Chartres

Performed by Duo Dubois.
Ciclo Continuo (2021) for soprano saxophone & percussion:
prepared snare drum, singing bowls, tuning forks, crotale.
Composition Ciclo Continuo seeks to achieve a hybrid organic timbre while associating atypical instruments to complement each other. A snare drum is used as a resonating body for the objects. The snare drum's wire also serves as a saturation effect changing the timbre of metallic instruments and also reacting to the saxophone's sound. Dyads and multiphonics are predominant in the saxophone part while pitched, but very fragile and unstable sounds are used in the percussion section. Harmony is enriched with beatings creating synergy between musicians, unfolding timeless processes. The duo plays the cycle that is on loop, an endless repetition devoid of narration, a basso continuo of an
unsung aria.

Ciclo Continuo

Sergey Tchirkov (accordion) and Ilya Rubinstein (cello)

Plate Tectonics

Sturnus vulgaris cohibitus (2020) for piano & transducers inside the piano. 
Performed by Marco Riccelli (der/gelbe/klang). Recorded by Asparuh Tashev at Villa Waldberta 17.06.2022.
The impact of the lockdown on nature was pronounced, as people were confined at home, animals began to feel freer in cities, pollution and noise levels decreased and birdsong became more audible. Confined at home, I began to watch starling flocks in my garden and listen to their (by my first-impression) non melodic songs. I wanted to capture their voices, turning them into a virtual instrument.
Composition Sturnus vulgaris cohibitus reflects on the idea of confinement. Piano part has a developed rhythmical language and is treated as a percussion instrument with prepared strings inside the big resonating box. Tiny speakers inside the piano play the brief starling calls which have a timbre function, creating a reverb and later a delay of a played instrument. Expanding its register the piece progresses keeping the dependency between piano and tape while symbolising a bird trapped between the strings, only making sound when struck by piano hammers but still hoping to break free.
Virtual instrument patch created by Kristijonas Naslenas.

Sturnus vulgaris cohibitus

For Euphonium & Electronics

Unusual expression of euphonium fulfills the need of an animalistic sounding.

Electronics part is created from the pre-recorded euphonium and vocal sounds treated with audio effects. In order to create a sacrificial dance atmosphere euphonium and electronics interfere with each other as two fighting creatures changing the balance of dominance.

Dedicated to Vianney Desplantes.

Toro

Tapestry – a polychromic fabric, was an inspiration for the title of this piece of music, which has a decorative and repetitive character. According to the image of weaver's art, the compositional principle consists of binding different attacks of sound in order to create a timbre, dynamics and rhythm polychromy in time. 

Tapisserie for Flute, Clarinet, Piano, Violin, Cello is performed by Ensemble Court-Circuit and directed by David Hurpeau in 2015.

Tapisserie

Sfäärit (2025)
For harpsichord, organ, and transducers.

Performers
Harpsichord: Marianna Henriksson
Positive organ: Petteri Pitko
Sound designer: Markus Heino
Electronics: Justina Repečkaitė

Choreography
Choreographer: Anna Mustonen
Dancers: Anna Maria Häkkinen, Mira Kautto, Marlon Moilanen, Anna Mustonen

Assembling and concept
Marianna Henriksson, Anna Mustonen

Premiere
6 February 2025, Dance House Helsinki (Pannuhalli)

Commissioned by the Musica Nova Helsinki Festival, with financial support from the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation.

Program note

Harpsichord and organ—an odd pair. The organ, sustained by electricity, produces an uninterrupted, eternal sound. In contrast, the plucked string of the harpsichord fades almost instantly. Synthesizing electronics, I sought to create a sustained harpsichord-like resonance. This resonance enhances the harpsichord’s natural timbre and blends with the organ’s mixtures to form a hybrid sound. Electronics, injected via transducers into the instruments’ bodies, filter through them before reaching the listener’s ears.

In the score, I explored quarter-comma meantone temperament, a historical (16th-17th century) tuning system whose unequal semitones produce some unusual diminished and augmented intervals. Once avoided due to their perceived inharmonicity—including the well-known wolf fifth —these intervals form the foundation of the composition. Proportionally mapping these intervals onto rhythm and pulse, the composition moves through these relationships, shifting from abstraction to physicality.

Sfäärit alludes to the philosophical concept of the music of the spheres, and in collaboration with choreographer Anna Mustonen, explores movement between vast, resonant spaces and intimate inner vibrations, both physical and metaphysical.

Sfäärit

Cosmatesque term refers not only to a medieval style of geometric decorative inlay stonework but also to a developed symbolical system, which represents concepts and ideas of a universe structure thanks to the coded geometry. Cosmatesque technique, where a model is created from different size and shape pieces of stone, was an inspiration for this big orchestra piece. The singular proportion in permutation is used to create different temporality canons. They build the musical architecture repeating themselves while the orchestra register opens up. Orchestra is divided in to different groups associated with distinct tempo, duration, register and colour. It's superposed repetitive patterns are condemned to be broken by the developed percussion lines symbolically destructing the musical mosaic.
Commission of the festival Gaida. Performed by Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra, conductor Christopher Lyndon-Gee, at Vilnius Philharmonic the 30th of November, 2017.

