Bacevičius, Vytautas (EN)

Bacevičius Vytautas, *9 September 1905 Łódź, †15 January 1970 New York, Lithuanian composer, pianist and teacher. Son of Lithuanian Vincas Bacevičius and Polish Maria Modlińska; brother of Grażyna, Wanda and Kiejstut Bacewicz. From the age of 6, he studied piano and violin under his father. At the age of 9, he began composing. In 1916, he performed for the first time in public together with Grażyna and Kiejstut at a charity concert in Łódź, performing, among others, his Fantasy on War Themes. In 1919–26, he studied at the H. Kijeńska-Dobkiewiczowa Music Conservatory in Łódź (piano with H. Kijeńska, A. Dobkiewicz and J. Turczyński, theory and composition with K. Sikorski and K. Wiłkomirski). In 1926, he left – following his father – for Lithuania, began studying philosophy at the University of Kaunas and became a Lithuanian citizen. In 1927, he left for Paris, where he continued his piano studies with S. Riér, composition with N. Tcherepnin at the Russian Conservatory in Paris, and philosophy at the Sorbonne. In 1928, he received a diploma in piano and composition (both with the 1^st prize). In 1931–39, he taught piano and lectured on composition, harmony and aesthetics at the Kaunas Conservatory, and also published the magazine “Muzika ir Teatras.” In 1928–39, he gave concerts in many European countries. In 1938, he was a juror at the Concours International Eugène Ysaÿe in Brussels, where he was honoured with the Order of the Crown of Leopold III. As chairman of the Lithuanian section of the International Society for Contemporary Music, he participated in the ISCM festivals in London (1938) and Warsaw (1939). In 1939–40, he toured South America, from where he went to the United States in 1940, where he remained for the rest of his life. He lived in Bridgeport (Connecticut) and New York, and in 1967 he obtained American citizenship. In the United States, he developed concert, composition and teaching activities. He taught piano at the New York Conservatory of Musical Art, the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, the Long Island Institute of Music and in his own studio in New York. In 1948, he founded the Bacevičius Music Club. Teaching was the composer’s main source of income. Bacevičius was buried in New York.

Bacevičius’s work is still unexplored, most of his works remain in manuscripts. In Poland, the first extensive presentation of Bacevičius’s music took place in 1985 as part of the Wrzesień Muzyczny festival in Baranów, the next one took place in 1993 during the Warsaw Autumn festival. Two Polish-Lithuanian musicological conferences were devoted to the confrontation of the work of the siblings G. Bacewicz and V. Bacevičius: 5^th in Vilnius (1994) and 6^th in Łódź (1995).

The influences of Scriabin (harmonics, texture), Debussy (sound sensuality) and Prokofiev (vitalism) are visible in Bacevičius’s youthful works. Compositions from the 1930s (the ballet Tourbillon de la vie, Poème électrique) were considered avant-garde manifestos; the conservatively oriented Lithuanian musical environment accused Bacevičius of polluting native works with foreign elements (mechanicism, futurism). Bacevičius attached particular importance to the form of the piece. In the macroplan, the reprise form (ABA) and the narrative of contrasting events, juxtaposed segmentally, prevail in his compositions. They integrate the form of repetition of selected components (motifs, themes, textures) and the process of variantisation and permutation of musical material. In this way, the “individual form of each piece” postulated by Bacevičius is created, governed by the laws of its own, immanent logic.

Bacevičius was a versatile personality: his rich correspondence (including over 1,600 of Bacevičius’s letters written from the USA in Polish to his family in Poland) reveals his literary talent (Bacevičius is also the author of short stories-epigrams signed “Santo Diabolo”) and the character of an artist-thinker. Based on this epistolary resource, it is possible to reconstruct Bacevičius’s musical philosophy. He was an apologist for absolute music. He regarded music exclusively “as an expression of inner feelings (experiences) in an absolute sense” (from a letter to Kiejstut, 21 May 1946), and considered himself an expressionist. He saw the idea of ​​progress in atonality, and strove to create a “synthetic” style (Bacevicius’s term), in which elements of post-functional tonality (endowed with a new timbral and structural meaning), free atonality and pantonality coexist within the 12-note spectrum.

Fascinated by occultism and parapsychology, he proclaimed in letters to his family the idea of ​​“cosmic music,” the essence of which was the pursuit of the core of the universe (“thought,” “light of wisdom”). This idea guided him in creating, among others, Symphony No. 6 “Cosmic.” He claimed that through meditation one can “enter” one’s own universe, which is a source of inexhaustible creative ideas and a reflection of the entire universe. Cosmic music is therefore supposed to reflect the inner cosmos of man. It is created first mentally, and the “graphic technique” invented by Bacevičius was to serve the purpose of reproducing this original creative idea: the work is first presented in the form of graphic diagrams, which are then transferred to the score. According to Bacevičius, this technique ensures a faithful rendering of the original artistic concept and reflects the constructivism of creative work. He first used the new graphic procedure when composing Graphique (1964).

Bacevičius was constantly searching for new inspiration – in the subconscious, dreams, yoga practice and occult techniques (telepathy, exteriorisation). Suggestions from contemporary American literature and cosmic ideas (the identity of the micro- and macrocosm) bring his work closer to New Age poetics.

Literature: K. Bacewicz Mój brat Witold, “Ruch Muzyczny” Warsaw 1986 no. 16, 17; M. Kazakevičienė O twórczości Vytautasa Bacevičiusa, “Ruch Muzyczny” Warsaw 1986 no. 16; Rodzeństwo Bacewiczów, collective work, ed. M. Szoka, Łódź 1996; W kręgu muzyki litewskiej, collective work, ed. K. Droba, Kraków 1997.