| Year of Composition: | 2012 |
| Duration: | 30 |
| Instrumentation: | satb-2fl-2ob-2cl-2bn-2hn-str orch |
| Text (language): | Knuts Skujenieks (Latvian) |
for 16 voices, double wind quintet and 20 strings
Dedicated to Normunds Šnē
Commissioned by the Cēsis Art Festival 2012
Released recording:
Justė Janulytė. Sandglasses. - LMIPC CD 077, 2013
Premiere: 3 August 2012 at the Cēsis Sports Complex Festival Hall
Performers: Kamer Choir and Sinfonietta Riga, conductor Normunds Šnē
Programme note
The piece is a long, slow and extremely gradual odyssey from the "clouds" to the "earth" in both physical and metaphorical senses. The musical structure is based on a canon of 3 layers - strings and voices that are temporal and timbral opposition as ''instrumental'' and ''human'', and winds which have a position of the middle, being a ''breathing instrument'' and helping to connect two opposites creating a smooth ''thermodynamic'' transformation of the sound substance. Those 3 layers could remind of 3 different water states in the hydrological cycle - liquid, vapor and ice and their cyclical mutation processes (evaporation, condensation, precipitation and infiltration) become in music transformation of timbre and harmony, the densification and clarification of texture, rising and sinking of macro register and micro intonations.
To all these acoustic processes the poetry by Knuts Skujenieks gives a verbal expression, poetic meaning. The singers articulate though only vocals of the poem to purify the verbal material cutting off the consonants as word attacks as it can be seen in the instrumental parts as well - all the notes the string and wind players produce start from the silence, reach the general dynamics and vanish into silence, creating the "underwater" pulsations, unifying the timbres and homogenizing the texture. The poetry of Skujenieks was chosen not only for its literal sense, but also for the poet's connections with Lithuania as a part of the historical, cultural and linguistic relationship of our two countries - very important for me and musically realized by continuous collaboration with Latvian artists.
Justė Janulytė
Sung text (in Latvian)
tik skaistu kalnu mums nav
mums mākoņi dzimst uz zemes
blakām vītola atvasēm
blakām stirnas bērniem
un kad mākoņi salasās debesīs
tie ir tie mūsu kalni
kur mums augstu un balti domāt
tāpat kā visiem citiem
