Guest-lecture of Professor Dr. Jānis Kudiņš (Riga, Latvia)
2023 April 4, Tuesday, 13:00
LMTA Building 2: Room 2303 (Vilniaus 6-2, Vilnius)
Guest-lecture of Professor Dr. Jānis Kudiņš
19th-century Romanticism and its Stylistic Representation in Latvian Symphonic Music until the 1930s
Department of Musuicology, Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music
The lecture will focus on the issue concerning the long-lasting influence of the style and aesthetics of the 19th-century romanticism on the history of Latvian symphonic music within1880-1940. The above period witnesses the prevalence of the so-called national romanticism as one of the 19th-century romantic arts in diverse symphony music by Latvian composers alongside with instrumental chamber music, choral works and operas. The most outstanding symphonic pieces by composers of different generations mostly represent such genres as programmatic poems, illustrative music and suites. However, we find almost no traces of the branch of aesthetics and style of romanticism which reflects contrasts, grotesque and dramatic pathetic within the context of music expressiveness. Such tendencies turn up mostly in the thirties of the 20th century. The following works could be highlighted as particular examples in this context: Jānis Mediņš Concerto for piano and orchestra (1935, interaction of late romanticism and modernist constructivism), Pēteris Barisons Second Symphony (1938, a Berlioz-type “symphonic novel” in the history of Latvian music) and Jānis Ivanovs Fourth Symphony (1940-1941, transition from late romanticism toward expressionism). A detailed description of the manifestations of the stylistics of romanticism in the symphonic music of Latvian composers will offer an opportunity to compare possible related tendencies in the history of the music of other countries, for example, Lithuania, during this period.
Jānis Kudiņš is a full-time professor and researcher at the Department of Musicology of Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music (JVLAM). He is a graduate of the JVLAM (bachelor degree in 1997, master degree in 1999). In 2008, he earned his PhD in musicology. He has been a lecturer at the JVLAM since 1996. As a researcher, he also works in the Center for Scientific Research (and was head of the center from 2008 to 2012). From 2008 to 2017 he was the head of the Department of Musicology of the JVLAM. His major interests in musicology include Latvian and Baltic music history of the nineteenth and twentieth century, the concepts of style, modernism and postmodernism in music and art, the methodology of scientific research, the European popular music culture of the first half of the twentieth century. He is an author of scientific publications (including two monographs) in Latvian and English and actively participates in international seminars and conferences in Latvia and other countries.