The composer and conductor Jeronimas Kačinskas (1907-2005) is considered to be one of the most prominent modernists in the interwar Lithuania, who emphasised the importance of intuition and individuality. In Prague he studied under Alois Hába, from whom he acquired the idea of microtonal and athematic music: nothing in nature and the human life is recurrent, therefore music has also to be written according to the principles of non-recurrence. In Lithuania Kačinskas wrote microtonal works and established the classes of microtonal music in Kaunas and Klaipėda, however, all of his microtonal works were lost during the World War II. In 1938 the Convention of the International Society of Contemporary Music (ISCM) in London highly appreciated Kačinskas' Nonet, which was compared to the music of Béla Bartók. After emigration to the USA, Kačinskas mostly wrote religious music, worked as a conductor and a pedagogue.
Šarūnas Nakas
