Auswahl der wissenschaftlichen Literatur zum Thema „Dārziņš“

The Latvian composers who arrived in post-war West Europe (Jānis Mediņš, Tālivaldis Ķeniņš, Alberts Jērums, Volfgangs Dārziņš, and others) encountered the musical stylings and aesthetics of the respective lands. These stylings and aesthetics varied considerably from the national romanticism dominant in Latvia in the interwar period. Those who wanted to show their creativity outside the Latvian refugee society had to adapt to West European music innovations. The aim of the article is to explore this process. The mentioned adaptation also quickly raised the question of whether the peculiarities of the Latvian national music and the modernism of the 20th century could be combined. This issue was widely debated in periodicals, and each of the mentioned Latvian composers encountered it in their creative practice. The compositions of the mentioned composers show different variants of combining musical style innovations and national peculiarities, which attracted the attention of Western society and are also an inspiration nowadays.

Latvian Independence Day, 18 November (commemorating the day 85 years ago when Latvia proclaimed its independence from Russia), was marked in London by a mini-concert in the Royal Academy of Music: a handful of Romantic songs by Emils Dārziņş, delivered in the rich bass voice of Pauls Putninş, and the first UK performance of Pēteris Vasks's Piano Quartet, composed in 2000.

Keywords: classical music, style, national romanticism, transformation of creative works, modernism, avant-garde This article discusses the stylistic and aesthetic transformation of the work of the most prominent Latvian composers, who, as refugees of the Second World War, arrived in Western Europe in 1944 and encountered a different, innovative musical environment there. For those whose creative work in Latvia had been focused on traditional national romanticism, the encounter with musical expressionism and the avant-garde caused a certain shock. The stark differences in style were not only a matter of compositional technique; they also revealed the contradiction between a positivistic worldview and a more adequate musical reflection of the common man during the era. Longīns Apkalns learned from the ideas and style of expressionism most radically, but Alberts Jērums was much more moderate in this respect—he had already approached expressionism during his studies at the Latvian Conservatory. In his studies at the Paris Conservatory (1945-1950), Tālivaldis Ķeniņš studied the traditions of French neoclassicism and constructivism. Volfgangs Dārziņš adapted neoclassical trends in combination with Béla Bartók’s interpretation of folklore. Jānis Mediņš radicalized his traditional language of music, but did not abandon the paradigm of the music of romanticism. Similarly, Jānis Kalniņš’ music, even in the pre-war period, was not unfamiliar with the border between romanticism and expressionism. The composers who, with their creative work, chose to serve only Latvian society in exile continued in the romantic style.