| Music Encyclopedia: Mikolajus Konstantinas Čiurlionis |
(b Varéna, 4 Oct 1875; d Pustelnik, 10 April 1911). Lithuanian painter and composer. He studied with Noskowski in Warsaw and with Jadassohn and Reinecke at the Leipzig Conservatory (1901). His music makes use of invented modes, colourful harmony and autonomous rhythms; he wrote much for the piano as well as orchestral and chamber music. He was also famous as a painter.
| Art Encyclopedia: Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis |
(b Varena, Lithuania, 22 Sept 1875; d Pustelnik Minski [now in Poland], 10 April 1911). Lithuanian painter and composer. He studied music at the Warsaw Institute of Music and the Leipzig Conservatory and then took up painting at the Warsaw School of Fine Arts in 1905. In both his musical compositions and his paintings he drew on Lithuanian folklore, especially in his early paintings of scenes from fairy tales. Like many of his Symbolist contemporaries he also explored the origins of life and its mystical significance as expressed in Oriental thought, as in the series of 13 pictures called the Creation of the World (1904-6; Kaunas, Ciurlionis A. Mus.). But he used more abstract forms than any of his contemporaries in Russia.
See the Abbreviations for further details.
| Wikipedia: Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis |
| Mikalojus Čiurlionis | |
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| Birth name | Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis |
| Born | September 22, 1875 Old Varėna |
| Died | April 10, 1911 (aged 35) Pustelnik (Marki) |
| Nationality | Lithuanian |
| Field | Painting, musical composition |
| Training | Warsaw Conservatory, Leipzig Conservatory, Warsaw School of Fine Arts |
| Movement | Symbolism; Art nouveau |
| Works | Spring Sonata, In the Forest |
Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis, also known as M. K. Čiurlionis (22 September [O.S. 10 September] 1875 –10 April [O.S. 28 March] 1911) was a Lithuanian painter and composer. Čiurlionis contributed to symbolism and art nouveau and was representative of the fin de siècle epoch. During his short life he composed about 250 pieces of music and created about 300 paintings. The majority of his paintings are housed in the M. K. Čiurlionis National Art Museum in Kaunas, Lithuania. His works have had a profound influence on modern Lithuanian culture. The asteroid 2420 Čiurlionis is named after him.
Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis was born in Sena Varėna, the oldest of nine children of his father, Constantine, and his mother, Adele. In 1878 his family moved to Druskininkai, where his father became the town organist. Čiurlionis was a musical prodigy: he could play by ear at age three and could sight-read music freely by age seven. Three years out of primary school, he went to study at the musical school of Prince Michał Oginski where he learned to play several orchestral instruments, in particular the flute, from 1889 to 1893. Čiurlionis studied piano and composition at the Warsaw Conservatory from 1894 to 1899. For his graduation, in 1899, he wrote a cantata for mixed chorus and symphonic orchestra titled "De Profundis," with the guidance of the composer Zygmunt Noskowski. Later he attended composition lectures at the Leipzig Conservatory (1901 to 1902), and studied drawing at the Warsaw School of Fine Arts from 1904 to 1906.
He was one of the initiators of, and a participant in, the First Exhibition of Lithuanian Art that took place in 1907 in Vileišis Palace, Vilnius. Soon after this event the Lithuanian Union of Arts was founded, and Čiurlionis was of its nineteen founding members.
In 1907 he came to know his later wife Sofija Kymantaitė (1886-1958), an art critic. She taught him to speak good Lithuanian. In those years many educated Lithuanians spoke Polish instead of Lithuanian. The family Čiurlionis grew up in was no exception. He considered himself Lithuanian rather than Polish though.
Early in 1909 he married Sofija. By the end of that year he travelled to St. Petersburg, where he exposed some of his paintings. On Christmas Eve Čiurlionis fell into a profound depression there. In the beginning of 1910 he was hospitalized in a sanatorium in Pustelnik near Marki, northeast of Warsaw. There he died of pneumonia in 1911, 35 years old. He was buried in the Rasos Cemetery in Vilnius. He never saw his daughter Danutė (1910-1995).
Čiurlionis felt that he was a synesthete; that is, he perceived colors and music simultaneously. Many of his paintings bear the names of musical pieces: sonatas, fugues, and preludes.
In 1911 the first posthumous exhibition of Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis's art was held in Vilnius and Kaunas. During the same year an exhibition of his art was held in Moscow, and in 1912 his works were exhibited in St. Petersburg. The National M. K. Čiurlionis School of Art was founded in Vilnius in 1945; soon afterwards the Lithuanian community in Chicago opened The Čiurlionis Art Gallery, hosting collections of his works. In 1963 the Čiurlionis Memorial Museum was opened in Druskininkai, in the house where Čiurlionis and his family lived. This museum holds biographical documents as well as photographs and reproductions of the artist's works.
Čiurlionis inspired the Lithuanian composer Osvaldas Balakauskas' work Sonata of the Mountains (1975), and every four years junior musical performers from Lithuania and neighbouring countries take part in The Čiurlionis Competition. Čiurlionis's name has been given to cliffs in Franz Josef Land, a peak in the Pamir Mountains, and to asteroid #2420, discovered by the Crimean astrophysicist Nikolaj Cernych.
Čiurlionis's works have been displayed at international exhibitions in Japan, Germany, Spain, and elsewhere. His paintings were featured at "Visual Music" fest, an homage to synesthesia that included the works of Wassily Kandinsky, James McNeill Whistler, and Paul Klee, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles in 2005.[1]
Some of his most-performed musical works include:
The most famous Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis paintings include:
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 Angel. Prelude |
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 Cloud Boat |
 The Past |
 Crosses in Žemaitija |
 Kings' Fairy Tale (1908-1909) |
.jpg) Tranquility (1904-1905) |
Preludes and Fugues. Angel. Prelude |
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 | Music Encyclopedia. The Concise Grove Dictionary of Music. Copyright © 1994 by Oxford University Press, Inc.. All rights reserved. Read more |
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