Kuldar Sink (14 September 1942

Tallinn Tallinn () is the most populous and capital city of Estonia. Situated on a bay in north Estonia, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland of the Baltic Sea, Tallinn has a population of 437,811 (as of 2022) and administratively lies in the Harju ' ...

– 29 January 1995 Kõrve, Võru County) was an Estonian composer and flautist. While his earlier compositions were often neoclassical in style and influenced by

Claude Debussy (Achille) Claude Debussy (; 22 August 1862 – 25 March 1918) was a French composer. He is sometimes seen as the first Impressionist composer, although he vigorously rejected the term. He was among the most influential composers of the ...

and

Olivier Messiaen Olivier Eugène Prosper Charles Messiaen (, ; ; 10 December 1908 – 27 April 1992) was a French composer, organist, and ornithologist who was one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex; harmonically ...

, the mature part of his career was devoted to

musical modernism In music, modernism is an aesthetic stance underlying the period of change and development in musical language that occurred around the turn of the 20th century, a period of diverse reactions in challenging and reinterpreting older categories o ...

and

avant-garde music Avant-garde music is music that is considered to be at the forefront of innovation in its field, with the term "avant-garde" implying a critique of existing aesthetic conventions, rejection of the status quo in favor of unique or original elemen ...

. Some of the techniques he employed in his compositions included

serialism In music, serialism is a method of Musical composition, composition using series of pitches, rhythms, dynamics, timbres or other elements of music, musical elements. Serialism began primarily with Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, thou ...

, tone clusters,

unified field In music, unified field is the 'unity of musical space' created by the free use of melodic material as harmonic material and vice versa. The technique is most associated with the twelve-tone technique, created by its 'total thematicism' where a t ...

, and aleatoric music. In the latter part of his career he began incorporating traditions from the folk music of Central Asia into his compositions, and he ended his career with a period focused on choral works inspired by Gregorian chant and Estonian folk music. Sink trained at the Tallinn Music School where he earned diplomas in music theory (1960), flute performance (1961), and music composition (1961). At that school he was mentored by

Veljo Tormis Veljo Tormis (7 August 1930 – 21 January 2017) was an Estonian composer, regarded as one of the great contemporary choral composers and one of the most important composers of the 20th century in Estonia.Daitz, Mimi. Ancient Song Recovered: The ...

. He pursued graduate studies in music composition at the Leningrad Conservatory in the early to mid-1960s. His most highly regarded composition is the

song cycle A song cycle (german: Liederkreis or Liederzyklus) is a group, or cycle (music), cycle, of individually complete Art song, songs designed to be performed in a sequence as a unit.Susan Youens, ''Grove online'' The songs are either for solo voice ...

''Sünni ja surma laulud'' (''The Songs of Birth and Death''), which incorporates tonal and rhythmic elements of the Arabic classical music maqām. Composed between 1985 and 1987, the cycle consists of five poems by Federico García Lorca. He died in Kõrve in 1995. One of Sink's last compositions included a Biblical-themed opera. He was killed in a 1995 accident. Kuldar was married to the artist Lilia Sink. Their daughter is the bioroboticist

Maarja Kruusmaa Maarja Kruusmaa (maiden name Maarja Sink; born 4 January 1970) is an Estonian computer scientist, professor at Tallinn University of Technology, vice-rector for research and head of the biorobotics center at that university. Her main research are ...

. Kuldar's brother is politician Tunne Kelam.

References

Bibliography

* 1942 births 1995 deaths 20th-century Estonian composers Tallinn Georg Ots Music School alumni Musicians from Tallinn {{Estonia-composer-stub