MIKALOJUS KONSTANTINAS CIURLIONIS

Biography and Works

 

Biography
Musical works
Painting

Biography
M. K. Ciurlionis (1875-1911), composer and painter, was born in Varena(southern Lithuania) where his father was organist. Three years later his father moved to Druskininkai, a health resort on the Nemunas, to take up the post of organist. It was here that Ciurlionis grew up and used to spend his holidays frequently. He was unusually fond of the delicate and dreamlike quality of the natural surroundings of Druskininkai. Their influence can be felt in both his music and his painting. Taught by his father, he could read music without any difficulty at the age of seven. He continued his musical education at Prince Oginski’s orchestra school in Plunge. Here from 1882-1893 he learned to play the flute and several other instruments and attempted to compose music. Some of his compositions were played on the occasion of the Prince’s name day. He was directed to the Warsaw Conservatory of Music by the Prince who had supported the talented young man.
He was in Warsaw from 1893-1899. At first he studied piano and, later, composition. During his free time he studied the natural sciences, the history of culture, and literature. The grandeur of the universe and its astonishing harmony interested him deeply. He attempted to understand cosmogonic problems from the popularly and poetically written works of C. Flammarion and from the hypotheses of I.Kant and Laplace.
While studying at the Warsaw Conservatory he composed the cantata De profundis (for choir and symphony orchestra), two sonatas, variations for string quartet, choral and instrumental fugues, and many short pieces for piano.
When he graduated from the Conservatory, he was offered the position of director of  Lublin School of Music, but refused to accept it and earned a living by giving private lessons.
In 1901 he completed the symphonic poem In the Forest, which won the first prize in the competition organised by Zamoyski.
He was again supported by the Prince M. Oginski as well as by some of his own friends, and was able to go to the Leipzig Conservatory of Music, where in 1901-1902 he studied composition under K. Reinecke and counterpoint under S. Jadassohn.
While studying in Leipzig, he composed the overture Kestutis, a fugue for string orchestra, and a four-part string quartet. This was his diploma work on finishing the Leipzig Conservatory.
When he returned to Warsaw in the autumn of 1902, he was offered a teaching post at the Conservatory, but continued to give private lessons in rich and respected families.
In Plunge he sketched details of the Prince’s mansion and park and drew landscapes in Druskininkai. When he returned to Warsaw from Leipzig, he at first attended Kauzik’s drawing school; after that, from 1904-1906 he studied at the Academy of Art under I. Tichy, K. Krzyzanowski and F. Ruszczyc. Although he was anxious to learn the principles of painting, he still took to free composition more willingly. It satisfied the development of his imagination which was enriched with new visions from the Bible, the ancient Hindu religion, the works of Tagore, Ruskin, Wilde, Kipling, Merezhkovsky and others. His paintings were almost always awarded a prize at the competitions held by the Academy. The Academy acquired the cycle of six paintings called The Storm, in which man's’ spiritual struggle between evil and good was depicted.
After the revolution of 1905, there was more freedom in the field of Lithuanian culture, and Ciurlionis made up his mind “to dedicate all his past and future work to Lithuania” (in a letter of Jan. 7, 1906 to his brother Paulius).
Ciurlionis’ works were put on display at the first Lithuanian art exhibition held from Dec. 27, 1906 to Feb. 15, 1907 in Vilnius.
In Vilnius he was an active member of Lithuanian Art Society, organised the music section, conducted Ruta Society Choir, and wrote articles about music and art in the Lithuanian press.
He put about sixty of his works on show at the second art exhibition which was opened on March 12, 1908.
In the autumn of 1908 he went to St. Petersburg, hoping to find better living conditions than in Vilnius.
His first works were put on show in 1906 at the exhibition held at the St. Petersburg Academy of Art, and were highly appreciated by Russian critics.
Several of his better works were put on show for a second time (in 1908) at an exhibition organised by the art magazine Apollon (edited by S. Makovsky).
Despite his success, M.K.Ciurlionis was of poor financial state, not always having enough money to buy paints. Besides, he was of a poor health, and became mentally ill because of overworking in 1909. He had been taken to a sanatorium near Warsaw and was already recovering, but had caught a bad cold and died unexpectedly on April 10, 1911.

