Father Thunder (Pērkontēvs)

Father Thunder (Pērkontēvs) by Laura Jēkabsone
performed by Seattle Pro Musica
live in concert at Saint Marks Cathedral, Seattle
October 28, 2023 - with gratitude to the staff at St. Marks
Laura Jēkabsone is a Latvian composer, arranger, singer, conductor, and artistic director of the vocal group Latvian Voices. Her music has been performed by the Latvian Voices, Latvian National Symphonic Orchestra, Liepāja Symphonic Orchestra, State Choir LATVIJA, The Real Group (Sweden), Amarcord (Germany), The Oxford Choir (UK), and many other organizations around the world. She composed the first symphony written for the kokle, a traditional Latvian plucked-string instrument resembling a zither.
Father Thunder (Pērkontēvs) is a Latvian folk song setting in which the composer calls on the choir to create sounds of storms and thunder. Pērkons is the Baltic god of thunder, documented in both Lithuanian and Latvian mythology as the god of sky, thunder, lightning, storms, rain, fire, war, law, order, fertility, mountains, and oak trees. Pērkons symbolizes the creative forces (including vegetative), courage, success, the sky, rain, thunder, heavenly fire (lightning) and celestial elements. Pērkons possesses many weapons-an axe or sledgehammer, stones, a sword, lightning bolts, a bow and arrows, a club, and an iron or fiery knife. His family included sons that symbolized various aspects of thunderstorms (such as thunder, lightning, lightning strikes) and daughters that symbolized various kinds of rain.
Father Thunder (Pērkontēvs)
Father Thunder has nine sons:
Three strike, three rumble, three flash lightning.
Thunder had nine lightning bolts,
With them bolts he struck the oak.
Three bolt axes chopped the stump,
Six lightning flashes split the top.
Zibināja
Trīs gadiņi saule raud,
zelta zarus lasīdam’.
Pērkona tēvam deviņi deli.
flashes
The sun has been crying for three years,
gathering golden branches.
Father Thunder has nine sons.