Vasks, Evening Music
Pēteris Vasks is a contemporary Latvian composer born in 1946. His compositions have attracted increasing attention around the globe, and he has a good claim to being the most prominent composer from the Baltics.
Vasks points to his Baptist roots, somewhat unusual in his part of the world, not just to explain his inability to study in Latvia, but also as a important component of his work. His father was a Baptist pastor. The Soviets who controlled Latvia in Vasks’ youth had a repressive policy toward Baptists that prevented him from studying there. Vasks was able to complete his studies in neighboring Lithuania instead.
Commentary on Vasks often deals with the political nature of his work and the effect of Baltic politics on the environment. On his own website, he emphasizes a broader and more spiritual outlook:
During his creative life, he has developed from a young, angry and avant-garde author who speaks the language of modernist music, into a remarkable artist who illustrates the eternal duel between good and evil with the so-called new principles of simplicity, as well as universally understandable sound expression.
The simplicity is readily apparent in his open textures, lyricism, and use of melodies expressive of his Latvian roots. Images of nature often appear in his works. He has written extensively for choir, including sacred choral works.
As I’ve confessed here before, I studied composition at the height of modernist self-absorption. And while I certainly don’t reject everything that era produced, I think its excesses foreshadowed some aspects of our current political self-absorption. The language of modernist music seems to be shifting now from anger to something more like that of Vasks. That’s a good thing in its own right, and maybe we can hope it signals a coming improvement in our civic life as well.
Evening Music premiered in 2010 at the Usedom Music Festival in Lithuania.
