Interview, Jaan-Eik Tulve on the music of Cyrillus Kreek

For many classical fans, the musical history of Estonia comes into existence out of nowhere with Arvo Pärt, who rose to fame from the 1970s onward; previous generations of composers from the north Baltic state seem to be viewed, if they are known at all, as mere precursors and layers of groundwork for Pärt.

A new release from ECM aims to help correct this view, bringing to light the previously barely-heard music of Cyrillus Kreek, a fascinating figure who combined an original and sonorous approach to choral textures with a lifelong passion for the native folk traditions of his home country. Like the better-known Vaughan Williams and Bartók, he made great efforts to record and preserve these often endangered traditions, and their idioms inevitably percolated into his own writing, not least through his harmonisations of the folksongs he encountered.

I spoke to Jaan-Eik Tulve, conductor of the choir Vox Clamantis who present a selection of Kreek's choral works on this recording, about Kreek and his place in Estonia's musical heritage.

Even among those who take an interest in the music of the Baltic region, Kreek is a relatively little-known composer. He seems to have enjoyed some success during his own lifetime, though; did he simply slip out of favour after his death?

In fact, Cyrillus Kreek has always been a well-known and beloved composer in Estonia. He lived in Haapsalu, a small seaside town in Western Estonia, and worked as a teacher. He has written a great deal of choral music, but these works are relatively complex and this is perhaps one of the reasons why his music was not performed a lot during his lifetime. However, Kreek's life became difficult during the years of Soviet occupation, as much of his religious music was no longer allowed to be performed at all.

Cyrillus Kreek, like many of his contemporaries, was quite old when the Soviet occupation arrived and he did not want to adapt to this new life and its values. Unfortunately, he also died before the society got somewhat more free and open in the 1960s.

Thus, his vast vast collection of works was not discovered until the end of the Soviet occupation. Since then, his choral music has been performed a lot, but since it is in Estonian, unfortunately it has largely remained only in the programs of Estonian performers. However, in recent years his beautiful vocal works have increasingly started to reach the repertoires of foreign choirs.

The runic song that makes up the majority of the third track on this album is a mesmerising piece, combining three seemingly independent elements that move at their own pace but all work together. Is this tradition still practised today, or was an element of reconstruction necessary to arrive at this musical result?

This composition is completely arbitrary and created especially for our programme. There are three elements, a long epic spiritual runic song, the priest's prayer for the Orthodox liturgy, and the opening song of the Orthodox Vespers created by Cyrillus Kreek.

This composition is created for the beginning of the concert programme, where one singer comes first singing the runic song, then another singer starts the part of the priest, and then the whole choir answers with the opening song of Vespers. The programme of the record has a different logic than the concert and therefore it is no longer at the beginning.

The opening song of Cyrillus Kreek's Orthodox Vespers is the answer to the liturgical recitation of the priest. But since Kreek uses a lot of spiritual folk songs, the idea arose that something truly archaic, an Estonian epic runic song, could be included in this program. It is a long poetic story about Jacob, who dreamed of the ladder to heaven and the gate of Paradise. The poem is quite recitative and and so is the priest’s prayer. Therefore, they fit well together and in our programme one piece becomes another.

The notes to this recording lean towards casting Kreek as similar to England’s Vaughan Williams in his study of folk music. Would you say he is of comparable importance in terms of preserving those traditions, and bringing them to new audiences via his own arrangements?

Yes, Cyrillus Kreek considered collecting, notating and preserving Estonian folk songs to be a very important task. He was the first to use a phonograph for this purpose, and he quoted folk songs extremely accurately, with all the ornaments and variations. His collection contains more than 6,000 folk songs. Kreek also based his own compositions mainly on this tradition, and he loved to say that folk music uses him to reveal itself.

The booklet also speculates that the setting of Psalm 137, with its theme of the Israelites’ exile in Babylon, is a coded lament for the tribulations of Estonia itself under successive foreign rulers. Was there any musical tradition of “hidden messages” like this, as was previously the case among Catholics in Tudor England and elsewhere?

Estonia has been dominated by various foreign powers since the 13th century, so it is deeply rooted in the memory of the people. In the 19th century, it was increasingly expressed through various art forms. Cyrillus Kreek used the psalm text of the Babylonian captivity in 1938 when Estonia had been independent for 20 years, but at the same time World War II was approaching at an alarming speed. In 1944, Kreek returned to the same text and created a new version for mixed choir. Needless to say, at that time, the whole world was going through one of the bloodiest and most difficult periods of the last centuries. If we talk about coded messages in music or more broadly in art, then this way of expression arose in Estonia a little later, during the Soviet occupation when any message was transmitted covertly.

Fans of Rachmaninov’s Vespers will recognise the haunting znammeny and Greek chants in tracks 3 and 7 – but here sung in Estonian, rather than in Church Slavonic. Was this normal liturgical practice at the time, or was Kreek making an early nationalist statement in setting parts of the Orthodox liturgy in his native language?

In Estonia, the Orthodox liturgy was translated into Estonian already in the 19th century, and since then the liturgical practice has been in Estonian. However, liturgical melodies from the Russian Orthodox Church were used. In the case of Kreek, therefore, the use of the Estonian language is not a new approach. However he wanted to write a complete liturgy for different services, and this is his contribution to the development of the liturgy.

The freely-composed unaccompanied psalm-settings have a rich, unique harmonic language that seems to defy the identification of precursors or influences, and wouldn’t sound out of place in today’s world of lush choral writing. Who would you say were the key people who shaped his development as a composer?

Cyrillus Kreek's sense of harmony is indeed very peculiar, and the harmonic sequence is always a bit surprising. He often uses a non-traditional mixed choir arrangement, where there are more male voices than female voices. Sometimes only one female voice against three or four male voices. Not much is known about his creative role models. In 1908, he began studying at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, where he received classical music education. However, it is worth noting that he had a very strong friendship with the organist and composer Peeter Süda, through whom Kreek certainly reached the depths of polyphonic thinking. According to Kreek himself, his main source of inspiration is folk song, and although I cannot say what Cyrillus Kreek's direct influences in composition were, he himself has influenced many composers of the younger generations, namely Veljo Tormis.