I feel complete. Wonderful composition. Thank you

performed by The State Chamber Orchestra Sinfonietta Rīga and conductor Normunds Šnē

Grand Concert of Latvian Symphonic Music
January 29, 2022
Great Guild, Riga

Ray-bows II

perf. by Rūta & Zbignevas Ibelhauptas Piano Duo (LT)
Commissioned by the “Warsaw Autumn” foundation

A slow metamorphosis of silence of the falling snow. Alongside it is a metamorphosis of touching the piano; a study of the touches that vibrate the pianos and turn them into long sounding, resonating objects. Thus you realize that the piano keys are like certain magic buttons by which resonating abysses of the piano can be raised. If you succeed in pressing them right, you may hear at least some music of those resonating abysses, meanwhile the sounds of the key attacks are just little iceberg peaks sticking out on the surface.

Desktop

"Silence of the falling Snow" for 2 pianos (2002)

perf. by Šv. Kristoforo kamerinis orkestras, Mantvydas Drūlia (cond.), and Lietuvos simfoninis pučiamųjų orkestras, Karolis Variakojis (cond.)

Šarūnas Nakas. Moters žvilgsnis / Women's Gaze (2022)

perf. by London sinfonietta, cond. Jack Sheen. 2nd of December 2022, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank center, London (UK)

"To dream is to forget.." - Fernando Pessoa. The Book of Disquiet

"I’ve been living with the minor second all my life and I finally found a way to handle it…" Morton Feldman, 1982

Co-commissioned by and written for Ensemble Modern, London Sinfonietta and Remix Ensemble

Cyclically floating between different phases of density and intensity, minor and major, slowing or accelerating waves, the piece is woven from hypnotically repetitive patterns of 7 slightly different tempos which intertwine through 16 lines of the ensemble conceived as a complex human body with regular breathing, heart beating, eye movements, blood flow etc., all happening at the same time but not synchronised.

The title “Sleeping Patterns” refers to the brain wave oscillations through different sleep stages as well as to the Morton Feldman’s question “Why Patterns?”

Duration: 20’

Instrumentation: fl, ob, cl, bsn, tpt, hn, tbn, acc, kbd, 2 vibr, 2 vln, vla, vc, cb

© Éditions Salabert/Universal Music Publishing Classical

"Sleeping patterns" for ensemble (2022), London sinfonietta (excerpt)

perf. by Talvi Nurgamaa (Ensemble for New Music Tallinn)

"Psalms" for viola d'amore (2008, vers. 2023)

commissioned by Ircam-Centre Pompidou and SWR for the 100 years anniversary of György Ligeti

1st performance: ManiFeste (Philharmonie de Paris), 19th June 2023, SWR Vokalensemble, cond. Yuval Weinberg, electronics IRCAM: Robin Meier

Duration: 18'

"then white light / no longer disguised as matter". Louise Glück, End of Summer

“Iridescence” for choir and electronics (2023) is a search for a musical metaphor of light - a radiating sound object, a choir emanating light, inspired by “Lux aeterna” by György Ligeti, one of my lighthouse composers. The title comes from the interviews with Ligeti who used this term to describe sound surfaces of changing colours in terms of harmony and timbre which appeared immediately as a perfect concept to my composition referring to the optic, light-based phenomenon of iridescence in nature.

The voices of the choir are constantly moving in a circle from the highest frequencies down to the lowest pitches and returning, gradually expanding the micro-polyphonic sphere, densifying, enriching, transforming it towards its utmost limits. The only form of sound in the piece is a pure wave, like a simple breath in and out which becomes slower and longer along the organic evolution of the entire sound body. The only text material used, pronounced without consonants and therefore accessible only for the singers, is a phrase from Richard Brautigan's poetry “Star Hole” (“I sit here on the end of a star”) which, like a mantra, is repeated infinite times adding a melancholic, nostalgic, lightly apocalyptic dimension to the lux aeterna theme:

I sit here
on the perfect end
of a star,
watching light
pour itself toward
     me.

