Page 306 - Vinkler, Jonatan, in Jernej Weiss. ur. 2014. Musica et Artes: ob osemdesetletnici Primoža Kureta. Koper: Založba Univerze na Primorskem.
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musica et artes
dures of composition. Which are those and how may they be addressed? This
is a rather thorny – and central – issue on the old frictions between the aes-
thetical and the ethical facets of music: the frictions between different seman-
tic values attached to music.
Facets of the Aesthetical Values
To leave the otherwise necessary technical analysis, it may suffice for the mo-
ment to indicate Rojko’s compositional practice as an idiosyncratic poetics
based on textural music or sonorism, since both terms point to practically
different compositional stylisations from the beginning of the 20th centu-
ry and especially from the ‘fifties onward (e.g.: from futurist ideas as well as
the concept of Cowell’s tone-clusters in the works of I. Xenakis, the Polish
composers from the ‘sixties, spectralists and New Complexity movement, Gi-
acinto Scelsi, Conlon Nancarrow). Rojko’s compositional ideas circumscribe
what Helmut Lachenmann (another composer fascinated by Luigi Nono’s
views who also thought Rojko composition in Freiburg) apostrophized as the
»emancipation of acoustically presented sound« that has led to a »bulk of mis-
understandings«.14 I refer to Lachenmann’s typology of compositional proce-
dures as indicated in terms of archetyps of sound in avant-garde music as de-
fined in his Klangtypen der neuen Musik in 1970.
The typically modernist »always-anew« approach to composition – in
Rojko’s case an approach with variables of uncertainty and a fear of being un-
able to fulfil the task of creating new work – is founded in what may be com-
pared to Lachenmann’s »phenomen of the syntactical«15 where the basic prin-
ciple is: »Alles muß jedesmal neu gepolt werden«: everything has always to be
re-polarized. This Heraclitan stance actually calls for certain idealistic musi-
cal poetic in which the idea of the sublime, central to Rojko’s work, seems to
be richly elaborated.
It seems rather at odds though that today only rare voices16 are raised re-
garding the sublime, as if its historical importance, usually confined the music
siano necessariamente populiste, popolari o comprensibili nei loro sviluppi. C’ è di nuovo la possibilità per l’ar-
te di potersi sviluppare ancora nella maniera del principio, quello che si dice ‘ basso principio artistico’.« Gian-
franco Terzoli, »Uros Rojko, un musicista creativo,« Fucine, april 2001, http://www.fucine.com/
network/fucinemute/core/index.php?url=redir.php?articleid.
14 Helmut Lachenmann. Musik als existentielle Erfahrung - Schriften 1966–1995, ed. Josef Häusler
(Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1996), 1.
15 Op. cit., 213.
16 Cf. Damian Thompson, »Are today's composers up to the challenge of writing sublime music?,«
The Spectator, 27. april 2013, http://www.spectator.co.uk/arts/music/8895001/transcendental-me-
ditation/ (18. 4. 2014).
304
dures of composition. Which are those and how may they be addressed? This
is a rather thorny – and central – issue on the old frictions between the aes-
thetical and the ethical facets of music: the frictions between different seman-
tic values attached to music.
Facets of the Aesthetical Values
To leave the otherwise necessary technical analysis, it may suffice for the mo-
ment to indicate Rojko’s compositional practice as an idiosyncratic poetics
based on textural music or sonorism, since both terms point to practically
different compositional stylisations from the beginning of the 20th centu-
ry and especially from the ‘fifties onward (e.g.: from futurist ideas as well as
the concept of Cowell’s tone-clusters in the works of I. Xenakis, the Polish
composers from the ‘sixties, spectralists and New Complexity movement, Gi-
acinto Scelsi, Conlon Nancarrow). Rojko’s compositional ideas circumscribe
what Helmut Lachenmann (another composer fascinated by Luigi Nono’s
views who also thought Rojko composition in Freiburg) apostrophized as the
»emancipation of acoustically presented sound« that has led to a »bulk of mis-
understandings«.14 I refer to Lachenmann’s typology of compositional proce-
dures as indicated in terms of archetyps of sound in avant-garde music as de-
fined in his Klangtypen der neuen Musik in 1970.
The typically modernist »always-anew« approach to composition – in
Rojko’s case an approach with variables of uncertainty and a fear of being un-
able to fulfil the task of creating new work – is founded in what may be com-
pared to Lachenmann’s »phenomen of the syntactical«15 where the basic prin-
ciple is: »Alles muß jedesmal neu gepolt werden«: everything has always to be
re-polarized. This Heraclitan stance actually calls for certain idealistic musi-
cal poetic in which the idea of the sublime, central to Rojko’s work, seems to
be richly elaborated.
It seems rather at odds though that today only rare voices16 are raised re-
garding the sublime, as if its historical importance, usually confined the music
siano necessariamente populiste, popolari o comprensibili nei loro sviluppi. C’ è di nuovo la possibilità per l’ar-
te di potersi sviluppare ancora nella maniera del principio, quello che si dice ‘ basso principio artistico’.« Gian-
franco Terzoli, »Uros Rojko, un musicista creativo,« Fucine, april 2001, http://www.fucine.com/
network/fucinemute/core/index.php?url=redir.php?articleid.
14 Helmut Lachenmann. Musik als existentielle Erfahrung - Schriften 1966–1995, ed. Josef Häusler
(Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1996), 1.
15 Op. cit., 213.
16 Cf. Damian Thompson, »Are today's composers up to the challenge of writing sublime music?,«
The Spectator, 27. april 2013, http://www.spectator.co.uk/arts/music/8895001/transcendental-me-
ditation/ (18. 4. 2014).
304
