MARGARITA KATUNYAN

VLADIMIR MARTYNOV’S  “NEW SACRAL SPACE”

 

The contemporary cultural consciousness is characterised by a dialogue between the Modern and Post-modern times, and it is on the borderline between the two epochs: one of them is summing up its achievements, while the other is taking the place of the former. On the one hand, the previous period has not come to its ultimate end; on the other, the new one, due to the influx of new ideas, has not yet formed its own uniform identity. In principle, this is a difficult problem today. Such situations have always produced the effect of an opened lock. “Nouvelle musique”, “New Age Music”, “Minimal Music”, “New Simplicity”, “New Traditionalism”, “New Canon”, “New Sincerety” etc. – all these trends overcame the concept of avant-garde – each in its own way – and embodied the general tendency to abandon the rational tradition of the Modern Time for the sake of new synthesis.

 

In Russia, the post-modern culture evolved (for apparent reasons) in the underground as a marginal phenomenon. In reality, it began in 1968 when Alexei Lubimov performed for the first time Terry Reily’s “In C” in Moscow. Gradually, it came up to surface taking a conspicuous place in the concert programmes of contemporary music festivals (Tallinn, Novosibirsk, Riga – in ‘70s and ‘80s), and was finally legalised giving its name to the annual Moscow festival “Alternative” first organised by A. Liubimov in 1988.

 

This subterranean culture moved in two streams: first was that of minimalism leading to psychedelic rock and the second, the one leaning on Oriental aesthetics and the “new simplicity” proper. As a conscious alternative, they were opposed at once to two things: ideologically, to the Soviet official policy, and as a cultural phenomenon, at least, to avant-garde, generally speaking, to any kind of academism, i.e. to the professional written tradition. A radical turn away from the structurally elaborated avant-garde with its individualism in the style of composition and aesthetic maximalism occurred almost simultaneously but independently in the works of many composers around 1974-76. Among them were Eduard Artemyev (“7 Gates to Satori’s World”, 1974), Valentin Silvestrov (“Quiet Songs, 1974; “Kitsch Music”, 1976), Vladimir Martynov (“Album Leaf”, 1976; “Christmas Music”, 1976), Arvo Pärt (“Trivium”, 1976), Georg Pelecis (“New Year Music”, 1976).

 

This turn found individual forms, meanings, and nuances. Thus, Silvestrov’s meditative “quiet music” speaks the language of the historical idiom (romanticism, classicism) – as a metaphor of a “postlude state of culture”. Artemyev’s symbiotic style was formed on the borderline between academic electronic avant-garde and Zen-rock aesthetics. Martynov’s “new simplicity” was born under the sign of minimalism — stylistically universal and allowing for operations with semantic and linguistic categories as realities of today, equally important for our time. Pelecis’ almost authentic romanticism is subtly illuminated by the idiom of lyrical rock. The glorious piano-romantic allusions of Alexander Rabinovich are permeated with mystical symbolism of numbers. Arvo Pärt’s gothic minimalism, tintinnabuli, dissolves the illusory borderline between music and ascetic discipline. Despite these differences, all of them share the features of post-avant-garde. They are: denial of pure genres for the sake of a new synthesis and what can be defined as “new syncretism”; denial of the psychological dimension or its re-interpretation; denial of the author’s individual intonation for the sake of bricolage, i.e. employment of ready-made styles, metaphorism, allegory, contextuality, double cipher, post-structuralism, etc. In some respects, Alexander Kneifel, who has smoothly glided to simplicity, asceticism, and rituality, has much in common with this group too.