 

The light pours
itself through
a small hole
in the sky.

I'm not very happy,
but I can see
how things are
     faraway.

Richard Brautigan


Justė Janulytė © Éditions Salabert/Universal Music Publishing Classical

"Iridescence" (2023) for choir and live electronics (Robin Meier, IRCAM), excerpt

For viola da gamba & bass continuo
By Eva Reiter & Tom Pauwels 
Rehearsal Recording in Vienna (nov 22)

Prelude in A-minor (du 4ième Livre) by Marin Marais

Juste Janulyte, Unanime, long version for 8 trumpets
The Monochrome Project, live @ festival Romanische Sommer, Cologne 6th June 2021
Marco Blaauw, Christine Chapman, Mathilde Conley, Rike Huy, Bob Koertshuis, Nathan Plante, Markus Schwind, Laura Vukobratović

Juste Janulyte, Unanime, The Monochrome Project

commissioned by the Cesis Art Festival 2012, written for Kamer choir and Sinfonietta Riga, dedicated to Normunds Šnē

The piece is an extremely gradual and surreal odyssey from the "clouds" to the "earth" in both physical and metaphorical senses. The musical structure is based on a canon of 3 layers - strings and voices that are temporal and timbral opposition as ''instrumental'' and ''human'', and winds which have a position of the middle, being a ''breathing instrument'' and helping to connect two opposites creating a smooth ''thermodynamic'' transformation of the sound substance. Those 3 layers could remind of different water states in the hydrological cycle - liquid, vapor and ice and their cyclical conversion processes (evaporation, condensation, precipitation and infiltration) become in music transformation of timbre and harmony, the densification and clarification of micro-polyphonic texture, accumulation and dissollution of different layers, pulsation of dynamic crescendos-diminuendos, rising and sinking of macro register and micro intonations. The directions of these changes are guided by the progressive cyclical form where every cycle is longer in time and wider in register than previous, gradually embracing the maximum range from the highest possible violin harmonics at the begining to the lowest open string of contrabass at the very end of the composition, whilst the harmony is based on a continuous sequential sinking of a diatonic mode crossing the cycle of fifths at 3 different levels.

To all these acoustic processes the poetry by Knuts Skujenieks gives a verbal expression, poetic meaning and moves the work into almost sacral dimension. The content, however, remains only to the performers as the singers articulate only vocals of the poem to purify the verbal material masking the consonants as word attacks, which can be seen in the instrumental parts as well - all the notes the string and wind players produce start from the silence, reach the general dynamics and vanish into silence, creating the "underwater" pulsations, unifying the timbres and homogenizing the texture. The poetry of Skujenieks was chosen not only for its literal sense, but also for the poet's connections with Lithuania as a part of the historical, cultural and linguistic relationship of our two countries - very important for me and musically realized by continuous collaboration with Latvian artists. 

"As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth, and making it bud and flourish, so that it yealds see for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: it will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it". (Isaia 55:10-11)

Observation of Clouds for voices, winds and strings (2012)

Lorenzo Pagliei - A.L.M.A. (2015)
for cello and orchestra © Casa Ricordi. Live recording of world première
a video of the performance here: https://youtu.be/9lI2fiVrXpc

Francesco Dillon cello
Orchestra della Toscana
Francesco Lanzillotta conductor

Teatro Verdi - Firenze, September 24 2015. Festival Play It! 2015.

Edizioni Casa Ricordi

A.L.M.A.

The works of Justė Janulytė claim to build a "monochrome music" collection: they explore time-space perception through large-scale multilayered textures and extremely gradual metamorphoses. Justė Janulytė's catalogue, balancing between the aesthetics of minimalism, spectralism and acoustic electronica, has become one of the most fascinating focal points in the contemporary musical world. (Universal Music Publishing Classical) 

More on www.justejanulyte.com

Observation of Clouds for voices, winds and strings (2012)

Juste Janulyte

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