Postdoctoral projects and internships

Šarūnas Šavėla, postdoctoral project “The role of Cultural Memory in Shaping Immediate Acoustic Experience”(supervisor Rūta Stanevičiūtė).

     In the world of Antiquity, the term mousikē refers not only to instrumental music, but also to literature, metrics, dance andtheatre. Defined in this way, music becomes an extremely important part of social life and has a very wide range ofpractical applications. In the ancient sense, music was understood not only as a purely acoustic phenomenon, but also as aphenomenon worthy of philosophical conceptualisation, transcending the empirical reality, and analysed through itslinkage with mathematics, cosmology, ethics, and politics. Although the special status of mousikē in the ancient world isnot a matter of much debate, up till now in Lithuania this subject has been almost completely neglected. Usually, ourresearch on music focuses on the later centuries and on a narrow, rather technically defined concept, in which the ancienthistory of ideas is completely marginalised. We aim to encourage Lithuanian academic community of a broader interest inthe studies of the music of Antiquity. For this reason, we suggest to publish a monograph, organise an internationalconference in collaboration with the University of Bologna, publish several articles and an edited volume on this subject,and to present the research results to the international community. Together with our partners we would seek to to raise theawareness not only of the Ancient music itself, but also of music-related textual testimonies. We propose to analyse it notonly by applying the musicological, but also a philosophical and a philological approach. This is a new, very under-researched topic, and a highly productive approach that would provide a much-needed interdisciplinary dialogue betweenthe scholars from different study fields, especially philosophers, philologists, musicologists and historians of art andculture. The project would focus on the analysis of the mythological origins of music as the art of the muses, and thedevelopment of later theories, based on a very broad concept of mousikē.

Gintarė Stankevičiūtė, postdoctoral project “Jeronimas Kačinskas and the European Modernist Nonet: Transnational Networks and Schoenbergian Influence in the Interwar Period” (supervisor Matthieu Guillot).

     This project re-examines the contribution of Jeronimas Kačinskas (1907-2005) to European musical modernism by situating his Nonetas (1932) within a network of transnational exchanges that shaped interwar modernist composition. Challenging historical frameworks that marginalize Baltic modernism, the study positions Kačinskas as an active participant in a pan-European modernist movement. It foregrounds the nonet ensemble as a shared compositional and conceptual medium through which innovative musical ideas circulated across national boundaries during the 1930s.

     Employing a comparative methodology, the project analyses Kačinskas’s Nonetas alongside other interwar nonets written in the 1930’s including Alois Hába’s Fantasy for Nonet No. 1, Op. 40 (1931), and No. 2, Op. 41 (1932); Hanns Eisler’s Nonet No. 2 (1939) and also compositions consisting of nine performers such as Anton Webern’s Concerto for Nine Instruments (1934); Elisabeth Lutyens’s Chamber Concerto for Nine Instruments (1939). This comparison highlights convergences in ensemble construction, formal experimentation, and the treatment of pitch organization. Central to the study is the dissemination and transformation of twelve-tone technique associated with Arnold Schoenberg and his associates, tracing how these compositional principles were mediated through pedagogical and artistic networks – particularly via Hába – and reinterpreted in Kačinskas’s work.

     The project further incorporates analytical perspectives drawn from the concept of Neue Formenlehre to examine rotational and processual approaches to form in interwar nonet compositions. This framework enables a nuanced understanding of how structural innovation functioned alongside harmonic and timbral experimentation within a shared modernist idiom.

     Combining comparative analysis with archival research conducted in Lithuania, the Czech Republic, Austria, and the United Kingdom, the study also investigates the reception of Kačinskas’s Nonetas, including its performance at the International Society for Contemporary Music Festival in 1938. Reception history reveals how the work was interpreted across different cultural contexts and it contributes to a broader reassessment of interwar musical modernism as a transnational phenomenon.

     By foregrounding Lithuania’s engagement with European modernist networks, this project challenges centre-periphery models of music history and demonstrates the importance of cross-cultural exchange in shaping twentieth-century compositional practice. It ultimately repositions Kačinskas’s Nonetas as an important contribution to the European modernist repertoire and identifies the nonet as a significant genre of avant-garde experimentation.

José Miguel Pérez Aparicio, postdoctoral project “Transfer and reinterpretation of national, ethnic and cultural identities in the popular works of Lithuanian emigrants, the need and function of this repertoire in the processes of migration and enculturation” (supervisor Rūta Stanevičiūtė).