Mikalojaus Konstantino Čiurlionio muzikos modernumo prielaidos ir paskatos

ENThe creation of Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (1875-1911), the artist of a universal talent, laid the foundation of Lithuanian professional music. However, it also had a potential to become an important part of the European music in the first half of the 20th century. During his very short life he devoted only thirteen years to the creation of music, and merely six years to painting. Čiurlionis' creative style evolved very rapidly presenting unexpected insights, innovative ideas and means that forecast the evolution of the European music in the near future. The modernity of Čiurlionis' music at that time should be linked with the polyphonisation of musical thought and the technique of composition, polylinear tendencies of the texture, with the structure formation regulated rather by melody-rhythmic features instead of the tonal harmony, the emancipation of the harmony and tonality leading towards pantonality, and the prerogative of the principles of modality in melody and harmony, as well as his early premonition and discoveries leading to serial structuring of musical materials. In this respect Čiurlionis foresaw the future discoveries of dodecaphonic and serial principles by J. M. Hauer, A. Schoenberg and A. Webern. His experiment with the literal palindrome (B-E-Es-A-C A-Es) predicted Webern's search for the symmetry of musical elements and was used half a century earlier than the numerical palindrome practiced by P. Boulez. Čiurlionis' musical compositions were also distinguished by the abundance of melorhythmic ostinato structures, the application of isomelic as well as isorhythmic principles. It is important that these constructive dominants did not eliminate tonal hierarchy and intonational gravity, consequently energetic and emotional potentials of the melody.The modernity of Čiurlionis' music was conditioned and stimulated by his sensitive and progressive attitude, by his self-dissociation from regressive traditionalism, and good professional education that, besides other things, gave him knowledge and impulses to employ the principles of Renaissance and Baroque music formation and measures of counter point techniques. (As the saying goes -"new things are well forgotten old ones".) The artist's intuition urged him to hurry and look for innovative solutions in order to compensate for a short creative life and to lay a foundation for the future of Lithuanian music.