Georgs Pelēcis
Georgs Pelēcis is a Latvian composer and musicologist, born on 18 June 1947 in Riga. He grew up in a Russian-Latvian Orthodox musical family and showed musical ability early. He studied at the Emīls Dārziņš Riga Secondary Special Music School, where the composer Ģederts Ramans taught composition and encouraged him to apply to the Moscow Conservatory. There Pelēcis studied composition with Aram Khachaturian.
After graduating from the Moscow Conservatory in 1971, Pelēcis returned to Riga and joined the music-theory department of the Latvian State Conservatory as a teacher. In 1977 he began postgraduate study in music theory at the Moscow State Conservatory with Vladimir Protopopov. His 1981 candidate dissertation examined form in the music of Johannes Ockeghem and the traditions of the Netherlandish polyphonic school. He received a Doctor of Arts degree in 1990 for a dissertation on Palestrina's polyphonic principles and the traditions of the era of vocal polyphony; the International Palestrina Centre in Rome recognized this research in 1993. He became a professor at the Latvian Music Academy in 1990, teaching principally counterpoint and fugue, and has written more than 30 scholarly works on medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque music.
His study of earlier music, including Vivaldi, Scarlatti, and Monteverdi, shaped a style associated with the new simplicity and new consonance movements. He also cites the influence of Arvo Pärt and Steve Reich. Pelēcis describes his own aesthetic as “new consonant music,” a tendency that emerged in Belgium during the 1990s. His music is represented by the German publisher Sikorski and the Latvian publisher Musica Baltica.
Research visits supported by the Soros Foundation took him to Corpus Christi College, Oxford, in 1995 and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, in 1997. In England he received his first foreign commissions. His music for Roald Dahl's Jack and the Beanstalk was performed at the Royal Albert Hall in London, in an oratorio for dramatic actors and symphony orchestra that featured Danny DeVito in a leading role. He also collaborated with the BBC. His works have been heard at Moscow's Alternative festival and at the Lockenhaus Festival in Austria. His concerto Nevertheless, for violin, piano and chamber orchestra, was choreographed by Mark Taylor for Dance Alloy in Pittsburgh in 2000.
Among Pelēcis's major works are New Year's Music for piano (1977), Trumpet Concerto (1982), Concertino bianco for piano and chamber orchestra (1983), Music from Behind the Wall for violin, viola, cello and bassoon (1984), Lamento for string quartet (1986), Nevertheless (1994), the Orthodox oratorio Christ Is Risen! (1996), the Christmas oratorio Christ Is Born! (2000), Dialogue for soprano, two countertenors and organ (2003), Missa Brevis for women's choir and piano (2003), Latvian Requiem (2006), and the piano concerto Musica confinanta. The latter received its world premiere for his seventieth birthday, performed by pianist Vestards Šimkus with the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Andris Vecumnieks.
Orthodox texts and liturgical study also became important to Pelēcis's music. His sacred output includes the oratorio God Is Love, using Russian and Latvian texts by Orthodox passion-bearers who lived in Latvia; Christmas and Easter oratorios; a Requiem; and choral settings of Psalms 28 and 118. Performers of his music include Alexei Lyubimov, Gidon Kremer, Tatiana Grindenko, and Anton Batagov. Pelēcis served as an active participant and president of the Riga Early Music Centre in the early 1990s. In 2001 he received the Latvian Ministry of Culture Prize for the symphony London and for the oratorios God Is Love and Christ Is Born!, and in 2017 he was appointed an Officer of the Order of the Three Stars.