 

In the context of this new tendency in culture on the verge of the 3rd millennium, Vladimir Martynov’s work is a convincing and constructive answer to the questions raised by modernism. It implies all the essential features of contemporary culture, its tendency towards synthesis, which brings together oppositions of varied nature: East and West, the contemporary and the archaic, the elite and the “low culture”, the rational and the intuitive, the secular and the religious, the professional tradition and the folklore, the author and the anonymous, the musical and the extra-musical, the immanent and the syncretism. Such diversity reflects the complex paths the composer follows: at first he represented avant-garde, and at the background of the soviet recognised masters of the trend he was seen as the leader of new generation. He became the leader, however, only as an ideologist of the underground based Moscow Electronic Studio, which cultivated post-avant-garde ideas, the new music of all dimensions. On the basis of minimalism Martynov built his own method and style. He organised the first Soviet happenings, collected folklore, published music by Dunstable, Dufay, Machaut, Isaac, A. Gabrieli, played the recorder in the Early Music ensemble, created his own rock-group “Forpost” [outpost] (composer, keyboard). He indulged in Eastern religions and theology. This was followed by the departure from music. The period of silence (1978-1984) was devoted to religion and research of vocal manuscripts in monasteries, creation of an ensemble for performance of the Russian early chants (the ensemble has survived). The composer believes that the study of the Russian early religious singing and experience in restoring it completely changes one’s consciousness. The one, who has really had to deal with that, finds key to understanding of all musical culture as a whole. That provides an outlet to Gregorian and Byzantine singing, to archaic folklore, to everything”. His return to writing the music was enriched by intense inner work.

 

Martynov’s words “I have ceased to be a composer” should be interpreted from the point of view of the difference between music and religious singing, composer and chanter, artist and iconographer, i.e. between author and non-author; anonymous canonic work, on the one hand, and an escape from activities limited by exclusively one’s own field on the other. “We find the truth on the crossroads of different activities. These may be philosophy and poetry, music and magic, i.e. syncretism. One has to be syncretic. One does not need to be a philosopher, nor a poet or musician, but all those at once” (Martynov). His work evades academic definitions of genre, due to the conceptualism, syncretism, the borderline idiom sharing features of music and ritual, experiments with interrelation of music and the ritual medium. He aspires to invade the planes of non-academic cultures of oral tradition, to create a synthesis of folklore and minimalism, religious singing and folklore, religious singing and minimalism, cultural “exploration of sound” and religious action. From his experience in minimalism, to which he had rendered much tribute, he gained ability to construct monumental forms from three components: the word, melodic formulae, and continuous time.

 

Martynov’s idea of a “new sacral space” is not merely a new program but an interpretation of the exiting tendency that appeared at the turn of the millennium. It has something in common with the concept of a unified Christian space, proclaimed at the end of the first millennium, in the epoch of Carolingians, when the 1000-year-long experience of Christian religious life in East and West was summarized, and the sacral canon was created as unified form of religious and, consequently, artistic life – that very source, which has fed the European civilisation.

 

The composer says: “A new sacral space is an attempt to confront the decay of the modern world by creating a new cultural synthesis. This can be done on the crossroads of different cultures and traditions, which together produce many new cultural contexts that merge into one multi-dimensional text. A new sacral space does not claim to create new forms that would compete with the religious ones. Its purpose is to make wider the sacral space that exists in the liturgy, to go beyond it by sanctifying the unsanctified or de-sanctified fields of time and space, i.e. the ones devoid of their church life. In the Middle Ages all space was sacral, the same was in pagan times. All art of modernism is devoted to the problem of losing God. The turning point is what Nietzsche said: “God is dead”. This is connected with the desacralisation of culture, of all our space, time, life, socium. Now the pendulum is moving back – the sacral space is being restored. A new sacral space is not an attempt to create a new religion or new forms of worship. It means to collect the stones of the destroyed Jerusalem. We are trying to collect what has been destroyed.”

