In his works, the father of Lithuanian professional music, a composer, artist, philosopher and poet Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (1875–1911) embodied the idea of synthesis of arts – music, painting and poetry. His works have taken a special place not only in the history of Lithuanian but also global culture. Through his paintings he tried to express music and interpret sounds with colours. Being a gifted musician and painter, Čiurlionis felt the need to express himself in these two creative spheres.
For his bright yet short life (Čiurlionis died at the age of 35), he created about 300 paintings and about 350 musical compositions, most of which were piano miniatures (preludes, variations, "landscapes"). He penned symphonic poems In the Forest (1901), which marked the beginning of the history of Lithuanian professional music, and The Sea (1907), an overture Kęstutis (1902), a cantata for mixed choir and symphonic orchestra De Profundis (1899), compositions for a capella choir to the texts of the psalms. He also wrote down and arranged about 60 Lithuanian folk songs.
The composer was born on 22 September, 1875, in Senoji Varėna, Lithuania. Mikalojus Konstantinas was the oldest of nine children in the family. Since childhood he was surrounded with music, and it was his father, a church organist, who gave him his first piano and organ lessons. By the age of seven, the boy could play easily. Čiurlionis grew up in picturesque place Druskininkai. Since early age he had a subtle perception of a soft and poetical beauty of the Lithuanian nature full of delicate colours. The artist and composer conveyed all its diversity and versatility, all its palette and images in his works inspired with the feeling of unity of the man and the world around him.
Čiurlionis continued his musical education at an orchestral school in Plungė that was maintained by a passionate music lover and patron Prince Michał Ogiński, the well-known composer's grandson. There Čiurlionis learnt to play the flute and tried composing for the first time. At eighteen, the composer entered the Warsaw Conservatory and graduated from it in 1899 with honours in composition and piano. Upon graduation, the musician was offered a post of headmaster of a recently opened music school in Ljubljana, but Čiurlionis declined it and left for Germany in 1901 to attend lectures at the Leipzig Conservatory. In Germany, Čiurlionis fell for painting. After he got his diploma, he returned to Warsaw in the autumn of 1902, where he continued to compose and took up private teaching. He did not give up drawing as well attending a painting school. His first painting dates back to 1903 and is named Music of the Forest. In 1904, the artist and musician enrolled for a drawing course at the Warsaw School of Fine Arts where he also studied Indian philosophy and astronomy.
During 1905–1909, Čiurlionis lived in Lithuania and St. Petersburg where he devoted his time to broad educational activities organizing exhibitions and concerts, and writing articles. In St. Petersburg, Čiurlionis met the prominent Russian painters Leon Bakst, Mstislav Dobujinsky, Nikolai Rerikh, as well as Alexandre Benois who highly valued Čiurlionis and in his critical essays mentioned him in the number of "Russia's talented masters." In his turn, Čiurlionis was extremely carried away with the Russian culture. It was in St. Petersburg where he created his best music and paintings.
Not long before he died, the artist came back to Druskininkai. Mikalojus Čiurlionis passed away on 10 April, 1911, near Warsaw, after a serious illness.
"I will fly to the distant worlds, to a land of eternal beauty, sunshine and fantasy, to an enchanted country..," Čiurlionis once said. His pantheistical scenic and musical canvases present a picture of the world perceived simultaneously in sound and colour.
