Contours of Feminist Consciousness in the Musical and Theatrical Life of Vilnius: The Second Half of the Nineteenth Century and the Early Twentieth Century

Feminism is a broad concept, and its definition is a constant subject of debate. The article is limited to the treatment of feminism as one of the aspects in the development of female identity. The chronological boundaries of feminism discussed in this article cover the period from the second half of the nineteenth to the beginning of the twentieth century. This period is traditionally considered the first wave of feminism as an organized movement. Although primarily associated with the fight for the right of women to vote, this movement also extended to women’s other social and professional fields. Both in Lithuania and other countries, the growing modernisation of society gradually rendered the general attitude towards women’s creative work more liberal: the artistic expression of actresses and female musicians became freer. However, the shift in public consciousness and the transformation of values was not fast enough. Traditions of social life and the stereotypes of gender cohesion resulted in diverse public reflections on these changes for a long period of time: women were often subjected to one set of standards on the stage and another set of standards when off the stage. The theatrical and concert life of Vilnius, Lithuania’s major culture hub, witnessed more and more examples (both local and foreign) that reflected the change in female self-expression. On the theatre stage, actresses demonstrated unusually bold means of acting expression (admittedly, this phenomenon was partly due to the epochal changes in theatre art), dared to play male roles. The number of female soloists in concerts was growing: female singers and pianists had to compete with violinists. Although with caution (triggered by the position of the instrument while playing it), female cellists were admitted to the cultural space. It should be noted that the striving of a woman – an actress or a musician –to break or ignore the deep-rooted public stereotypes would often receive a controversial response from the public and the reviewers of cultural events.

Qualities of Musical Instruments as a Device of Hierarchisation

The conflict between specialisation and personality is the main theme in the novels by Peter Høeg, Vladimir Orlov, Jose Saramago, and Patrick Süskind. The protagonists are brought together in their attempts to find and prove their new identities but quite different problems are discovered in the process. The violinist Kasper Krone, the violist Vladimir Danilov, and the unnamed cellist and the double bassist have their own status in the hierarchy of the musical world: this element of the narrative is a lure for readers who would like to learn the secrets of different professions. Sometimes the ways postmodern authors create images both in correlation with professional stereotypes and drama overcomplicate the plot for the unprepared recipient. For them, the variety of allusions and the brilliant game of intertextuality make no sense; however, this problem can be the reason to seek more information about the aforementioned musical opuses for a better understanding. In this case, readers will build strong links between implicit information and the motives of the protagonist’s behaviour.

Arno Nadel (1878–1943): A Contributor to Modern German-Jewish Identity from Vilnius

The phenomenon of Arno Nadel (1878–1943) is presupposed by his extremely diverse activities in art, scholarship, and musical journalism. A music arranger, musicologist, music journalist and collector, composer, choirmaster, pianist and organist, as well as a poet, playwright, painter and translator, Arno Nadel was born in a religious Jewish family in Vilnius and spent his first twelve years there. Having lived and studied in Königsberg for five years, in 1895 Nadel settled in Berlin, one of the largest centres of German Jewish cultural life before the National Socialists came to power in 1933. Nadel was murdered in Auschwitz in 1943. So far, his creative legacy has not been studied in Lithuania. The aim of this article is to bring Nadel back on the horizon of multinational Lithuanian cultural history and to review his contribution to the formation of modern German-Jewish identity in the context of Nadel’s Vilnius origins and his diverse musical activities. Nadel’s original compositions, arrangements of traditional Jewish liturgical music and folk songs, research in and texts about Jewish music contributed to a new approach towards cultural connections between the Jews of Eastern Europe and Germany, and were important for the development of German Jewish music in the first half of the twentieth century, as well as for the documentation and renewal of Jewish liturgical music. Although Arno Nadel composed music in a variety of genres himself, it was his work as a scholar and arranger of Jewish music and as a musicologist that received the most attention among his contemporaries and in the articles written after the Second World War.