Cosmatesque

“The obstruction of a vessel that carries blood to the brain breaks the optimal blood circulation system of the brain and synaptic space. Knowing that the radius of the whole dendritic tree is about a millimetre... the continued prolongation of the axon terminates in a star-like arborization and is lost in the cerebellar night, the lateral hemisphere is bathed in liquid. <...>”
Text by Douna Loup. Performed by ensemble Asko/Schönberg  conducted by Joey Marijs, soprano Eduarda Melo,  performer Aurélie Turlet,  electronics Justina Repečkaitė. Recorded on Sunday the 8th of July 2018 at the church of Chartreuse Villeneuve lez Avignon during the festival Rencontres d'été, commissioned by TOTEM(s) project.

INCANTA

Designation & Expulsion (2018) uses the text of pagan Lithuanian charms from the book Lithuanian Verbal Healing Charms (2008) compiled by Daiva Vaitkevičienė. The author apply a classification of charms, two of them being Designation and Expulsion. Composition explores a relationship between the sounding of a word and its emotional impact of meaning. The stretching of words is used until the loss of their concept and the gain of a different effect is achieved exploring the sounding of Lithuanian diphthongs. Harmonically percussion and voices are interlinked and only few intervals dominate the composition while the rich Lithuanian consonants are orchestrated with the non pitched percussion. Composition draws inspiration from repetitive and austere manner of saying charm formulas.

Performed by mezzo-soprano Lucy Goddard, bass Jimmy Holliday and percussionist Philipp Lamprecht at the Royaumont Abbey on the 8th of September 2018.

Designation & Expulsion

The composition La Cité des Dames (The City of Ladies) for 6 Sopranos uses the selected text from Christine’s de Pizan (1364-1430) book of the same name finished by the year 1405 in a vernacular middle French. Pizan’s allegorical city of ladies, created as a response to Jean de Meun’s Roman de la Rose, is defending the virtue of female with examples of famous virtuous women to be “housed” at La Cité and serving as role models for other women to follow. In the book the protagonist Christine, upset after reading the misogynist Matheolu’s Lamentations, is visited by three female Virtues who present themselves and their roles in helping building the foundations and houses of the city. In the first part of my composition the chosen text is an instruction on how to build the city, given by Virtues to Christine. The second part is her answer to their demand. At the very end the Virtues encourage Christine.

Performed by singers: Adriana Aranda, Louise Leterme, Kanae Mizobuchi, Andrea Conangla Fernandes, Mathilde Barthelemy, Esther Rispens and directed by Donatienne Michel-Dansac at Abbey of Royaumont on the 7th of September. Commission of Fondation Royaumont.

La Cité des Dames

Encierro was created for and recorded by the saxhorn quartet Opus 333
at the studio 104, Radio France for the radio show Création Mondiale (Alla Breve)in 2019. Listen to the podcast with more music and an interview here: https://www.francemusique.fr/emissions/creation-mondiale-l-integrale/encierro-de-justina-repeckaite-diffusion-integrale-et-portrait-de-la-compositrice-75308

Encierro

Transduced (2020) for percussions (3 snare drums, cymbal, Tibetan bowl), 3 transducers & electronics performed by Yannick Monnot at the Center Pompidou, Paris.  
Lights:  Pauline Falourd, 
video: Année Zéro,  
sound engineer: Jérémie Bourgogne, 
Cursus IRCAM tutor: Jean Lochard,

Transduced explores the inner relationship between physical models from the snare drum used in the electronics part and electronics transferred back to snare drums inviting to experience the imagined atmosphere of being inside the instrument itself. More: www.justinarepeckaite.eu

Transduced (binaural) for percussion & electronics

Vellum (2020) for Symphonic Orchestra.

Commission of the festival Gaida. Performed by Lithuanian State Symphony Orchestra conducted by Anu Tali on the 30th of October in the Congress Hall, Vilnius.

Vellum is a “membrane” or animal skin, - a parchment to write on, widely used in the medieval ages. Vellum material represents the membrane of the drum since the vibrational modes of percussive instruments are used to create a harmonic structure of the piece as if writing a manuscript on a vellum. The vibrational modes of untuned percussion used for the harmony in the orchestra are prolongated and pulsing according to it's frequency and contrasting to the more noisy-percussive and whispering expressions. The distinctive composition parts are fading in and out until the arrival of the climax where whole sound of the hybrid instrument is illuminated. Untuned percussive instruments lead the composition with sustained sounds. Metal instruments are prepared by coupling them with drums, filling the sound and changing the material itself. It is an allusion to a written word transforming a piece of parchment into a manuscript.

Vellum

Justina Repeckaite’s music is described by critics as having „many similarities to a diamond“ (Ben Lunn, UK), „inviting, constantly changing, gritty and lustrous” (Max Erwin, USA), and „drawn with the sharpest pencil“ (Šarūnas Nakas, LT).

Justina Repečkaitė

Popular tracks