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Sacrum Profanum 2023

Beauty of noise - the avant-garde stream

2016-08-04
What would art be, if it did not provoke and irritate? How do we show the spirit of a time of an excess of information and omnipresent noise? Does music need to have melody, rhythm and harmony? What is music, after all? Those are all important questions, that we have to ask ourselves before October. The concerts constituting the avant-garde stream of the Sacrum Profanum festival will provide a clear answer by breaking schemes, broadening horizons, revising notions and changing our aesthetic values, since they will show the beauty of noise.

On the 3rd of October, in the Theatre Hall of the ICE Kraków Congress Centre
the avant-garde will take on a female form – before Sur incises by Pierre Boulez, the Ensemble intercontemporain will perform compositions by two outstanding artists, for whom experimentation is the raison d’etre. First of them – Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje – is a composer and singer, and on the evening she will present herself in both roles. Her Concerto for Voice (moods IIIb) is a showcase of her vocal abilities, presented on the background of noisy music, performed by chamber ensemble. Unarticulated sounds, whistling, clicking and roaring noises perfectly fit into the ambient and sonorous landscape, painted by instruments. It is, however, a true vocal concert – Ratkje shapes her voice in a masterful manner, she finds the direction and creates an atlas of man-made sounds anew. She also alludes to the text – despite not saying it right away, she imitates a typewriter with her voice, creating “words” in front of the audience. Words that are different every time, as her part is mostly improvised, following the context and the mood of each performance, thanks to which each interpretation of the Concerto for Voice (moods IIIb) is different, as showed by the title of the piece.

Agata Zubel is the second composer. If someone knows her primarily as a vocalist, it is time to update your information – her piece titled Double Battery proves that she is able to create her own musical world, colourful and autonomous. The instrumental piece, commissioned by the Ensemble Intercontemporain, had its premiere in May during the Musica Electronica Nova festival, where it intrigued the critics with its aggressive musical language. The never-ending argument in the music may give it a disquieting sense of topicality, reflecting the dichotomous world of radicalised opposites fighting with each other. Said conflict is the main focal point of Double Battery – two instrumental surfaces, the ensemble and bass clarinets, negate each other, fight and try to be louder than the other. The noisy ensemble carries out an internal fight, the instruments explode with colours, end the phrases or scream like monkeys, fighting for the leadership in a group. Their variance, contrasted with the stable, dark sound of clarinets, shows the nonsensical nature of this competition, as if suggesting that cooperation may be more beneficial in the long run. However, it all sounds convincingly and as a whole piece – as a composer, Agata Zubel is bold, provocative and definitely worth listening to.

The following day, the 4th of October, will bring new aesthetic challenges, with the zeitkratzer formation performing on the stage of the Małopolska Garden of Arts – contemporary musicians, outstanding improvisers and non-compromising lovers of cacophony. The ensemble will perform four compositions, starting from the piece by one of the fathers of Polish avant-garde, Witold Szalonek (Improvisations sonoristiques from 1968, for clarinet, trombone, cello and piano), Xenakis Alive I (2004) by Reinhold Friedl, their artistic director and lover of non-classical music, who in the past collaborated with Lou Reed and Merzbow, Monochromy (2002) by Zbigniew Karkowski, the enfant terrible or rather enfant rejeté of Polish contemporary music, ending with Agitation & Stagnation, written specially for the Sacrum Profanum festival by Kasper T. Toeplitz, who, despite being born in Poland, remains mostly unknown to the wider audience. The performance of Karkowski’s work by an orchestra is a special treat for all lovers of his music – up until now, his fans could only listen to his works in electronic versions, partly due to the reluctance of Polish festivals and critics towards the most prominent representative of Polish noise, his radicalism and departure from the academic side of music. It is the time to look at Karkowski without biases, by listening to his music – difficult and as radical, as his aesthetic views, but genius, especially when it is performed by the zeitkratzer ensemble, characterised by this kind of aesthetic – non-compromising and unwilling to cater to general tastes, lovers of noise, improvisation and stage rituals.

The avant-garde stream at this year’s Sacrum Profanum will certainly be a test to some; however, the beauty of music always allows us to become better – more sensitive, enlightened, open, ready to live in a society – even the most radical music soothes the savage beast.

Maja S.K. Ratkje

The Małopolska Garden of Arts

The Małopolska Garden of Arts

Rajska 12, Kraków