Triangles

Vilnius: Vaga, 1970
CD Lithuanian Music in Context I. Lessons of the Avant-garde. - Vilnius, Lithuanian Music Information and Publishing Centre LMIPCCD065-066, 2011

“The piece is composed of three ‘triangles’, all to be played through once in any succession. Performers can decide where to begin.” – Vytautas Montvila.

Vytautas Montvila is considered to be the forefather of the post-war avant-garde movement in Lithuania. His works from the 60s feature many musical innovations that were in vogue in Western Europe at that time, such as serialism, aleatoric technique, pointilism, micro-polyphony, or graphic notation. Written in 1968, the three-minute-long miniature called Triangles was the first graphically notated concert piece in the Lithuanian post-war music history. The sonic material, generated by the combination of the twelve-tone structural principles with the aleatoric order was notated, literally, in triangles (hence the title). It is unknown whether the musicians had the courage to demonstrate the aleatoric possibilities of the piece to their contemporary audiences, however the score, published by Vaga in 1970, ‘straightened’ the triangles and notated them on conventional and familiar staves.

Veronika Janatjeva