 

“A new simplicity” and the idea of a “new canon” is interpreted by Martynov as a sign of modern culture that has risen to its sources – the canonical creative idiom, which is a commentary, not the author’s creation. The cantus, both secular or religious, is for him culture as a whole, and the composer – not an author – employs it like early chanter employed his psalm tones or the medieval counterpoint writer tunes from the Antiphonary. At the same time, the “new sacral space’ in the context of the “new simplicity” has something in common with other historical ideas, e.g. the 14th-15th-century religious movement “Devotio moderna”, a “new godliness” that confronted the speculative scholasticism with popular religious feeling, warmth, contemplation, and simplicity. This move to the sources of culture – this search for a syncretic uniform consciousness, a new discovery of the old Christian culture, the Middle Ages, the archaic folklore, the traditional art of the East – are connected with the creation of the new sacral space. The composer confronts the nostalgic postlude approach to the culture of the 3rd millennium and the inter-textual games of the ironic consciousness with the idea of the “new sacral space” as a kind of Devotio moderna of our time.

 

For Martynov the “new sacral space” is not a work of an individual composer but a fully developed cultural trend represented by Pärt, Kneifel, Silvestrov, Rabinovich, Kancheli, and himself – composers who have turned to religious music in one way or another.

 

The path to the “new sacral space” is work on the crossroads of music and ritual, restoration of the structures of the canonical books – The Old and The New Testament – in musical or musical-ritual forms. It is not by accident that the cathedrals and various clerical institutions in the West commissioned many pieces of this kind. The Cathedral of Cologne for the 750th anniversary of its foundation commissioned Pärt’s Penitential Canon, and the world premier took place there not long ago; the Washington cathedral commissioned Kneifel’s Eighth Chapter (the premier took place in 1995). Martynov’s Apocalypsis was commissioned by the Cathedral of Mainz and was performed in the cathedrals of Mainz, Cologne, Strasbourg, and Paris (1992). The opera “Exercises and Dances of Guido” was commissioned by the Lockum Evangelic Academy (Lower Saxony) for the performance at the Lockum cathedral during the “Sacro-Art ‘97” Festival.

 

The idea of the “new sacral space” as a “combination of archaic melodic formulae and structures with today’s methods of postmodernism” has been realized by Martynov in such pieces as Apocalypsis, Jeremiah’s Lament, opera Exercises and Dances of Guido, Magnificat quinti toni, Canticum fratris Solis, Stabat mater, Requiem; ritual pieces tightly connected with the theme of the sacral are Night in Galicia, Christmas Music, Come in! and others. Essentially, they are characterised by the following:

 

1. Text as sacral structure. A way to overcome the musical concepts of the modernity, which interprets religious texts in the emotional-psychological key, and to treat the text canonically, i.e. to sing from the book means to recreate its sacral semantics through its structure. Symbolism of numbers is regarded as a structure.

 

2. Cantus as idiom. According to the composer, this is an idiom “supported by the experience of the creators of religious chants: Gregorian, early Russian, Byzantine, Bulgarian, Serbian, Georgian, Syrian, Copt – tradition employing canonised formulae and archetypes. Besides these, some traditions of early polyphonic elaboration of monody, archaic folklore, elements of early baroque are also built on formulae, as well as the Renaissance polyphony, Venetian poly-choral music, Protestant chorale, Christian rock, Elements of Modern Time idiom.

 

3. Canon is the principle of commenting on the historical-stylistic complex as cantus, the device of reading “with parallel places”, textual collage as a form of commentary.

 

“The synthesis of these canonical traditions with modern and post-modern methods creates a new sacral space in culture [...] this space is born on the cross-roads of different cultures and traditions, whose combination creates a multitude of new cultural contexts united into a uniform text with many dimensions. The new sacral space is a dialogue between the canonical traditions and contexts seen from the viewpoint of the present day and realised by contemporary methods” (V. Martynov).

 

Canticum fratris Solis. Octo tonorum (Hymn to the Brother Sun or Praise of Creations, 1996[1]) has been written to the poetic text of Francis of Assisi[2]. It is an attempt to return to liturgy with its melodic forms. Praise of God’s eight creations named in St. Francis’s prayer are chanted to eight tones of Gregorian monody. The stylistic complex is crowned by Venetian arabesques in the style of St. Marco’s school and, as antiphons, by singing and ritual dancing, in its melodic structures bearing the genes of the Mediterranean ethnoses.

