 |
|
| pic.1 |
|
Pumping up at Home - In the 1960s, information about developments in graphic art in the rest of the world finally reach Czechoslovakia; an important role in this respect was played by the theoretician and conceptual artist Jiří Valoch (1946), based in Brno, who closely monitored developments abroad and, through his interest, motivated Czech and Slovak artists. In 1969 he organized the first exhibition of musical scores in the Houses of Art in Brno and Prague; this is where he begins work on his monograph Partitúry (Musical Scores) that was finally published in 1980 as part of the underground edition JazzPetit. The most important figure on the Czech scene was Milan Grygar (1926) who after 1964 focused on recording linear variance in space, acoustic drawings, ground–plan scores, pattern scores, and burned scores. Of particular interest are Blahoslav Rozbořil’s scores that have the appearance of lino-cut phonograph records, used by the author, in conjunction with his physio-phonograph, as the source of sounds in his “noise” presentations. Quite another approach was chosen by Zdeněk Plachý who, in composing contemporary music, crafted his classically playable musical scores emphasizing their visual aspect (they might be shaped like a star). From among Czech artists mention should be made of postscriptive recordings of acoustic processes in an environment, such as recordings of the singing of birds in Oľga Karlíková’s (1923) work, of the flight of insects and the movement of river waves by Milan Maur (1950), a pedestrian’s movement by Karel Adamus (1943), and that of sea waves by Martin Zet (1959). Scores that stress graphic aspects are represented by Aleš Lamr’s (1943) work; see also conceptual scores by Jiří Steklík (1938) and Jiří Valoch (1946), and scores designed for acoustic interpretation by Jiří Pokorný (1952) and Marian Palla (1952). Milan Dobeš (1929) uses an idiosyncratic signs score for a light–producing kinetic instrument during musical performances that were part of his concert tour American Wind Symphony Orchestra in 1971 in the United States. In this respect it should be stressed that in the 1970s and 1980s, artists were creating “scores” of environments, keeping track of surroundings and the processes that took place in them, and later also “scores” of installations. The 1960s were progressive in Slovakia also in the context of New Music: the first graphic scores thus appeared in the first two seasons of the international symposium for New Music, in Smolenice in 1968 and 1969. The composer Ladislav Kupkovič created the graphic score Osemhran samoty, nudy a strachu (1962) [The Octagon of Loneliness, Boredom, and Fear] with the stave in the shape of a circle. During the 2nd International Seminar for New Music in Smolenice in 1969, Milan Adamčiak and Róbert Cyprich in their turn performed compositions by the Fluxus artists (Ben Patterson: Paper Piece).
 |
|
| pic.2 |
|
In connection with the opening and development of the Electroacoustic Studio of the Slovak Radio, composers (Ladislav Kupkovič, P. Kolman, I. Hrušovský, Milan Adamčiak, I. Patachich, Hanuš Domanský, R. Rechberger; later Víťazoslav Kubička, Juraj Ďuriš, Peter Machajdík, and Marek Piaček) introduce their compositions for electronics also in the form of visual scores as one of the most accessible forms of musical notations. In an exhibition in the House of Art in Brno (1969), Jiří Valoch introduced the work of, among others, Milan Adamčiak (1946) who along with Róbert Cyprich (1951–1997) ranks as one of the pioneers of visual scores in Slovakia.
