French influences in the works by Bacevičius

Jacques Amblard (1)

1 LESA - Laboratoire d'Etudes en Sciences des Arts

During his stay in Paris, Lithuanian composer Vytautas Bacevičius was probably imbued, by a certain scientific (positivist?) atmosphere, which was important in all the arts at this time in the French Capital. This could have provided the “inspiration” for some of his future works, such as Electric poem (1932), Cosmic symphony (1960) or Graphic (1964). Paris would also have been the place to study certain aspects of French musical “impressionism”. One can find harmonic procedures characteristic of Debussy or Ravel, for instance, in certain piano works of the French period (such as the Poem op. 10), procedures which don’t appear before in his works. Several aspects of French neoclassicism also appear in his compositions. A certain taste for ostinato and polytonality may have come from Stravinsky (who was still living and creating his works in Paris at this time), but also Milhaud and Honegger, whose very pragmatic, “scientific”, but also neoclassical Pacific 231 was famous in Paris for several years already. It is also possible that Varèse, who had just returned from the United States (and was about to stay in Paris for several years before flying back to America) served as some kind of model for Bacevičius, in connection with the scientific inspiration of the future works, of course, but also the positive evaluation of the New World (America), which Varèse was probably symbolising in Paris at this time period.

Mots clés: music; Bacevicius; Lithuanian; French; Paris; scientism

Domaines: Musique, musicologie et arts de la scène

Jacques Amblard. French influences in the works by Bacevičius. 2019. ⟨hal-02307716⟩