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Wed, 03 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0300

The Spread of the Cult and Iconography of St Barbara in Lithuanian Sacred Art of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

Daiva Vaišnorienė — Wed, 03 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0300

The article addresses the spread of the cult of St Barbara in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania during the period following the Council of Trent and the diversity of her iconography in sacred art. The image of this saint, which became extremely popular in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, became frequently encountered after the spread of St Barbara’s fraternities; however, so far it has not been analysed in detail from the artistic aspect. The aim of the study is to delve into the spread, change, and iconographic methods of the extensive cult of this saint during the period following the Council of Trent in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. To achieve this goal, the following tasks were set: to find out how the cult emerged and spread and to explore its nature in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania; to review some of the surviving images of the saint in the altars of Lithuanian Catholic churches and in Lithuanian museums, classifying them according to typical and specific iconographic ways of representation. Theoretical-descriptive, empirical, and iconographic-iconological research methods were applied, which allowed to fully investigate, evaluate, and reveal the meaning and importance of the content of sacred art in the Christian community at that time.

The Forgotten Works of Juozas Zikaras: Medals, Badges, and Sports Prizes

Eduardas Remecas — Wed, 03 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0300

Much has been written about the work of the sculptor Juozas Zikaras (1881–1944), but not all his works are known so far. There is also a lack of information on the dating of his works. This article addresses only a small area of Zikaras’s work: medals, medallions, badges, and sports prizes. The main focus is on the unknown facts of the sculptor’s work. The circumstances of the creation of medals, some of the medallions, and their dating are specified: medals of the Decade of Lithuania’s Independence (1928), the medal of the Forerunners of the Army (1940), plaques of President Antanas Smetona (1933), medallions of Kipras Petrauskas and Juozas Tūbelis, etc. For the first time, facts are presented about the sculptor’s yet unknown activity as a badge designer. The article also introduces the sculptor’s works intended as awards to athletes: ‘Žirgai’ (Horses, 1933), ‘Krepšininkas’ (A Basketballer, 1943).

A Rendezvous of Theatre with Music on the Metamodernist Stage: The Genotype of Sun and Sea by Rugilė Bardžiukaitė, Vaiva Grainytė, and Lina Lapelytė

Gražina Daunoravičienė — Wed, 03 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0300

The article investigates and substantiates, with scholarly arguments, the identity of the genotype of the artifact Sun and Sea (2017) by Rugilė Barzdziukaitė, Vaiva Grainytė, and Lina Lapelytė. The author’s concept of the music genre (music genotype 1990, 2021) is used as a theoretical base and a research method. The conception of a ‘musical genotype’, or a dynamic music genre, proposed by the author of the article, is based on the idea of a ‘spiritual organism’. Meanwhile, the concept signifies not only the fact of an inherited type of opus (in a sense, a kind of DNA, genome of an opus) but also the fact of its self-organisation and live change (transformation). The genotype is a mark of identity of the products created by individual artistic intelligence, a recursive self-organising system that pervades the development of music art with its changing actualisation. The proposed theoretical model of the music genotype forms a new approach to the identity of the phenomenon, its origin and development, structural elements, and ontology and promotes the development of the discourse of dynamic processes. From this point of view, the music scene of contemporaneity and its sound art represent the ‘chromatic’ phase of the change in genotype (macro)systems. The author proposes that the structural elements of the genotype are naturally grouped under determinants of different origins. The tetractys structure of the music genotype is formed by: (a) factors of sociocultural determination; (b) factors of communicative determination, and (c) factors of artistic determination, covering the aspects of the genre poetics (ideas), and the formal structure, introduction of poetics through the sounds of music. From this point of view, the article investigates the factors representing the music genotype of Sun and Sea, however, particular attention is paid to the analysis of the artistic determinants of the music genotype. Sun and Sea” is tested as an opus-hybrid, the genotype structure of which is dominated by the opera segment and the performance component interacts in a subordinate manner. The transformations and atypicality of traditional genres and the mixed forms of genres (poly-genres, hybrid genres, music in-between genres, Musik zwischen den Genres, etc.) have become historical facts in the second half of the twentieth through the twenty-first century. In the course of the research, the artifact Sun and Sea is contextualised in the environment of the cultural paradigm of metamodernism, Regieoper theatre, and the mainstream transformation of music genotypes.

The Practice of Score Rewriting: The Case Study of Bronius Kutavičius’s Opera-Poem Strazdas – žalias paukštis (Thrush, the Green Bird)

Imantas Šimkus — Wed, 03 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0300

Often composers, who themselves are not practising performers, render the music they compose in very complicated notation. To convey symbols, composers use numerological codes to mark metres and bars or sacrifice the practicality of the score and its clear reading in an attempt to convey a beautiful, symbolic graphic image in the score. In such cases, conductors should rewrite the score (along with the parts). Otherwise, the mastery of complicated and complex notation in the interpretation of the metro-rhythmic fabula will take up a lot of precious rehearsal time.
Scores of this kind are difficult for musicians to comprehend precisely because of the complete mismatch between the fixed metro-rhythmic fabula and the actually sounding pulsation fabula. For this reason, it is recommended to rewrite the metro-rhythmic fabula by organising the metro-rhythmic events in an easy-to-understand way. Of course, the conductor must respect the dramaturgical codes composed by the author and realise them with precision. Yet if we can achieve the same sound by rewriting everything in a simpler way without violating the original intention, this is the recommended practice. As a specific example, we provide the case study of Bronius Kutavičius’s opera-poem Strazdas – žalias paukštis (Thrush, the Green Bird).
Kutavičius used to write down the music he composed in graphic scores. They are very beautiful and deserve attention in their own right as works of visual art. However, graphic notation is quite tricky for performers in terms of practicality. The need to regroup metrotectonic structures in Kutavičius’s opera-poem Thrush, the Green Bird is one of the most important arguments for rewriting the score. From the very first bars of the entry of the first violins, we are confronted with several problematic issues: what value of the sound duration is identical to a conducting beat? how many smaller beat units does a beat contain? what are the support points of phrases?
Rewriting the scores allows the metro-rhythmic progression of events, which is particularly difficult to interpret, to be understood by the conductor and the musicians in a much simpler way. First of all, the necessity of rewriting arises when the pulsation fabula, as composed by the composer, does not correspond at all with the metro-rhythmic fabula fixed in the score at the actual moment of performance. The conductor’s interpretation of this type of a metro-rhythmic structure will only disturb the performers with his projection of the movements. Not only is it not enough for him or her to prepare the score for the performance (thus identifying their own movement progression with the pulsation fabula), but it is also necessary to rewrite the performers’ parts. Only then will two radically different pieces of information about the same opus to the performers be avoided: the conductor’s projection of the movements will be identical to the pulsation fabula and not identical to the part of the metro-rhythmic fabula. In the face of the problem of this nature, the practice of rewriting scores and parts is recommended and appreciated.

Characteristics and Products of Free Improvisational Music

Matas Samulionis — Wed, 03 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0300

The article analyses the phenomenon of free improvisation through the prism of the perception of the contemporary artist. The aim is not to frame improvisation in stylistic terms; on the contrary, it highlights the pervasiveness of the art of free improvisation in many different artistic movements and the constant adaptation of artistic tools and concepts. The article identifies and analyses the essential qualities of improvisational music and questions absolute freedom. The processuality of free improvisation is emphasised, and the main artistic products that emerge from this process are identified and discussed. The inevitable contradictions, complexity, and multidirectionality are presented in the article not as factors of chaos but as tools that enable innovative thinking inherent in the artistic research.