francis of Assisi (2014). In these works, there emerge the principles of transformation of architectonics of chorale’s “sanctum” – Natalevičius’s overflow to the horizontal and Martinaitis’s integration of different sphere outlines into the vertical of rising transcendental harmony. Baltic minimalism demonstrates the way of the New Sacrality as an ideological alternative, a response or even replication to still relevant postmodernism, the “carnival of simulacra” ( J. Ranciere), relating it with the discourse of modern Western cultural philosophy of the image. The works by Arvo Pärt (Trivium, 1976), Aivars Kalejs (“Via dolorosa”, 1990), Imants Zemzaris (“Field. Mandala”, 1984), Teisutis Makačinas (“Prayer for Lithuania”, 1980), Onutė Narbutaitė (“The Road to the Silence”, 1981), Peteris Vasks (“Musica serva”, 1988) are actualised by refusing “carnival simulacra” (after J. Ranciere) or representativity, going into silence of sacrality, seeking reduced choral architectonic and pulsation of Enlightening. In this way, the Baltic musical creation is especially relevant nowadays, it is renewing the global concept of sacrality.