Milan Adamčiak began creating graphical music and graphical scores in 1965, in parallel with private performances and visual experimental poetry. Cooperating with a younger fellow artist, Róbert Cyprich, he realized several artistic multimedia projects that showcased the interconnections between various genres of art (“intermedia”). In 1969 in Ružomberok, they organized the 1st Evening of New Music (Scores and Projects), which as part of the Ensamble Comp. (Milan Adamčiak, Jozef Revallo, Róbert Cyprich) saw the performance of Adamčiak’s Trojrozmerná partitúra [A Three-Dimensional Score]. In 1970 a stand-alone exhibition (Visual Music) at the V-klub in Bratislava presented Adamčiak’s unconventional scores. From 1970s to 1990s, Adamčiak continued working on his visual scores while never giving up the possibility of their later realization in sound. His focus is on musical characteristics (structures, rhythm, and planes) and their mutual relations. The issues that interest him are the questions of surroundings (Vodná hudba [Water Music], a text score – instruction, 1970); instructions for concert performances (Tentatori – Pokušitelia [Tempters], a score for a music theater, 1969) in which he redefines the ways in which classical music is to be performed; but also overlaps between the media, and a synthesis of music with theatrical action (Hommage ? A. Rimbaud – Balet pre päť tanečných a päť speváckych dvojíc [A Ballet For Five Dancing and Five Singing Couples], 1969). Adamčiak’s scores appear in the form of drawings, graphs, collages, objects, assemblages, or cumulations. He presented them in several stand-alone exhibitions, among them Scores and Projects (Bratislava, 1979 and 1985, with A. Szabo), Scores and Musical Concepts (1991, Galéria ARTdeco, Nové Zámky), Notations (Gerulata, Bratislava, 1992), Scores and Acoustic Objects (Berlin, 1992), Scores (Galéria Medium, Ružomberok, 1995), and Scores (Slovak National Gallery, in Dunajská Streda, 2000); the most recent exhibitions of Adamčiak’s work were those in the Nitra Gallery (2000), the CC Centrum in Bratislava (2001), and the Považská Gallery in Žilina (2001). His scores were featured in other exhibitions as well, such as Music and Graphic Art (Slovak National Gallery, 1991) and The Sixties (1995). Adamčiak organized several events that presented his scores (Northern England In Northern Slovakia; Poprad, 1993); here he would give his scores away to the audience, or tear them apart. The most extensive presentation of music according to Adamčiak’s graphic scores was realized on three pianos in the multi-media performance of Left Hand of the Universe, as part of the Piano Hotel project (1997).
The first contacts with visual scores in the work of the graphic artist Dezider Tóth (1947) may be observed in 1971 (Ochrana prírody [Protection of the Environment]); later (1976–78) he fully developed the theme in creating a pad of 70 drawings on note paper called Partitúry [Scores] and exhibiting them (1978) in the Galerie mladých in Brno (curator Jiří Valoch). In 1982, he finishes 9 more drawings titled Partitúry po zásahu [Impacted Scores] and exhibits them a year later in Český Těšín. He has not devoted himself to scores since then. Tóth’s scores originated under the influence of Jiří Valoch’s presence, mirroring events on the Czech musical scene at the time rather than the problem of scores itself. His visual paraphrases of scores are based on graphical paradoxes, verbal and visual plays, elusive humour, and the charm of banality. They are lyrical, sometimes anecdotic, and were not meant to be performed in music.
After contacts with Dezider Tóth, the glass-blower Štěpán Pala (1944) begins creating visual scores in 1978–9. These are mostly ink-drawings in which he reacts to his own structure of the stave; it is being visually modified and transformed through dynamic changes of structures, rhythmical planes, mirroring, and the overlapping of “presumed, musical” surfaces. This period already suggests the encounter of scores with the second focus of Pala’s work - the open geometry of growth, the multiplication of an isosceles tetrahedron, that Pala fully developed in 1992. For his first exhibition in 1991, he crafts scores utilizing the technique of silkscreen printing and presents them in Galéria B in Bratislava (during the Festival of Intermedia Art organized by Spoločnosť pre nekonvenčnú hudbu – SNEH [Society For Unconventional Music]), and in the ARTdeco Gallery in Nové Zámky. Since 1979, working with several metronomes, Štěpán Pala has also been creating sound recordings of rhythmical structures and fields, following the guidance of his visual scores. In 1998, in 3D software on a computer, he crafted scores that explore the relations of space geometry towards movement in time. The output are computer drawings, but also pulsating, “moving scores” that are, through the animation of a five-line stave, anchored in the geometry of a tetrahedron. In Farebné partitúry [Colour Scores] (1998), which show unmistakable traces of a flowing colour substance, is evinced Pala’s interest in the flow of time – the fundamental question of music. Towards the end of the 1990s, projects appear that feature visual scores in the form of glass objects.
