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Sacrum Profanum 2023

On a journey in the footsteps of 20th-century great composers

2016-07-21
The sky, studded with stars since Kant’s times, brings us to morality. Picasso? We think of Guernica. Bent over, we think of Rodin. Dun-dun-dun-dunnnn! – Beethoven, no mistake. It’s time for those, without whom today’s music would sound much different – or perhaps, judging by their accomplishments, we can even go so far as to say much worse – to take their place in universal awareness. They are a triumvirate: Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luciano Berio and Pierre Boulez. Great 20th century composers, each of whom has left their unique mark in the history of culture. The Sacrum Profanum festival in October will follow in their footsteps like a consummate tracker. It is worthwhile taking this exciting journey under its leadership.

The first path will lead us from mathematics to electronics. Two areas that are close, seemingly soulless (despite the former containing in itself, coincidentally, the element of the absolute), but in the mind of Pierre Boulez, educated in mathematics and music, they were connected by music, full of spirit and emotion. Boulez was not only a prominent creator of electronica and the founder of IRCAM, the famous Parisian institute for science about music and sound, but also the founder and long-time conductor of the Ensemble InterContemporain, founded in 1972. This ensemble, well-known to the audiences of the Festival, will come to Krakow with a piece composed by Boulez, who died in January, titled Sur Incises (On Interpolations). This 1998 composition is a meta-tale, composed of two layered chapters-planes. One layer is an intimate parable about the essence of music, its languages and means of expression – sounds, harmonies, contrasts, space, sound and silence, while the other uses a snippet of Boulez’ own musical language, its title referring directly to Incises (Interpolations), a short piece written four years earlier for the piano. Thus, the composer weaves a tale about himself, adding new motifs and multiplying those already used, and expanding the narrative. It is a great reason to explore at least part of Pierre Boulez’ impressive body of work and to remember him as well as we can. Especially since the story of Sur Incises will be told on the 3rd of October, in Theatre Hall of the ICE Krakow Congress Centre, by the prominent Ensemble Intercontemporain, conducted by Julien Leroy.

The second path leads where our imaginations lead us. And we know that Karlheinz Stockhausen’s horizons reached far – he himself said that his Helikopter-Streighquartett for four helicopters and a string quartet came to him in a dream. In the meantime, the 17-part collection of text compositions Für kommende Zeiten (For Times to Come), is a shifting of borders even further – to where not only the imaginings of the composer and the audience of the work reach, but also – or perhaps most of all – those of the musicians. The procedure that Stockhausen used is trivially simple – in his texts to the individual compositions (it is difficult to speak about ‘scores’ here, they are only performance notes, or sporadic sketches of the melody and rhythm), he allowed the interpreters to follow their intuition, to co-create a cycle in the course of preparation, discussions and finally joint rehearsals. The entire process is to take a week, as in the 1970s, a week completely dedicated to art. The lushness of this collective imagination will be presented on Saturday, the 8th of October, the last day of this year’s Sacrum Profanum, by Jérôme Noetinger along with the Ictus Ensemble in the Auditorium Hall of the ICE Krakow Congress Centre.

Finally, the third of the greats, Luciano Berio. His trail splits into three motifs, because that is how many of his compositions are in the festival programme. On Sunday, the 2nd of October, in ICE Krakow Theatre Hall, the famous formation musikFabrik will perform two of Berio’s chamber pieces from – Naturale (su melodie siciliane) [Naturale (On Sicilian Melodies)] from 1985 and Points on the Curve to Find from 1974. In the first, overlaid on a subtle percussion backbone, is the viola part, used in two ways: drawing on the traditional Sicilian heritage and creating a modern musical narrative, corresponding to modernity. The whole is supplemented by a voice singing fragments of folk songs that tear apart or complement the instrumental parts. It is ethnography filtered through the present, sentimental but tailored to the times. On the other hand, Points… is a multi-part piano piece encased in the footnotes of a chamber orchestra, like a poetic text accompanied by a commentary and analysis. Berio’s works will be contrasted with the compositions by the winner of the prestigious Toru Takemitsu Award, Marcin Stańczyk – some drops…, commissioned by Sacrum Profanum 2016, in which the concertante part will be played on a double-bell trumpet by Marco Blaauw, and Blind Walk, an example of the acousmatic trend that allows for experiencing music apart from the sound source, which the audience will listen to blindfolded, while the musicians circulate among the audience. Finally, at the conclusion of this year’s festival, in addition to Stockhausen’s cycle, we will hear Luciano Berio’s Laborintus II¸ with a libretto by Edoardo Sanguineti, in which the Belgian Ictus Ensemble will join forces with the Polish Radio Choir, while the leading vocal part will be performed by Mike Patton himself – a tireless experimented, a great singer, and an artistic ecumenist oscillating on the border between musical worlds. It is difficult to imagine a better interpreter for a work that is the synthesis of arts and genres, a conglomerate of philosophy, poetry, contemporary music, jazz, electronica and theatre. It is a timeless treatise on values, clothed in the patchwork garment of the era of the remix.

Can you imagine a better resume for the syncretic, genre-bending Sacrum Profanum?