Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis’s “In the Forest” (“Miške”)
Notes by TŌN violinist Lap Yin Lee
Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis was a Lithuanian national treasure, renowned as both a composer and a painter. His cultural identity shed light on such intersections as an artist who stood at the crossroads of three worlds: he was born in Lithuania and died in Poland under the Russian Empire. Čiurlionis studied at the Warsaw and Leipzig Conservatories. The last three years of his short life he spent in St. Petersburg, where he became close to the Mir iskusstva artists. He was therefore both part of Russian imperial culture and outside of it. Although he could read and understand Lithuanian, he did not acquire proficiency in that language and needed assistance from his fiancée. However, his pride in Lithuanian heritage stood in tension with his life under the Russian Empire. His uncertain grasp of his own language left a gulf between him and his culture; but it became not a barrier, but a threshold to a more universal art, compelling Čiurlionis to imagine an art vast enough—cosmic and holistic—to transcend national boundaries.
With synesthesia, a fusion of the senses that Čiurlionis himself experienced, such tangled identity and sensations created the most unprecedented and kaleidoscopic arts. He explored correspondences between tones and hues, rhythms and forms. He sought a deeper unity, a vision of the cosmos where forests, stars, and harmonies merge. As he had written in his diary, “I see my paintings as if they were symphonies or fugues. Colors are like tones, and lines are like melodies—together they form harmony.”
In the Forest (Miške) was his first major work and remained his largest orchestral piece. It can be heard as both a musical journey and a painted panorama. The opening string octaves draw us into a twilight landscape; voices of winds and brass create shadows, meadows, marshes, and, suddenly, light glancing on water. At times, the score feels like walking through one of his several paintings titled “Forest”—a world at once physical and mystical.
Čiurlionis’s music is rooted in Lithuania but resonates beyond it, reflecting both national longing and the broader cultural currents of the Russian Empire. This concert places his vision in dialogue with his contemporaries, yet Čiurlionis remains distinct, an explorer of hidden correspondences. His art asks us not only to listen but also to see—to discover harmony in the meeting of sound and image, of memory and dream.