Onutė Narbutaitė was born in 1956 in Vilnius in the family of musicologist Ona Narbutienė and geologist Vytautas Narbutas.
She learned the basics of composition from Bronius Kutavičius and graduated in 1979 from the Lithuanian State Conservatory (now the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Drama), where she studied composition with Prof. Julius Juzeliūnas. From 1979 to 1982, she taught music theory and history at the Klaipėda Faculty of the Lithuanian State Conservatory. Since 1982, she has concentrated exclusively on her creative work and lives in Vilnius.
Even in the 1980s, Onutė Narbutaitė enjoyed a reputation as a composer of subtle chamber music. Her early works were suffused with depictions of "night," "silence," and "oblivion"; her compositions, unhurried in their flow, with their transparent textures and nostalgic mood, often resembled the pages of a diary written in sounds. The composer's music underwent a significant transformation in the years following Lithuania's independence. First, Narbutaitė devoted herself to large-scale symphonic and symphonic-vocal works. Maintaining her undeniably creative independence, she developed an expressive musical language characterized by cerebral nature and structured thinking, expressive instrumentation and haunting melodic quality, lush harmonies and textures, and an intense musical flow. The subtle sonic imagination of her music is in harmony with the rich cultural references found in it.
We can say that Onutė Narbutaitė is today one of the few composers whose music bears the mark of exceptional individuality and is recognizable from the first bars of all her compositions. In addition to the broad spectrum of various emotional states and feelings in the creative work, what is also palpable is the sense of aristocratic restraint and strong compositional discipline that only increases the music's emotional impact. However, the constructive origin is not manifested by systems of organization of various musical parameters borrowed from others or created by her. Narbutaitė's intellectual works do not resemble 'mechanical production' but 'manual work' performed with great precision. The rationality of her composition is revealed through meticulously detailed textures, precise proportions of smaller or larger sections, the overall shape, and the not immediately perceptible interaction of the minor details. At the same time, the abstract musical narrative is highly expressive, clearly emerges, and often resembles "something familiar." Perhaps the aptest description of her current work was given by the American musicologist Richard Taruskin: 'Not "tonal." Not "romantic". Not "retro". Consonant.'
Onute Narbutaite's "Was There a Butterfly?" composition for chamber orchestra (2013)
Written on commission by the Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra and dedicated to the conductor Juha Kangas and the Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra. The initial musical idea and working title of the piece was Ostinato. As a constant repetition of musical patterns, Ostinato connotes a constant return to the same place, memory, and dream – dark and deep. The butterfly flew onto the title only after completing the work, but not by chance. It continued to flutter in various forms throughout the writing process, in the corners of the mind. Like a mysterious breath, a shadow of Psyche – in ancient Greek, the same word indicates Psyche, soul, breath, and butterfly. Or, as a symbol of metamorphosis, the idea of a momentary unfurling of wings. In this regard, it would be appropriate to quote a joke by Czesław Miłosz: Why does a butterfly spread its wings for a flight measured by the grains of an hourglass?
