LUMINARIUM

Without a doubt, Luminarium offers one of the most original concepts of recent music. Mařatka rightly believes that the musical language of a given work is primarily determined by its material. In this case, it is traditional music from twenty-seven countries from all around the world but, once again, we are being taken on dream trip, since the composer found all his sources in recordings. Moreover, the succession of the pieces does not follow any physical or geographical reality, but only a musical logic. Mařatka quotes his material almost unmodified, and even insists he did not behave as a composer, since the material is not his. It is easy to answer that, on the contrary, the work of a composer is the implementation of a material, whatever its origin or the author, and that in this sense he undoubtedly is the composer of Luminarium. The orchestra consists of a wind quintet, percussion and a chamber ensemble of strings. The twenty-seven vignettes are grouped by three in nine movements, each of which presents a unity and contrasts with its neighbours. N° 4 (II / 1), based on an old troubadour song, would at first sight seem to be an exception, inviting us to a trip back in time (in the past) and not in space, but popular or traditional music is timeless by itself. Anyway, as it has not been written, we cannot judge if it sounded different in the past, which is a paradox: a music fixed by writing becomes a “work” belonging to its composer and introducing the notion of “Progress” in art which has become the very essence of Western (European) culture, while music transmitted by oral tradition only (despite the fact that some civilizations, like India, have a system of notation, even though it is only used for theoretical treatises) remains fundamentally unchanged. At least until the modern means of communication expose it to external influences threatening to destroy its originality. Listening to Luminarium, most Western educated and cultured listeners will necessarily feel that material derived from European sources is much less “altered” by the treatment to which Mařatka submits it, and therefore much more familiar. But the composer objects, not without reason, that a listener from Melanesia or Vietnam could have a very opposite reaction, the implementation of “Western” instruments obviously playing an important role in our perception of music. Here is now a brief overview of the nine groups of three pieces, which will reveal some cross relationships between pieces of different groups, if only for reasons of geographical proximity.

The first group begins with Bua’, the Indonesian rite of the rising sun, the richly ornamented vocal line being based on a scale of only three neighbouring heights (with some glissandi), with the orchestra remaining in the background letting us hear heterophonic unisons. Then comes Kushnai, a rapid improvisation on a reed instrument of Uzbekistan, sharp and piercing, very “oriental” in its melodic intervals. After these two adorned monodies, and still belonging to the Islamic world, comes an Albanian funeral song of Gheg origin, one of the many ethnic groups of this small country so rich in superimposed traditions, from the substratum dating back to archaic Greece (Pelasgians, Illyrians), to the more recent contributions of Islam due to the Turkish occupation. It is a choral lamentation, halfway song and halfway shout or cry, resulting in opaque, cluster-like sounds. The clarinet’s brief interpolations have exceptionally been added freely by the composer.

The second group opens on Sitot me soit, a troubadour song of the twelfth century, the complaint of a woman betrayed in her love, a modal monody in minor mode based on a very medieval bourdon in the fourth, with chromatic ornaments and even some microtones reminding us that the Arab influence was important among the Troubadours. Madrosh is the liturgical chant of a Syrian women’s convent, a purely modal unison revealing traces of Byzantine influences (here, it is the Christian West that influences the Islamic East!). And this group ends with the most abrupt contrast that can be imagined, borrowed from the Japanese Noh theatre, transcription of violent half-spoken vociferations, very dissonant and obviously intemperate, punctuated by the piercing cries of the little Shakuhachi flute and by brutal percussions.

The three pieces of the third group form a brilliant and very rhythmic Scherzo, beginning with Beranca, a lively Macedonian dance based on the Lydian scale (with augmented fourth), also typical of Romanian music (there exists in Macedonia a Romanian community, the Aromanians). The original already used clarinet and violin. The Rain Dreaming ceremony (Ngapa), very typical of the Australian Aborigines, is a strange invocation through very fast, almost spoken, deep murmurs that Mařatka has written in a very evocative environment of “natural” polyphony, with vegetal sounds in the violins, scansions spoken by the violoncellos and obsessive strikes of the bass drum. This part ends with one of the brightest and most colourful pieces of the work, Nira, a quick Moroccan improvisation, superimposing different layers of sound again.

