Love Song and Farewell

Indeterminate duration

Vilnius: Vaga, 1986
CD Vilnius Recording Studio VSCD-054, 1998
CD Lithuanian Musicians' Union LMSMBCD-021, 2001 (excerpt)
CD Lithuanian Music in Context II. Landscapes of Minimalism. - Vilnius, Lithuanian Music Information and Publishing Centre LMIPCCD067-068, 2011

Minimalism was still in full swing in the United States when Urbaitis and his work attracted the attention of his colleagues and listeners to this trend in Lithuania. However, the composer didn’t fall under its spell right away. “After the first encounter, it seemed to me that this way was leading nowhere. Only later the possibilities came to light, when I found way to it quite intuitively. I really don’t like excessively dense, overloaded music, and avoid writing it. Minimalism, for me, is a particular condition of music. In this respect I feel close to the old polyphonists and J. S. Bach.”

The music of Mindaugas Urbaitis presents a harmonious coalescence of micro- and macro- worlds: while observing changes at the micro-level, one can travel to infinity in thought. “I could perhaps compare processes of my music with natural phenomena: the flowing of a river, the setting of the sun, the drifting of clouds; it seems as if nothing is happening, but something is changing all the time. In our everyday lives we often do not notice this; but in art we notice even the most imperceptible things.” One of his most successful vocal compositions, Love Song and Farewell for voice and delay system, is notable for such observations. “As I was writing my Love Song and Farewell I was not an expert in new music by Western composers; meanwhile, foreign musicians traced the connection between this composition and ambient music at once,” the composer admits. In Urbaitis’s music, it is difficult to imagine time compressed to the maximum. On the contrary, it stretches out and reminds us of a leisurely viewing of exhibits at a museum; or otherwise, visitor’s eyes would glide over, not paying attention to most irrelevant details, although the atmosphere and the process are adapted to being in this space and observation.

Composing like this, it is impossible to surf on the rising tide of sentiment. The sound of music has to be as many-faceted as a finely cut gemstone, so that  a different facet would turn up each time, while repeating the same or similar patterns many times over. The composer achieves this effect by applying polyphonic techniques, especially canonic imitation. Urbaitis’s music is also distinguished for the purity of style, which allows the listeners to instantly grasp the limits of the sound space set by the composer, and so they can either observe the keen wit of the creator, or just make themselves comfortable in the surrounding sound world.

Rūta Gaidamavičiūtė