 

1. Material is the chanting of psalmody based on eight psalm tones; post-Renaissance concertante style; orientation towards archaic Mediterranean folklore.

 

2. Individual project and the problem of authorship. The opposition “author versus the anonymous” is a key issue of the post-modern art. The idea of individual protest is a tradition of the Modern-Time analytical mentality and is re-interpreted in the post-modern context. The individual features here are the concept of the piece, the structure, the means of interrelations between the elements of the text, but not the material itself. The material as a historical-stylistic complex neutralises the effect of the immediate presence of the author, of the “I”–narration. In this sense, the author is anonymous like the anonymous chanter of the Middle-Age cantus. The composer treats the Modern-Time material allegorically and in different contexts.

 

The style of composition based on cantus firmus is presented in Martynov’s Apocalypsis. It declares most directly connection with the early tradition of cantus as a canonical type of creation: the anonymous borrowed cantus and the commentary on it in the form of contrapuntal constructions. However, the cantus mentality is not limited by the use of tunes from the Octoechos or Antiphonary. The connection with the sacral canon is preserved on a deeper level, even when the cantus turns out to be the Guidonian hexachord ut-re-mi-fa-sol-la, in Martynov’s opera Exercises and Dances of Guido. It is preserved not merely because the melodic arabesque is taken from the Hymn to St. John (through a result of its deconstruction), but also because the presence of any cantus in the modal system of the church tones itself realises the connection with the sacral canon; in addition, because above the church tones themselves, the modal tonal rows are rooted in formulae, i.e. cantus in the widest sense of the word. Thus, the tone-row modal mentality is the cantus mentality. For the same reason the so-called free composition is free merely in the sense that it does not process a concrete melodic primary source, but exists in an extra-individual melodic milieu of a certain tone row or cantus with its typical melodic models or formulae. As for the Hymn to Brother Sun, a composition based on psalm formulae, it is addressed to the earliest archaic tradition of singing based on absolutely concrete melodic structures, not even the tunes yet, which characterise every psalm tone and express certain states of prayer.

 

3. New structuralism. The analytical mentality of the Modern times, which formed the concept of opus perfectum et absolutum and employed exclusively the musical means, yields its place in the post-modernism to a synthesising mentality searching for contacts of the musical with extra-musical. The synthesis above all concerns the creation of a form as denial of purely musical structuring methods on conceptual level. The individual nature of the project is connected with a choice of the leading structural parameters, as a rule, of an extra-musical nature. In Martynov’s music these are:

· The catalogue principle. The entity may be based on a numeric row, alphabet, group of phonemes, an acrostic, Guidonian hexachord, system of eight modes, subject index, etc. In the prayer of St. Francis this is the enumeration of the eight creations: the Sun, the Moon, wind, water, fire, earth, the lovers of God, the corporal death. Hence, in Martynov’s Canticum there is a row of eight categories, 8 strophes, 8 psalm tones, a numerical row from 1 to 8 shaped as a row of 8 melodic diapasons from the first tone to the octave. The structural idea of numerical progression unifying the cosmic and the tonal order appears to be an allusion to the tradition of the Pythagorean school, to Boethius, to the times when music was considered to be in the system with arithmetic, astronomy, and geometry.

