Sutartines: Folk Music of Lithuania

The word sutartines is derives from sutarti (which means to be in concordance, in agreement and the singular is sutartines), which is highly special instances of the folk music. They are an olden method of two and there voiced polyphony, based on the oldest principles of multi-voiced vocal music: cannon, parallelism, heterophony and the free imitation.

source of picture: www.argophilia.com

Most of the sutartines collection was recorded in the 19^th and 20^th centuries, but evidence from the 16^th century show that they were important along with the monophonic songs. At the recent, the sutartines have almost become dead as a genre among the populace, but they are nurtured by many Lithuanian folklore groups.

The basic functions of the sutartines encompass all the major Lithuanian folk song genres. Sutartines melodies are not difficult, containing two or five pitches. The melodies are balanced, comprising of two equal-length parts; rhythms are typically modified and the different articulated refrains gave them a driving quality.

Sutartines can be divided into three groups according to the performance practice and function;

·         Dvejines (twosomes) are sung two singer or two groups of singer

·         Trejines (threesomes) are performed by three singers in severe canon

·         Keturines (foursomes) are sung by two pairs of singers.

Sutartines are confined occurrence found in the northwestern part of Lithuania. The song is done by women, but men performed the instrumental versions in the kankles (psaltery), horns and on the skuduciai (pan-pipes). The thematically and rich diverse poetry of the sutartines confirms to their importance in the social cloth. Sutartines were sung at festival, weddings, gatherings and while performing at different chores. The poetic language while not being difficult is extremely visual, expressive and resonant. The patterns of beats are clear and stressed. Sutartines dance are humorous and spirited, in spite the fact that the trends of the dance are quite reserved and slow. The main important characteristics of the sutartines are the wide variety of vocals used in the refrains (lylio, ratilio, sodauto, ciuto, dauno, kadujo and tonarilio etc).