Vitols, Jazeps (1863 - 1948)
Biography Works
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Jāzeps Vītols (Joseph Wihtol) – the first truly
universal master of Latvian music whose creative work raised almost
all the main genres to the level of classic perfection and
faultless artistry. He is the intellectual father of several
generations of composers. His pedagogical principles reflect those
of his teachers and companions at the St. Petersburg Conservatory –
Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, Alexander Glazunov and Anatoly Lyadov.
After graduating in 1886 he remained at the St. Petersburg
Conservatory as an instructor. In 1908 he was appointed Professor
of Composition, a post he held until 1918, when he returned to
Latvia to become both Rector and Professor of Composition at the
Latvian Conservatory in Riga.
Fleeing the Soviet occupation in early 1944, Vītols found
himself a refugee in Germany, where he was appointed Director of
the UNRRA Baltic DP Music College founded in Detmold (1946–1947).
For almost half a century his activity and powerful
personality were an inspiration and a driving force in the
development of Latvian music. His choral works, numbering more than
a hundred, display thematic and musical variety, autonomy in the
musical setting of poetic images, a structure and design combining
variety in development with the retention of unity, reminiscent of
instrumental music, and a fully-developed sense of mood and
harmony. While still at St. Petersburg he developed to a high level
of perfection the dramatic ballad, a genre characteristic of
Latvian music.
