Onutė Narbutaitė and Pēteris Vasks: texts, titles and musical meaning

Narbutaitė’s oratorio about Vilnius

Onutė Narbutaitė composed the oratorio Centones meae urbi, catalogued in English as Patchwork for My City, in 1997. It is written for soloists, choir and orchestra. Music Information Centre Lithuania lists its languages as Polish, Lithuanian, Latin, Yiddish and Hebrew. The combination of languages is part of how the work builds its image of the city.^[1][2]

Audronė Žiūraitytė’s study follows the oratorio’s use of texts from different periods. They include poetry by Czesław Miłosz, Adam Mickiewicz and Moshe Kulbak, alongside epitaphs and other writing associated with Vilnius. She reads their combination as cultural memory made active in a new composition. The selection of voices and their combination are central to that interpretation.^[2]

More than an illustration of the seasons

The main cycle moves from autumn through winter and spring to summer, with framing sections around it. Žiūraitytė cautions against expecting a straightforward seasonal picture: contrasting moods interrupt easy associations between a season and a feeling. Her discussion connects the structure with the selected writing and historical associations. The sequence provides a way to follow the work without assuming that each movement depicts the weather.^[2]

If you listen with a text or programme, notice when a language, voice or instrumental group becomes prominent. Keep the text’s date separate from the composition’s date. A passage can refer to an earlier world while performing a new role in the work you are hearing.

Vasks and the work done by a title

Ilona Būdeniece’s 2013 study examines genre in Pēteris Vasks’s instrumental music. Alongside familiar labels such as symphony and concerto, she considers titles built around words such as music, landscape and book. She uses the concept of librogenre, drawing on Gražina Daunoravičienė’s theory, to discuss works whose names do not announce a traditional genre. This is an analytical framework for particular repertoire, rather than a label for all Latvian music.^[3]

Būdeniece reports Vasks explaining that a title can give a listener a direction before the music begins. Her account distinguishes this guidance from a detailed narrative programme. A name can suggest an emotional starting point without requiring every listener to imagine the same scene.^[3]

Her concrete comparison pairs Musica dolorosa from 1983 with Musica appassionata from 2002. Both are for string orchestra. Būdeniece reports the composer connecting them as contrasting works: the former confronts tragedy and death, while the latter affirms life. Their related titles offer a starting point for comparison, while their common instrumentation makes it possible to ask how contrasting ideas are realised with similar performing forces.^[3]

Comparing specific works

Try the comparison at the level of a specific question. In Narbutaitė’s oratorio, what can the words tell you about a remembered place? In the two Vasks works, what does the title lead you to expect, and does your response change as you listen? Keep those observations tied to the work and performance. Three compositions cannot establish a shared style for an entire region.

The article on Tūla offers a related question in another medium: how does an artist’s arrangement of places and memories shape an experience of Vilnius? The comparison is a reading and listening exercise, rather than evidence that the novel and oratorio have the same structure.