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Justė Janulytė
Observation of Clouds

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

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