Latvian Choral Music
National Conference: Association for the
Advancement of Baltic Studies
(Seattle WA 2022)
What it feels like to sing:
new Latvian choral works in a globalizing musical world
The decade 2013-2023 is proving to be one of significant contribution and advancement for Latvian music, particularly among choral repertoire. To celebrate Latvia’s centenary, conductor Māris Sirmais developed a project commissioning new works from 77 Latvian composers. The project was titled “Latvijas Komponisti Latvijas Simtgadei,” and Musica Baltica published 19 of the works in an anthology, released at the completion of the cycle in 2018. Sirmais’ project as a concept and the contributions of each composer are a unique and real-time gift to the nation’s musical life, one that reflects Latvia’s choral repertoire at the crux of the shift between the first—and next—100 years.
In this presentation I take a performer-focused look at compositional trends reflected by these recent compositions. What ties the past to the present, and to the future, in Latvia’s choral music is the inherent singability built into each work; the new pieces are meant to be performed by both professional singers and amateur choirs. By shifting the focus of analysis toward elements necessary to learn, lead, and perform a piece for unaccompanied choir, I show how living Latvian composers are employing techniques that solidify their work in the modernizing national repertoire. Through focused case studies that prioritize the embodied experience of what it feels like to sing these works, I show how the collection leans into the deeply-seated historical trends of Latvia’s choral canon while also recognizing that success depends on a recognition of global musical currents.
Interational Conference: College Music Society
(Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia Summer 2023)
The Road of Song:
Body-Place Memory and the Latvian Song Festival
Invited Keynote Lecture
History is documented in books and newspapers, in photos and recordings. But the past is also chronicled in physical memory—the experiences we hold in our bodies. It is preserved in the memory of place—the spatial memory of furniture in a room, traveling down a road, the smell of the air. Cultural and collective memories forge and feed narratives that imbue meaning into specific events, locations, and as is the case for many social movements—song. In 2023, Latvia marks 150 years of their national Song Festival. The celebration is, at once, an historical artifact and a distinct marker of the present; it constantly toggles between what has happened before and what is perched on Latvia’s musical horizon.
The location for some of the largest events in the Song Celebration—a forested, open-air stage on the outskirts of Rīga called the Mežaparks—has been home to the Festival’s grandest choral concerts since 1955. The amphitheater has been renovated and remade in its near-70 years, but the location of performance has remained the same. The place holds its own narrative history, influenced by and stored in the embodied memories of hundreds of thousands of people who have stood on its stage or taken a seat in the audience to participate in the festival traditions. What role, then, does place have in our conception of the Latvian Song Celebration? How does the literal, physical space influence, enhance, and limit the impact of the musical performances it holds? Further, how do participants and observers store the history of the Song Celebration in their own physicalized bodies? This keynote posits a topo-corporeal—place- and body-based—framework for approaching the Latvian Song Festival traditions, deepening the relationship between song, singer, and the location of performance.
In Progress:
Analytical Approaches to New Latvian Choral Music
An article-length submission focusing on analyzing recent commissions for mixed, unaccompanied choirs by Latvian composers.
Past: Music, Sound, and Trauma: Interdisciplinary Perspectives
(On-line 2021)
Return, Education, and Commemoration in Latvian Song Celebration Performances of “Pūt, vējiņi”
"Pūt, vējiņi” is a traditional Latvian folk song best known in its choral setting by Andrejs Jurjāns. The song has been programmed in many of the quinquennial Latvian Song Celebrations held since its premiere in 1910, often performed as part of the event’s closing concert. In 1985, "Pūt, vējiņi” was stricken from the festival; the song’s significance in Latvia’s cultural identity caused concern for the occupying Soviet government. However, after the close of the formal program, the 10,000-voice choir stayed on the steps of the Soviet-built amphitheater for an impromptu performance of two banned songs emblematic for Latvians: Jāzeps Vītols’ “Gaismas pils” and Jurjāns’ setting of "Pūt, vējiņi.” The festival conductors each took turns leading a verse of the strophic setting, so no single person could be named as leading the “protest.” In 2018, the festival’s honored conductors each took a verse to lead at the year’s closing concert, paying homage to the impromptu event in 1985.