The fourth group begins with the total contrast of the purely pentaphonic invocation of the Vietnamese theatre sorcerer Hat Tcheo, accompanied by the equivalent of local string instruments, with bow (Dan Nhi) or with plucked strings (Tranh, Ty Ba). From the Solomon Islands comes the Maome funeral cycle, reminiscent of Australia’s very quick parlando murmurs, but using a three-sound scale as in Indonesia. The Chinos are Chilean standard bearers, whose procession in the mountains is punctuated by a succession of cries whose cacophony is reminiscent of clusters, as it completely ignores any system of heights. Here, the composer has added a clarinet part of his own.

The fifth group constitutes the mystical and immobile heart of the work, the first of its two “slow movements” (before the eighth group). Rdo-rje’jigs-byed dbang is a Buddhist psalmody from Tibet, a grandiose ritual underlined by deep resonances of the horns. The music of high mountains is always slow, majestic and powerful, made of calls from one summit to the other (even in Switzerland, with the Alphorns!) and here, the music cannot fail to evoke the great orchestral pages of Giacinto Scelsi, for whom Tibet was an essential source of inspiration. The whole piece is based on multiples of the sacred number three (the small bells of the temple give successively nine, eighteen and twenty-seven strikes). Here, the clarinet is melted in the tutti, whose sound power is amazing, given the modest orchestral instrumentation. Another space, that of an infinite plain, is evoked by the Dudka of Belarus, a poignant modal melody on the fringes of silence, the secret heart of the score. The clarinet remains silent during the brief medieval chorale from Bohemia (Pane), played very slowly and pianissimo by col legno strings, giving an effect of distance.

In contrast, the sixth group has the character of a cadenza for the soloist. Mané igini kamu (Papua New Guinea) is the very fast but tender song whispered by a mother washing her child, the composer varying the three sounds scale with octave steps. Nipaquhiit, also unaccompanied, is an example of the extraordinary vocal games of the Canadian Inuit, these jousts where two male (or female) singers face each other closely, trying to thorw the other off by all means, including laughter. We then return to the Muslim Middle East, with Avaz, where an Iranian woman sings in a voluble way and at times plays a small flute. Here, Mařatka brings the orchestra discreetly back.

The seventh group is a second Scherzo linking three dances from Eastern Europe, and here both the music and its re-composition suddenly become very familiar, whether in Skutchna, a lively and truculent Klezmer Jewish music piece, in the audibly consanguine swirling Czardas of Moldova, or in the Greek Souste, more distinctly oriental and melodically ornamented. Here too, the original material already used the clarinet.

The eighth group is a second point of rest between the previous Scherzo and the brilliant Finale. It begins with perhaps the most beautiful piece of all, Pasi but but, a Taiwanese prayer song for a bountiful harvest of millet, magnificent superimposition of dense microtonal layers (the original is sung by men’s voices), and after Tibet made us think of Scelsi, here it is the greatest Ligeti whom Mařatka recalls, without ever losing his own recognizable personality. Ghau Kilori is no less surprising: a Melanesian ritual of immersing a corpse to the sounds of a bamboo wind organ gently made to sing by the wind. Mařatka’s instrumentation reaches here summits of delicate refinement. A Lithuanian harvest song, Leiskis, leiskis, saulela, with its brief modal chant, reminds us of the geographical proximity of Belarus (the heart of the fifth group). Everything is ready for the final celebration.

This ninth group begins with the harsh, sharp tones of Duduk, the reed instrument of Turkmenistan, in a rapid and rhythmic improvisation on an Eastern scale reminiscent of those of neighbouring Uzbekistan and Iran, but differing from them by an “impure” second degree, neither major nor minor. Sampatye is the ritual song of young Senegalese girls initiated to the cruel test of excision. It is a colourful and very rich piece, not far from the one that evoked Morocco, relatively adjacent on the map. The clarinet and a solo violin solo play in heterophony, supported by a sumptuous percussion. And our “armchair” world tour ends in New Caledonia with Xwââxâ, a ritual discourse that here becomes a glittering display of virtuosity, serving as a useful reminder that this is above all a true Concerto, which should attract many performers.