Name Jurgis Karnavicius Died December 22, 1941 | Role Composer | |
Jurgis Karnavicius (23 April 1884 – 22 December 1941) was a Lithuanian composer of classical music and a forerunner of the development of Lithuanian operatic works.
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Karnavicius' son, also named Jurgis Karnavicius (1912–2001), was a pianist and the long-time rector of the Lithuanian Academy of Music. His grandson, Jurgis Karnavicius (born 1957), is a concert pianist.
Biography
Karnavicius was born in Kaunas, Lithuania, which at the time was a part of the Russian Empire. After completing his basic education in his homeland, he began the study of Law in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Music had always been his first love, and he began to simultaneously study music theory and composition, and this passion soon superseded his pursuit of a career in the legal profession. His primary instrument was the viola. Eventually he became a professor at the Conservatory of Music in the now renamed city of Leningrad. During this period he began experimenting with his own theories of musical composition and began writing his own works.
In 1927, Karnavicius returned to Lithuania, which had only regained its independence as a sovereign nation less than ten years earlier. In addition to teaching at the Conservatory of Music in Kaunas, he opted to play the viola with the orchestra of the State Opera for a number of years. Having a personal desire write a new opera himself, and under the influence of the renewed national pride released by Lithuania's regaining its independence, Karnavicius began to write his first opera, Grazina, which premiered on February 16, 1933. It had incorporated more than forty melodies borrowed from Lithuanian folk songs, and was a popularly acclaimed success. It is considered among the first of the "Lithuanian National Operas." This was followed in 1937 by the opera Radvila Perkunas, which was about the Lithuanian nobleman, Krzysztof Mikolaj Radziwill.