Historical Context in the Latest Lithuanian Music: Contemporary Tensions

The historical context opens its unresolved issues inside contemporary cultural consciousness. It gives the language of music a specific dimension of dramatic tensions. Here, composers’ propositions acquire a coded imagery close to the aesthetics of modernist catastrophe. The musical text becomes highly contextual and filled with the knowledge arisen from history. It is like an encrypted message about the current transformation of history. The texture of the work becomes an expression of the signs incorporating also non-musical sounds or visual space. Semantics play a crucial role in soundscapes. In this sense, we can talk about the war and post-war semantics, which is making its comeback into Lithuanian music. Here, the aesthetic poles of tension or the dramaturgy of conflict arise and are realised through the spectra of hum or expression of identities. In this context, two recent works by Lithuanian composers should be mentioned: they accurately respond to the tensions and wounds of the Second World War that continue to bleed inside the identity consciousness of the Lithuanian nation. These wounds are the Holocaust and the post-war partisan struggle against the Soviet occupation. The topic of ‘war after war’ acquires its musical task in Vytautas Germanavičius’s (b.1969) work Red Trees (2018) for flute, cello, and organ dedicated to the partisan commander Adolfas Ramanauskas-Vanagas. It is important to stress that Vanagas has been recognised as a de facto leader of the state and, thanks to sustained efforts of historians and archaeologists, his remains, which were discovered in the Vilnius Orphans’ Cemetery, were reburied in the Pantheon of State Leaders. All this forms an exceptional historical dimension, which finds an original reflection in Germanavičius’s work. Meanwhile, the Holocaust theme connects vividly with the 80th anniversary (late in 2020), of the deed of Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese diplomat who saved over 6,000 Jews in 1940. Algirdas Martinaitis (b.1950) work Visa for Life (2020) for two flutes, oboe, and organ is dedicated to Chiune Sugihara. Here, the composer combines, in a unique way, the worlds of the Japanese, the European tradition and Jewish music. His musical expression is based on the dramaturgy of transformation (the constant running of the toccata). In this way, each composer voices the context of the past: its tension transforms the language of music. It should be noted that both works bring back the catastrophe of the Second World War and the post-war period, which is a painful drama of the history of the Baltic States and not yet sufficiently understood in the world. As a result, the former meditative face of Baltic music identity changes accordingly.

The Criminals in Vilnius

On 29 April 1930, the premiere of Ferdinand Bruckner’s The Criminals (original title Die Verbrecher) directed by Aleksander Zelwerowicz took place at the Teatr Wielki na Pohulance in Vilnius. After two performances, the play was cancelled by the mayor of Vilnius. The authorities of the city were outraged by the ‘drastic amoral scenes (homosexual love, abortion)’. Zelwerowicz submitted his resignation, which he withdrew a few days later. A performance combined with a debate on the drama was organised. One of the Literary Wednesdays was also devoted to a discussion about The Criminals. The Słowo daily published an open letter to the director Zelwerowicz ‘supporting his repertoire policy’. Eventually, The Criminals was cancelled. Based on the unique documents I have found, publications in the press, photographs, and reminiscences of the participants, I will try to reconstruct these events and, above all, to describe and reinterpret the performance that was to ‘introduce the cultural Vilnius to the truly modern and European track’.

Paying a Church Musician in the Nineteenth Century: Between Possibilities and Necessities

In Europe, the nineteenth century had its own kind of an impact on the development of church music: fellowships that looked over the repertoire of music played in churches and encouraged research into the sources of the old church music and the Gregorian chant started emerging in many different countries. In the middle of the said century, the Holy See released documents that repeatedly and strictly regulated music and especially the music played during masses. Bishops were ordered to establish new music schools, reinforce the existing ones, and form committees in charge of the repertoire, musical performance and care of musicians in dioceses. The salary of the members of church chapels depended on the length of their work and the level of their professionalism. Sometimes the best musicians earned as much as the chapel leader. The leader, who received a certain amount of money to be spent on salaries from the seniors of the church every quarter of the year, distributed it on their own accord, taking into the account the intensity and quality of the instrumentalists’ performance. Each choir singer received the same amount of money, and the salary of the organist depended on the number of masses. Gregorian chanters received smallest salaries. Often the musicians were paid in kind: in food, candles, clothes, footwear, vodka, beer, honey, and the like. Some church chapels even had a cook who prepared breakfasts and lunches specifically for the musicians. Unfortunately, at the end of the nineteenth century, the financial situation of church chapels the financial situation of church chapels changed for the worse much worse.