 

 

Divisioni del testo

Tonus

Suoni sui quali e basata la melodia

Lode initiale

         -------------

sol

1. Sole

primi toni

fa sol

2. Luna

secundi toni

fa sol la

3. Vento

tertii toni

fa sol la si

4. A?qua

quarti toni

fa sol la si do

5. Fuoco

quinti toni

fa sol la si do re

6. Terra

sexsti toni

fa sol la si do re mi

7. Coloro che amano Dio

septimi toni

fa sol la si do re mi fa

8. Morte corporale

octavi toni

fa sol la si do re mi fa sol

Lode finale

           -------------

fa sol la si do re mi fa sol

 

 

·   Number as structure and as a sacral symbol. The sacral number 8 is a symbol of eternity: “The idea of the eightfold structure can be found in the beginning of the universe. “He blessed the seventh day and set it apart as a special day, because by that day he had completed his creation” (Genesis 2.3). Thus, the eighth day from the beginning of the universe became the first day of the first seven-day week on Earth and the image of the future endless age, a symbol of eternal life with a special, cosmic, super-world meaning for the history of religion.”[3] The number 8 determines the eightfold structure of the whole in the Byzantine Octoechos and Russian osmoglasie. The use of the psalm formulae in the Gregorian service was traditionally preserved in the Magnificats. Since on different days the Magnificats were sung in different tones, for the church service they were written as cycles (according to the canon) to all eight tones. This principle of employing all the tones is the principle of completeness of the modal system. This is where the cycles of Magnificats by Senfl or Palestrina differ from the tonal cycles of Bach’s Wolltemperiertes Klavier, which embraces the entire musical system of the tonal kind, i.e. the acoustic physical system of music – instrumental music – of clavier. They were based on a purely constructive idea. Besides the Magnificats employ the principle of completeness of the tone-system and the modal ethos. Magnificats were not designed as a cycle. Palestrina called them “a book”; they were never performed all together but according to the tone appropriate for the particular service. In the Hymn to the Brother Sun, Martynov reproduces this initial cyclic principle of completeness by employing the text of the St. Francis prayer – completeness of the creations.

·   The principle of ritual. The sequence of actions determined by the situation and repetition of this sequence a certain number of times embodies the idea of ritual. In the Canticum this sequence is as follows: psalmody, antiphon (as dance with singing and instrumental music), and “Alliluia” – all these are repeated 8 times as 8 widening circles. This situation really provokes a ritual-like behaviour and sacral perception. The persistent realisation of the structure and its rising intensity are seen also as a rise of the prayerful intensity towards the final lauda, where the sacral ecstasy expresses St. Francis’ elation in the face of the universe.

 

4. New syncretism is a contraposition of musical and extra-musical as a work on the borderline between music and a ritual medium. The postmodernism neutralizes the opposition of the musical and the extra-musical. The sacral structure always has a character of a ritual. It changes the structure of the perceived time by translating the psychological ‘now’ into the metaphysical ‘now=always’ and by allowing the musical to be included into the extra-musical temporal context. This gives a reason for the performers’ attempts to adapt the Canticum to a space where it sounds at the moment. Thus, the ancient rotunda of St. Angelo in Perugia enabled the singer to move in its space in circles, while the medieval basilica Klosterkirche in Lockum, to walk into it through the western door during the initial lauda, to move eastwards through the central nave towards the altar and go back during the final lauda, filling the cathedral’s vaults with ecstatic singing.

 

5. The problem of authenticity. In the situation of inter-text the performer’s authenticity becomes especially important, and even more so with stylistic heterogeneity, when the composer appeals to different cultural paradigms. The Umbrian dialect of St. Francis’ Hymn, as a mixture of medieval Latin and the 13th-century vulgar (Italian) tongue, found its parallels in the dialogue between psalmody and folklore antiphons-dances. The alternation of stylistic models is accompanied by the alternation of the authentic performing styles. In Mark Tucker’s interpretation (the Canticum was written for him) the post-Renaissance alliluias embody a semantic allusion to Monteverdi’s Vesperae. In its sound the Early Music Academy is oriented towards archaic instrumental music, and the style of psalmody corresponds to the reality (both with the composer and with the performer), i.e. to the early and the current practice of Catholic service. Authentic performance, like authentic composition, is an idea of the post-modern culture, a condition for creating a multi-dimensional text, which would fill the space between the simple and the complex.

