Overview

My connection to Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis began long before I fully understood it. As a composer, trained at Coventry University and always drawn to the interplay of light and darkness in my own music, I've naturally gravitated toward artists who live inside that same tension. When I first heard Čiurlionis's Prelude in D minor, VL 256, I felt something immediate, a kind of recognition, as though I had stumbled upon a musical voice that resonated with my own musical thoughts. I grew up on farmland in the north of England, surrounded by open fields and wide skies, and later moved to North Wales, where I have spent more than a decade living among forests. Trees have been a constant for me, and the sense of being immersed in nature has shaped my own creative world. When I began exploring Čiurlionis's work, I recognised a familiar spirit. His Lithuania, with its forests, lakes, and living atmosphere, felt close to the landscapes that shaped me. As if similar landscapes can breed similar music. I also experience music through synesthesia: I hear have always been able to hear music and feel a shifting colour in my minds eye, expressing a visual to the mind of the music being heard. Čiurlionis, from what I've read, experienced it in the opposite direction, he saw colours and heard music within them. We approached the same meeting point from different sides. Although, he may have also heard colour in music at the same time, only he mentions the opposite. His paintings entitled as pieces of music is a crossover of the arts that I specifically enjoy. An overlap between senses is rare, and perhaps it is one reason his work felt instantly familiar. Despite the century, the countries, and the entirely different lives we led, his from 1875 to 1911, mine from 1987 to the present (2025), there is a shared emotional terrain. His art and music to me feel alive, an impression of natures voice, speaking through a composer that has a close enough connection to nature, that it will be heard through them. I have always felt that Čiurlionis is a hugely underrated composer, overshadowed by his reputation as a painter, even though his musical voice is as vivid and original, as his visual one. This book brings together the parts of Čiurlionis that show a picture of the artist in some detail: the letters, where his imagination, humour, and love towards Sofija reveal the human being behind the artist, handwritten manuscripts, which preserve the intimacy of his own writing, and some of my own clean transcriptions of those manuscripts, offered simply to make the music clearer to modern performers while remaining faithful to the originals. I've also included my own composition, Dreams of Vilnius, L44, written in dedication to him, not in imitation of his voice, but as an offering in thanks for the inspiration and the strange sense of connection I have found in his art. This is simply a volume of collated letters, images, photos and manuscripts, which I hope will bring information about Čiurlionis to an English speaking audience, as I feel there must be more people out there waiting to discover the true artist Čiurlionis was. Rather than an academic study or essay, this is meant to be an enjoyable read, and as an offering to the the world. Lorin Jones-Stubbs, Cerrigydrudion, 2025

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