This paper posits the return of the 1985 conducting format for "Pūt, vējiņi” as a mode of commemoration and intergenerational community-forming in Latvia. The complication of this work, however, is that the generation-specific interaction with the traumas associated with the Soviet occupation slows the intergenerational work of the festival. Latvians born after 1991 have a different connection to the Song Celebration than that of their parents and grandparents; their experience of culture preservation through song is historical rather than lived. Using past research on cultural memory (Anderson 1983, Smelser 2004), ritual studies (Bell, 1997), and recent work on traumatic stress studies and transgenerational trauma (Kazlauskas and Zelviene 2016, Rush 2020), I explore this particular recreation of "Pūt, vējiņi” as a complex recipe of re-summoning cultural trauma, experiential education, and commemoration.
Past: Conference on Baltic Studies in Europe: Baltic Solidarity
(Gdansk Poland 2019)
The Duality of Baltic Song Celebrations as Heritage: Making Sense of “Then” and “Now”
Music is the thread of Baltic cultural fabric. The Baltic Song Celebrations in particular are the most enduring national events for Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, existing long before the countries were officially recognized in 1918. In current discourse, researchers face friction between whether these events are records of the past or orientations toward the future, and how new celebrations should be positioned. As each new iteration is planned and executed, a new pile of information is folded into the discourse of the celebrations, feeding each nation’s ability to layer the present among the past. However, because heritage is both an historical and contemporary record of culture, such duality also creates a tension between the “then” and “now.” To further complicate that pressure, the years of Soviet occupation document both the brilliant resilience of each nation through their song and dance celebrations, and also a lasting, significant cultural and historical trauma.
Research on the lasting cultural effects military and political occupation have on a community is limited—in the case of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, they survived occupation because of a pre-national identity documented in song and dance. In this paper, I argue for a shift in methodology and vocabulary of approach that considers research on oral tradition and diaspora as it applies to the Baltic Song Celebrations. Drawing from the defining characteristics and approaches associated with oral tradition, heritage, diaspora, and performance studies (Vansina 1985, Lowenthal 2005, Butler 2001, and Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1998, respectively), I situate the Baltic Song Celebrations at the center of this four-part Venn diagram. While none of these fields encompasses the intricacies of the Song Celebrations on their own, a combination of their defining characteristics aids in understanding why and how the events have endured for these 150 years.
Conference on Baltic Studies in Europe (Uppsala Sweden 2021) (DEFERRED)
The 13th Volume: Latvijas Komponisti Latvijas Simtgadei (Latvian Composers for the Centenary of Latvia)
Latvia has been building a national choral repertoire since the end of the 19th century, and has been systematically cataloging their choral history in the Latviešu Kordziesmas Antoloģija since the end of the 20th. From 1997-2006, the choir AVE SOL recorded CDs alongside twelve printed volumes, capturing the evolution of Latvian choral music from 1873-2000. This was a crucial project for documenting Latvia’s choral repertoire, housing much of the music that defined the nation in its formation and through occupation into a post-1991, free Latvia.
A decade after the last volume was published, Māris Sirmais developed a project commissioning new works from 77 composers as one of the many centenary events for Latvia. The project was titled “Latvijas Komponisti Latvijas Simtgadei,” and Musica Baltica published 19 of the works in an anthology, released at the completion of the cycle in 2018. In this paper, I argue that the repertoire in the anthology functions as the 13th volume of the Anthology of Latvian Choral Music. I situate the new repertoire in concert with previous volumes, tracking adherence to past compositional practice and clear innovations in the new century. The decade 2013-2023 is proving to be one of significant contribution and advancement from Latvia’s composers, particularly in their choral repertoire. Sirmais’ project as a concept and the contributions of each composer are a unique and real-time contribution to the nation’s musical life, one that fills in the gap between the twelve volumes and the next 100 years of choral music in Latvia.