Musical works
During his short life, Ciurlionis distinguished himself primarily as a composer with exceptional talent and good professional training. He is the first to have written Lithuanian chamber and symphonic music. In all he wrote more than 250 compositions for piano, string instruments, orchestra, and choir.
He was most prolific in writing for the piano (over 150 compositions). The most outstanding of these is the three-part cycle The Sea; others consist of short preludes, fugues, canons, etudes and variations. Their themes are short, condensed, of clear and finished form, melodious and emotional. Some of them are serene and optimistic; others are imbued with an indefinable unease and tragic pessimism. Sometimes contrasting moods of tempestuous rage and quiet resignation alternate in the same composition. The composer achieves this through the masterful use of polyphonic technique which was one of his favourites. The most striking example of this technique is the Fugue in B flat for four parts of wide compass (1909).
In his most important piano composition The Sea (1908), the third and the last part of the cycle (Finale) is written on the monothematic principle, characteristic of Ciurlionis’ last musical compositions.
He wrote an overture Kestutis (only the piano-score remains), symphonic poems In the Forest and The Sea for orchestra, and a cantata De profundis for orchestra and mixed chorus. The cantata is in three parts, its text being based on a well-known psalm of David.
There is more individuality in the symphonic poem In the Forest (1901). This is the first of his poems and the first of this kind in Lithuanian music, written according to the free form of a sonata for a symphony orchestra (including harp), three times its normal constitution but without percussion instruments. Its melody is lyrical and serene; the harmony and rhythm are not complicated; the instrumentation is colourful. The composer re-creates the idyllic landscape of his woody native land by means of his poem.
His second symphonic poem The Sea (1907), written by an already mature composer, is more complex and pithy in its compositional structure. This is Ciurlionis' greatest and the most original musical work. It is also written in sonata form, dedicated for a large orchestra with three times the usual number of woodwind instruments, six French horns, four trumpets, two harps, and an organ. The poem The Sea is strong in dramatic expression with rays of the fall of calmness. The composer’s aim was to express the anxiety and calm of the human soul through sound images by the parallel of a raging and abating sea.
Folk songs used for piano music and harmonised for chorus make up a separate group. In harmonising folk songs M.K.Ciurlionis used his own stylistic devices (a lively bass, wide range of pitch, chromatic progressions and altered chords, and canons) in moderation and maintained form, simplicity and mood of the folk songs.
Ciurlionis’ musical works and harmonised folk songs were put out in the following publications: Vieverselis (The Lark), 1909, a collection of folk songs for elementary schools; Muzikos kuriniai (Musical Compositions), 1925; Kuriniai fortepijonui (Works for Piano), 1957; Liaudies dainos ir kuriniai fortepijonui (Folk Songs and Works for Piano), 1959; Preliudai ir fugos (Preludes and Fugues), 1959; Fugos, kanonai ir preliudai (Fugues, Canons, and Preludes), 1965; Styginis kvartetas (String Quartet), 1966.

Pictures from the book „Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis". Vaga, 1972 

Painting
Ciurlionis left some 300 paintings, almost the same number as musical compositions. However, he is not as well known for his melodious music as for his colourful painting, in which he showed himself to be an original and profound artist of great feeling. The second talent that lay in him broke through its own accord in artistic work of independent type, when he attended the Warsaw Academy of Art for a short while after completing his music studies. M.K.Ciurlionis stands alone in Lithuanian art because of his unusually individual style of painting which is more an inner flair than an acquired technique.
Ciurlionis began painting when he was already a mature composer, and, so to speak, depicted music in his painting. He not only used the principles on musical composition in his art work, but also gave musical terms to some of his paintings, calling them preludes, fugues and sonatas. Especially close and characteristic feature of his music is the development of a theme in several paintings, where each of them reveals diverse scenes and moods. The compositional structure of the three or four-part sonata is most frequent. The frequent repetition of motifs, melodic rhythm of  lines, and playful harmony of colours also make his painting similar to his music. For example, the symphonic poem The Sea (1907) and the cycle of paintings The Sonata of the Sea (1908) draw on this kind of analogy of means of expression. Besides, one theme joins both of these works; namely the dialectics of rest and movement in the rhythm of nature.

