Since the 1970s the name of Bronius Kutavičius (1932–2021) has frequently been mentioned among the most outstanding figures in Lithuania’s music scene. His creative work goes far beyond the boundaries of pure music and encompasses a wide cultural context, revealing layers of the history and prehistory of nations going back to the beginnings of time, giving material form to the pure archetypes of mythic and religious consciousness. Kutavičius’s music, in carrying out the mission of ‘cultural archaeology’, grounded in archaic, primordial feelings, is at the same time very rational and mathematically accurate, but his harmonious and at times even complex systems of sounds always breathe with life and the power of feeling.
The composer is also considered to be the pioneer of Lithuanian minimalism. Because of its multilayered repetitiveness and the reduction of its musical material to quite elementary archetypal models, Kutavičius’s work can appear to resemble early European (post)minimalism, but sounds completely different. His ‘pagan minimalism’ is steeped in the archaic forms of Lithuanian ethnic music.
He wrote numerous oratorios and operas, film scores, orchestral works and chamber music. Kutavičius is regarded as a symbol of Lithuanian cultural identity, both in music and in politics Among many awards, he received the Lithuanian State Prize in 1987.