Theatre Criticism in Lithuania in the [Late] Soviet Era: From Ideological to Aesthetic Guidelines

The article analyses the institution of Lithuanian theatre criticism in the Soviet period and its connection with the ideological requirements of the time. The resolutions of the Communist Party during the Stalinist and post-Stalinist periods, theatre repertoire, reviews, and the concept of social realism in the theatre are also discussed. The 1946–1948 resolutions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union that regulated the development of culture and art, as well as the doctrine of socialist realism influenced both the practice of theatre and its critics. In the 1950s and 1960s, theatre criticism became a tool of ideology and propaganda, to such an extent that it ‘itself created a socialist realist text’. It is also important that during this period, the names of interwar critics disappeared from the press; critics were represented by party functionaries, party-owned directors, actors, and writers. The ‘return’ of criticism is related with the Thaw period and a new generation of both theatre creators and critics. It can be said that the independence and autonomy of criticism started taking shape in the late 1960s, especially with the performances of director Jonas Jurašas. Writing about the Jurašas’s productions, directed between 1967 and 1972, critics came to reflect on the nature of theatre, theatrical creation or creative freedom, and the disguised and false reality. The discourse of criticism not only freed itself from previously obligatory normative criteria and depersonalised style, but also started representing the subjective gaze of the critic, who not only tried to cover the aesthetic/artistic whole of the performance, but also to establish direct contact with both creators and readers, to capture and convey the impact of the performance on the viewers of their time. In summary, despite external (censorship) and internal (self-censorship) circumstances, the discourse of theatrical criticism changed only at the end of the 1960s, and began to approach artistic discourse: the ideological criteria for understanding and evaluating a performance theatrical production were replaced by artistic and aesthetic ones.

From the Correspondence of Musicologist Ona Narbutienė: Letters from Composer Jeronimas Kačinskas

This paper deals with studies into the personal archive of the musicologist Ona Narbutienė (1930–2007), including a number of previously unpublished documents. Narbutienė’s musicological heritage, which has been little investigated so far, consists of books, articles, lectures, radio and TV shows, musical evenings, texts for record sleeves and CD inlays as well as the conceptual framework, the programme, and texts for the International Thomas Mann Festival in Nida. Within the context of this heritage, her lessons and lectures stand out for their special role in shaping the views, attitudes, and professional choices of the musicologists of the younger generation. The evidence of all these activities can be found in Narbutienė’s private archive compiled over many years and thus displaying the content of great historical and musicological value. The paper examines Narbutienė’s musicological interests as revealed in her personal correspondence and their relationship to certain professional imperatives. Narrative, interview, historical-analytical, and empirical research methods were employed in this study.

Regency Ornamental Décor in the Embroidery of Liturgical Textile in Lithuania from the 1720s to the Middle of the Eighteenth Century

The article presents and discusses the so far poorly explored group of the embroidery of liturgical textile of the 1720s to the mid-eighteenth century distinguished by the Regency style, the ornamental decoration of the late Baroque variety. The elements of chinoiserie stylistics of oriental origin and bizarre style fabrics are organically interwoven with the dominant classical features of the style: Regency-type interwoven stripes, cartouches, and fields combined with stars of anise, blossoms of bellflowers and tiny tulips, and other floral motifs. For this purpose, we chose items of liturgical textile extant in Lithuanian churches and stored in depositories of various museums; we as also “took a look” in Poland and Belarus, the neighbouring lands of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth) So far, the opinion has prevailed that we have only few items of liturgical textile decorated with embroidered Regency ornamental décor. However, the examples discussed in the text show that the statement needs to be revised. Indeed, a large amount of embroidery of this type has survived. The vestments from the early 1720s embroidered with the ornamental décor in the Regency style are distinct in ornamentation colours and technological changes against the general context of embroidered liturgical textiles of the period. The wares mentioned above enrich the depository of liturgical textile embroidery, and the mastery of the craft is superior to the examples found in neighbouring countries. The insights provided in the text suggest that in the future, the study could be expanded by further examination of the peculiarities of the period’s décor, its possible origin and interpretations, and the search for broader contextual links.

Liturgical Paraphernalia and Decor Elements of the Parish Churches of the Diocese of Samogitia in the First Half of the Seventeenth Century

The article provides an overview (both in terms of types and amount) of liturgical paraphernalia (vessels, vestments, and processional items), musical instruments (organs and bells), and other items of church interior (pews, candlesticks, chandeliers, commemorative plaques, sacristy furniture, boxes for holy oils, offering boxes, wallpapers, sepulchral banners, and stoups) extant in the parish churches of the diocese of Samogitia in the first half of the seventeenth century. The overview is based on the information contained in visitation acts and inventories due to the fact that only a few material pieces of sacral art dating back to the mentioned period have survived until now. Historical sources enabled a description of the whole repertoire of liturgical paraphernalia of the parish churches of the above-mentioned diocese (in the first half of the seventeenth century) for the first time. The overview reveals some transformations of the older practice, occasionally witnessed in local sources of the sixteenth century. More significantly, it enables future research based on a comparison of the described material with the information contained in wider chronological and geographical (first of all, including the diocese of Vilnius) contexts.