This year, on the 3rd December, 120 years passes since the birth of composer Cyrillus Kreek. Among Estonian composers, next to Rudolf Tobias, Heino Eller and Mart Saar, Kreek is one of the most important influencer of development of national characteristics in musical composition. Several subsequent generations of music creators, including Arvo Pärt, Veljo Tormis, Tõnu Kõrvits and others, have drawn inspiration from his lifetime-work.
Kreek lifetime-work consists of three inseparable and complementary activities i.e composing, teaching and collecting and research of folk music. Kreek worked as a teacher more than 40 years of his lifetime, his folklore collection includes approximately 1300 songs, written down from his students. Since 1911, Kreek also participated in folklore collecting movement, organized by the Estonian Students‘ Union and Oskar Kallas, and was one of the most enthusiastic among folklore collectors. As the first, Kreek used in this work also an help of phonograph.
In Kreek‘s creation, nearly thousand Estonian folk songs and dance tunes are stored. In addition to approximately twenty original work (including "Little Flower Song"), Kreek has made choir arrangements of nearly 700 folk tunes and 500 chorals, about a dozen suites for different wind ensembles, based on tunes of Estonian folk dances on songs, and several folk music arrangements for symphony orchestra. A special position in Kreek‘s list of works holds his Requiem for tenor, mixed choir, organ and symphony orchestra. The work was completed in 1927 and is the first Estonian work in its own genre (the Estonian text written by Baltic-German folklorist G. J. Schultz-Bertram, after the text of Mozart's Requiem). Although almost entire creation of Kreek is based on folk music, a few characteristics of his music confirm some influences of neoclassical style – use of polyphonic devices, a modest scale of emotions, rigorous and simple form structures.
Cyrillus (born Karl Ustav) Kreek was born in 1889 in Läänemaa, Ridala, as the ninth of eleven children of a large and music loving family. He obtained primary music education at the Haapsalu st. Nikolaus Church Parish School. Since 1908, Kreek studied trombone at the St. Petersburg Conservatoire, and later also composition and theory. Since the outbreak of war, the conservatoire remained unfinished, and from 1919 until the end of his life, Kreek worked as a teacher in Haapsalu, Rakvere, Tartu and Tallinn. He gave music lessons in general education schools, as well as at the Tartu Higher Music School and Tallinn Conservatoire, where he from 1940-1941 and 1944-1950 was professor of theoretical substances, and from 1947, the head of theory department.
In 2001, a memorial museum was opened in Kreek‘s apartment in his home town Haapsalu. Cyrillus Kreek‘s heritage is preserved in the Kreek‘s Fund at the Estonian Theatre and Music Museum.
Malle Maltis