ONUTĖ NARBUTAITĖ - Oratorio "Centones meae urbi" ("Quilt for my city")

Tonight after Vilnius St. Onutė Narbutaitė's oratorio "Centones meae urbi" ("An quilt for my city") will be heard in the vaults of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary (Franciškoni) Church, for which the composer was awarded the Lithuanian National Prize for Culture and Art. Since its creation in 1997 the oratorio will be performed in Vilnius for the fifth time, it was played abroad three more times, and it was always conducted by Robert Šerveniks with various performers.

O. Narbutaitė is one of the most famous Lithuanian composers, her music is marked by exceptional individuality and is recognizable from the first bars of each piece, many of her opus have won various awards, they have been recorded on more than 40 CDs released in Lithuania and abroad. in 2015 for the opera "Cornetas" and the composition for chamber orchestra "Was there a butterfly?" O. Narbutaitė was declared Composer of the Year. "The immersive effect that comes from the composer's works is related to a rare, paradoxical inner balance: they sound simple and yet complex, personal and universal, meditative and analytical" (Albrecht Thiemann).

Composer O. Narbutaitė: "The oratorio Centones meae urbi is a kind of musical essay about my hometown Vilnius. Cento is a patch. Centones - a newly composed text from borrowed lines and verses, ancient literary, in later centuries - and musical game. Centones meae urbi - a patchwork for my city, patched together from the fragments of the walls of Vilnius, which when put together revealed a map marked with the usual symbolic figures: Baroque with Sarbievius, Romanticism with Mickevičius, Northern Jerusalem... And the stingingly clear voice of the exile of our age, turning the city into a City, understandable and recognizable to many.

Music is not "borrowed". Only one tiny quote from Moniuszka stuck to Mickevich's poem. However, multilingual texts from different ages brought their own intonations. I didn't run away from them, I was like a co-author because, in the words of Czesław Miłosz, "you have to admit that everything is created by the spirit of this city itself."

This oratorio is an attempt to use sounds to create a city that no longer exists in reality. But at the same time, with the rather intimate nature of the music, I wanted to say that that past is a tangible and lived part of our experience, the source of our life. And in this sense, the oratorio, being very documentary, at the same time touches on the completely universal theme of human life and death."

Audio: Onutė Narbutaitė - Oratorio "Centones meae urbi"

The concert is partially supported by the funds of the National Program