Download MIKALOJUS KONSTANTINAS ČIURLIONIS

Mikalojus
Konstantinas
Čiurlionis was a
Lithuanian painter
and composer.
During his short
life he composed
about 250 pieces of
music and created
about 300
paintings.
The majority of his
paintings are
housed in the M. K.
Čiurlionis National
Art Museum in
Kaunas, Lithuania.
His works have had
a profound
influence on
modern Lithuanian
culture.
M. K. Čiurlionis was born in
1875 in Varėna.
He was the oldest of nine
children of his father,
Konstantinas,
and his
mother,Adelė.
Čiurlionis was a
musical prodigy: he
could play by ear at
age three and could
sight-read music
freely by age seven.
Three years out of
primary school, he went
to study at the musical
school of Prince Michał
Oginski where he learned
to play several orchestral
instruments, in
particular the flute, from
1889 to 1893.
Supported by Prince
Oginski's 'scholarship'
Čiurlionis studied piano
and composition at the
Warsaw Conservatory
from 1894 to 1899.
For his graduation, in
1899, he wrote a cantata
for mixed chorus and
symphonic orchestra
titled De Profundis, with
the guidance of the
composer Zygmunt
Noskowski.
Later he attended
composition lectures at the
Leipzig Conservatory and
studied drawing at the
Warsaw School of Fine
Arts from 1904 to 1906
and became a friend of
Polish composer and
painter Eugeniusz
Morawski-Dąbrowa.
He was one of the
initiators of, and a
participant in, the First
Exhibition of
Lithuanian Art that
took place in 1907 in
Vilnius
Soon after this event the
Lithuanian Union of
Arts was founded, and
Čiurlionis was one of its
19 founding members.
He died of
pneumoni
a in 1911
at 35 years
of age. He
was
buried at
the Rasos
Cemetery
in Vilnius.
Čiurlionis felt that he
was a synesthete;
that is, he perceived
colors and music
simultaneously.
Many of his paintings
bear the names of
musical pieces:
sonatas, fugues, and
preludes.