 |
|
| pic. 3 |
|
Independently of developments in the Bratislava centre, Peter Kalmus (1953) in Košice has been creating Partitúry - básne [Scores – Poems] since 1983; he exhibited them for the first time as part of the album projects in Prague’s District 10 (Strašnice) in 1985, and in 1988 in an exhibition in the kontajner Gallery at UND (Ukrainian National Theatre) in Prešov. Bratislava’s public got to know Kalmus in 1993 (exhibitions Združenia 1992 [Associations 1992] at Umelecká beseda, and Geometria Viva at the House of Art). His scores were presented in a comprehensive manner in the stand-alone exhibition Monopolia at the ŠUP gallery in Bratislava (1995). One of the ways in which Kalmus interprets his scores is that of visual poetry. His scores are unbound sheets of paper crafted in relief; a large number of them were collected in two books (100 and 200 unbound sheets respectively). Kalmus works with large paper formats (A1), adhering to the regularity of note lines that he distorts using sculptor’s techniques (gesture, stroke); certain sections of paper may be torn out, glued, perforated, ground, or milled, which results in monochrome white scores, as opposed to burned or corrosive ones. Kalmus also understands his scores as instances of contemplation, a spiritual space in which he examines not only ?sthetic but also philosophic questions of emptiness (Wittgenstein) and loneliness (Sartre). Paintings by Svetozár Ilavský (1958) synthesize the ambivalent relation of the transformation of the sound form into the visual form, and its converse re-interpretation in the acoustic form. His musical experience allows him to integrate random elements into paintings: such as attaching (with glue) his own ECG records to his scores, as they originated during the listening of music, composing the visual aspect of such drawings into evocations of a score (Koncert pre J. Cagea [A Concert For John Cage], 1989–91).
In 1986, Ladislav Snopko presented the relationship of music and graphic art, architecture and arch?ology in the project Archeologické pamiatky a súčasnosť - Partitúry a projekty [Arch?ological Monuments In Present Time – Scores and Projects]; one of the focus areas for the project were visual scores (Milan Adamčiak, Peter Machajdík, and Michal Murin). In 1989 and 1991, in Perth, Australia, concerts of Vizuálna kompozícia [Visual Composition] (1987) by Michal Murin were performed, in the version of the piece that had been published in the Australian journal for contemporary music, EVOS. Another graphic score by Michal Murin was the source of music for the acoustic installation Travelling Art Museum by the duo LENGOW & HEyeRMEarS in 1997. From the point of view of graphic scores, two significant exhibitions were Hommage ? Cage (1992, curator Jozef Cseres) in the building of the Slovak Radio in Bratislava, and an exhibition of graphic scores by John Cage (curator Milan Adamčiak) whose opening in the Slovak National Gallery took place in Cage’s presence. At the time of Cage’s exhibition, Milan Adamčiak had a stand-alone exhibition of his own, Notácie [Notations] in Galéria Gerulata in Bratislava. One of the most comprehensive collections of graphic scores in Slovakia is being assembled and regularly presented as part of the HEyeRMEarS project – a follower of the former ARTdeco Gallery in Nové Zámky (1991–93) that used to have a similar focus; adhering to Jozef Cseres’s conception, it organized a series of exhibitions, each devoted to a different author of scores – Milan Adamčiak, Štěpán Pala, and Milan Grygar. Text-oriented visual scores were also the subject of Michal Murin’s stand-alone exhibition in Galérie Střepy in Brno in May 2001; graphic scores (Signature, and Telová-pupíková partitúra [A Body-Bellybutton Score]) were performed live during the opening night.
Pict.1 - Milan Grygar: Pôdorysná partitúra
Pict.2 - Blahoslav Rozbořil: Pocta Johnovi Cageovi, fonolinoryt ako partitúra, 1989
Pict.3 - Juraj Ďuriš: Sny (Dreams), 1987
|