 

 

“Music of the twentieth century within  the horizons of musicology”. Selected papers of the 29th and 32nd conferences of Baltic musicologists. Vilnius, 2001. P. 173–184.

 

 

 



[1] “Canticum fratris Solis. Octo tonorum” for tenor and string ensemble to the text of St.Francis of Assisi. 30’. The world premier in Perugia, St. Angelo cathedral, on 22 September 1996, during the “Sagra Musicale Umbra” festival. Performers: Mark Tucker, tenor, and the Early Music Academy. – CD.

[2] St. Francis’ text was written in the Umbria dialect and is the first poem in Italian.

[3] Nikolayev B., archpriest. Znamenny raspev kak osnova russkogo pravoslavnogo tserkovnogo penia (Znamenny chant as the basis for Russian Orthodox Church singing). Moscow, 1995, p.68.

World premiere of complete work
February 18, 2009
London Royal Festival Hall, United Kingdom
Vladimir MARTYNOV,
Opera VITA NUOVA More Info

The Monk Thogmey's Thirty-Seven Precepts - new disk of Anton Batagov is released More Info

The 1st International Festival of Joint Projects "Amplitude"
25th, 28th of September
More Info

LONG ARMS FEST- 4 (2007) September 27-30, October 6-27 -- FOURTH presentation of the MAIN INTERNATIONAL VANGUARD FORUM OF TWO CAPITALS -- LONG ARMS in Moscow and APOSITION FORUM in St. Petersburg.
More Info


10 April, 2007, concert In memory of Nick DMITRIEV

Dom Cultural Center
more info

13, 14 of November, 2006 Moscow Composers Orchestra on London Jazz Festival
More Info

LONG ARMS FESTIVAL - 3
September 27 - October 4, Moscow, 2006
DOM Cultural Centre
More Info

8, 9, 10 of July 2006 the play "Mozart and Salieri. Requiem" by Vladimir Martynov music.
14, 16, 17 of July the play "Song XXIII. Interment of Patrokl. Games" by Vladimir Martynov music
More Info

10th of April, 2006
Nick, we remember you...

A film about Nick Dmitriev is now available for download. The film was shown in 2004 on Russian Channel TV Culture
DivX (300 mb) download now

23d of November - 2nd of December, 2005
5 performances of "Unorthodox Chants" Project in UK and Belgium
More Info

17th-19th of November, 2005 Festival in Tokyo in memory of Nick Dmitriev
More Info

1st-10th of October 2005, Long Arms Festival - 2
in memory of Nick Dmitriev
see website

1st of July, 2004, 19:00

OPUS POSTH Ensemble
performs THE SEVEN LAST WORDS OF OUR SAVIOUR ON THE CROSS by Joseph Haydn

Kozitsky lane., house 5

metro Puschkinskaya, Tverskaya, Chekhovskaya
information - 299-2262


LONG ARMS
new music festival

in memory of Nick Dmitriev



from May 15 till 19
IN CONCERT STUDIO
M.Nikitskaya str., 24

organized by DEVOTIO MODERNA CENTER and RADIO CULTURE GTRK
composers Martynov, Batagov, Karmanov, Aigi, Zagny, Pelecis, Rabinovich, Semzo, Glass, Dresher and others performers Tatiana Grindenko, Galina Muradova, OPUS POSTH ensemble, Anton Batagov, Sergei Zagny, Alexey Aigi, 4.33 ensemble, Tibor Semzo, GORDIAN KNOT ensemble, ALKONOST choir and others

book tickets


Intro  Personalities  Institution  Projects  CDs Production  Press  Contacts  Subscription  Links
(C) 2004 Äåâîöèî Ìîäåðíà, admin@devotiomoderna.ru

Ðåéòèíã@Mail.ru
DEVOTIO MODERNA Center
works with a support of Ford Foundation