In 1902, on 14 May, Lūcija Garūta was born in Riga – a pianist, composer, musicologist and later a professor at the Latvian State Conservatory. Her name is especially linked with the 1943 cantata “Dievs, Tava zeme deg!” (“God, Your Land Is Burning!”), which transformed the experience of the Second World War and occupation into powerful Latvian music of spiritual resistance. During Soviet rule the work could not be performed until 1988, and later it became one of the markers of Latvia’s cultural memory.

Garūta belonged to the generation of Latvian professional musicians shaped in the era of independent Latvia and tested by the ruptures of war and occupation. Her cantata with text by Andrejs Eglītis gained symbolic importance both in exile and during Latvia’s National Awakening.