Note for BBC program for the world premiere of
“C” by Jiří Kadeřábek
by J. David Jackson
Listening to the music of Jiří Kadeřábek, I am always reminded of cubist paintings by
Picasso. It’s as if the Women of Avignon were singing from each strange facet of their
bodies, connected by the tensile strengths of their internal structures, yet protruding in
odd contortions of angles overlaid and intersecting randomly.
Kadeřábek himself describes his music “as if the listener were inside a geometric shape
of many sides, a polyhedron, and had mirrors reflecting every small line and direction.”
His myriad shapes transport us to interiors rich in associations, correspondences and
reflections, as light and dark bounce off our own personal mirrors.
What then are we to make of Kadeřábek’s music? “My musical materials are nothing
special,” says the composer modestly. The secret is, as all creators know, what you do
with them. In Kadeřábek we find the most joyous and fertile imagination at work. A
lanky man with an affable nature and a voracious musical appetite, his music considers
every stimulus fair game. The son of jazz/pop musicians grew up with everything from
jazz, blues, gospel, and rock to classical/contemporary music and Moravian folk songs.
His improvisations and compositions blister with crazy admixtures of New York cool,
Czech irony and black humor, the Southern harmony of the US, international
sophistication of form, and visceral back-country sound. He counts among his influences
Leoš Janáček, Charles Ives, Tristan Murail, Heinrich Goebbels, Chick Corea, Herbie
Hancock and David Bowie, visual artists Marina Abramović, Richard Prince and David
Lynch, filmmaker Jan Švankmajer, and writer Haruki Murakami. To which I might add
Béla Bartók, Elton John, the Central European style of gypsy string playing, and the
music of the Louisiana Bayou.
Early work with jazz and rock groups led to a more serious compositional style for
smaller ensembles (Reflexe, sax and piano; Night Fishing Rod, mezzosoprano, flute,
cello, percussion and piano; Barefoot Boy!, string quartet; Joie sur Terre, clarinet, viola,
piano), string orchestra (Concertino, double bass and strings; Scherzo Slivovicio, violin
and strings), and film music. A watershed sojourn at the SACEM (Society of Writers,
Composers and Music Editors) in Paris in 2005, where Kadeřábek concentrated on
spectral analysis, led to the incorporation of technology, using electronic and computer
sampling of everything from old recordings to television commercials (Basic Prague,
chamber ensemble, electric guitar and sampler; La Riemersione di Venezia, viola, cello
and tape; Better Land, singer, piano, percussion and tape).
A further Erasmus scholarship in Holland (2008) provoked a philosophical crisis, which,
happily for us, has led to Kadeřábek’s current cross-genre compositions (Hamoody
Jauda, singer, string quartet, soundtrack; Saki’s Irony, pop singer, classical singer,
ensemble, tape; Don Hamburger, baritone, ensemble and tape; The Storm is Coming,
vocal quartet and computer) and multimedia works (The Tone of a Broken Harp, the
Sound of a Snapped String, singer, piano, strings with video projections; Aj, už je rano,
performers and ensemble with video; Fireflies, children’s theater piece, Lesser Theater,
Prague; Self Portrait: Iphegenie in front of the Altar, film).
Yet despite a blizzard of outward changes in style, what remains constant in Kadeřábek’s
oeuvre?
A seeming digression will answer succinctly. Think about Dali’s ground-breaking
Persistence of Memory, where time drips and stops, perspective is damaged and
foreshortened, and where more questions abound than in practically any other work of
Western art. Kadeřábek’s music has a similar aim: the nullification of progression and
logical association, the establishment of timelessness. Motives which seem familiar are
repeated on many levels and incarnations, but they never line up the same way. Modal
and extended harmonies elude our grasp and make their point subliminally. An eastern
(Moravian) sense of melancholy and intimacy (as opposed to brighter, more happy-golucky Bohemian charm) softens the expectation of jarring differences. Hints of
counterpoint, flashes of color and wonder lead us to a fluidity of perception, where all
contrast seems spontaneous and natural. We almost always start hearing the piece in
medias res, and the music moves craftily through unique architecture. At the ends of his
works, Kadeřábek the inveterate showman almost always reveals some mischievous coup
de théâtre, curiously shocking yet at the same time incontrovertibly one with the work.
His definitions remain, however, obscured; meaning is ambivalent. Boundaries always
melt and merge organically, deformed then synthesized before our minds comprehend
what our ears understand intuitively.
In tonight’s premiere of “C,” a line of writing for large orchestra makes a surprising and
playful diversion. In the earlier Duel (2005) , insistent and bitonal patterns alternate with
gentler, sweeter “Czech” string writing under a very hip brass solo (trumpet with Harmon
mute, the classic jazz sound). The luminous Oriolus, for solo violin and orchestra (2006)
evokes a world of sensuality, with its delicate filigree and passionate scoring, continued
in the evanescent In me la morte (recorded by the BBC Orchestra in 2010, Jiří
Belohlávek, conductor, Allish Tynan, soprano), where a kaleidoscope of celestial colors
and quicksilver time-travel weave around poetry by Michelangelo Buonarroti. Filii Dei
(2007, for mixed choir, orchestra and tape) menacingly incorporates a Beethoven funeral
march, lurid and sinister orchestral colors and rhythms, a trap set, and a panoply of
computer and choral work including nightmarish sounds, polytonal chords and spoken
and whispered texts.
All of which make tonight’s delightful premiere all the more special. In it we follow the
adventures of C, the primary, simple diatonic scale which every dutiful young pianist
learns first off. Blithely presenting itself in a clear progression of pitch, color and odd
little rhythms, C eventually decides it wants to trick us, and outlines its own harmonic
(overtone) series instead, flirting along the way with both F-sharp and B-flat. And, to top
it all off, near the end the piece C has a big belly laugh on the note D-flat, the funniest
instance of the use of the Neapolitan I have ever encountered!
Some sort of circular logic is always at work in the music of Jiří Kadeřábek. The inherent
conflict of the circle with linear development of music in time (for music cannot exist
otherwise) is the delicious starting point for his “flowing reality.” Tonight we have a
chance for some rollicking good fun combined with his brilliant orchestral shading, keen
intellect and droll humor. Classic Kadeřábek!
J. David Jackson is a Staff Conductor at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. He has
also conducted at various American and European opera houses and festivals, including
Glyndebourne.
New York, September 24, 2011