Delving into the foundations of the universe, nature and man’s existence, Ciurlionis formulated his own conceptions and visions which led him from music to painting. He painted his first works and cycles of symbolic character while attending the Warsaw Academy of Art from 1904-1906: The Serpent (Vision), Rex, The Creation of the World (Let There Be Light), The Deluge, The Storm, Silence, Stillness, Knowledge, The Music of the Forest, The City, The Bridge, The Ship, The Funeral and others. Most of these paintings were put on show at student exhibitions at the Warsaw Academy of Art and at the first Lithuanian Art Exhibition held in Vilnius in 1906.
Ciurlionis produced his best art works between 1907 and 1909, while living in Vilnius and St. Petersburg. At that time he passed over from realistic symbolism to a more mystical kind of symbolism which better fitted the view of the world that he had created. In the universe and in nature he saw a peculiar inner life, full of mystery and elemental force. Depicting this through his paintings, he gave the visible world a spiritualistic appearance as if it were some kind of echo or reflection of another, invisible world. Both of them merge in his fantasy and become an astonishing symphony of symbols. This is how his so-called triptychs, sonatas, and cycles, making up the greater part of his work, came into being as, for example: 1907 - the triptych Spring, Sonata of Spring, the cycle Winter, the triptych Folk Tale, The Sonata of the Sun, the cycle Signs of the Zodiac; 1908 - Sonata of the Sea, Sonata of Pyramids, the triptych Summer, Sonata of Summer, Sonata of Stars, Sonata of Serpent, and others. In these works Ciurlionis achieved great pithiness and sensitivity as well as expressiveness and elegance of artistic form.
The above-mentioned series of works, picturing subjects concerning the universe and nature, develop one idea or another through scenes of diverse moods. The sonata composition of four scenes predominates. The first (Allegro) is usually lively and dynamic in mood; the second (Andante) is quiet and serious; the last scenes (Scherzo, Finale) are impetuous and stormy, dramatic in mood, expressing victory or sudden resignation. On the whole, sonatas are bright and optimistic as if they were enthusiastic hymns to eternal life.
Symbols drawn from natural phenomena are strikingly vivid in some of Ciurlionis’ other paintings: Hymn (1907), My Road (1907), The Black Sun (1908), and the great Rex (1909).
Visions of a world of happiness, beauty, and peace are united to these predominating subjects in other Ciurlionis' works: The Altar, The Offering, The Angel (all 1908), Paradise, Fairy-Tale of the Castle (1909).
A couple of paintings depict the life of Lithuania symbolically: The Fairy-Tale of Kings (1908), The Knight (1909).
Ciurlionis felt deeply the natural beauty of Lithuania, fascinating and dream-like in its nuances of gentle colours, and he carried it over into his paintings. Lithuania’s nature and the world outlook of the Lithuanian nation are reflected in all his principal works. He was acquainted with this outlook through knowledge of people’s way of life and customs, folk tales and songs.
Various works of engraving make up a separate group: prints, drawings, book covers, initials, vignettes.
Most of his works are painted in water-colours or tempera on paper, very few in oil or canvas.
Ciurlionis’ paintings belong to those works of art, which stir the imagination, compelling one to think and to interpret them in a variety of ways. Some hold his paintings to be the first examples of abstract art, others would deny this. The individualistic form of his paintings is strongly bound up with a meaningful idea content. The basic meaning of his work was to reveal profound foundation of eternal life and its divine harmony in the reality of nature.

Virtual Exhibition „Creation of Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis"
Pictures from the book „Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis". Vaga, 1972

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     Last updated 2011.08.12