Symphony Orchestra m Prague FOK: Opening concert in the spirit of European ideals
Jan Ryant Drízal (*1986) belongs to the distinctive and successful young Czech authors with wider international training. The titles of their compositions refer to various non-musical sources and contexts. This, among other things, speaks of his need for a broad and deeper humanitarian education. This can be an asset for authors if they manage to recast the artistic into an organic form, or a complicating factor that results in intellectual conceptualism.
With Otomar Kvěch at the conservatory and Hanuš Barton at HAMU, Jan Drízal (he took the name Ryant from his mother’s surname) undoubtedly acquired a solid foundation of the craft of composition, which he developed in a unique way even depending on the given theme. He fundamentally attracted attention with the winning composition of the first year of the composition competition of the Czech Philharmonic Chicken melancholic premiered in 2015 under the direction of Jiří Bělohlávek. The composition refers to the well-known (also filmed) short story by the naturalist Karel Josef Šlejhar under the same name. She appreciated the composition “tectonic and formal coherence with hidden surprises, colorful imagination expressed by sovereign, demanding and extreme instrumentation, wide-ranging harmony, dramatic tension, expressiveness, unequivocalness and directness of the statement, given in contemporary musical language”. The composer himself does not want to limit his means of expression a priori. His intention is, in his own words, to create “organic” music. For this reason, he is also a successful author of film music and music for drama.
Composing a composition that would provide the layering of Prague culture, its memory, is an interesting task. It is difficult to comment on it after one listen. The composer decided, similar to Umberto Eco in literature, to work with symbols and quotations from the works of individual cultures and periods connected in this case to Prague. As with Eco (or later, Pierre Boulez as an inspiration), as a result of the creative strategy, both people who are specially educated in the culture and those who are not familiar with it can find their own layer of meanings, who receive the work immediately sensory and intuitively. From this point of view, it must be attractive to them as well (and in the case of Dřízal, it is). It is, of course, a very demanding task if the composition is to be truly “organic” in the musical sense of the word, so that the non-musical concept does not stick out from it in places.
The symbolism of the composition works not only with the musical material of period songs, but also with texts, while these segments emerge from their own processing into literalness and vice versa. The author assigned subtitles to individual parts. Praga mystica/Mystical Prague has a subtitle Caelestis Jerusalem/Heavenly Jerusalem, which refers to the intention of Charles IV. to conceive of Prague layoutally using key church buildings in the cross as the “heavenly Jerusalem.” In this part, Driesal used a reference to a Christian medieval Christmas carol In natalia Domino of Franus’s songbook (1505) with text incipit “All the angels rejoice at the birth of the Lord” and (according to the composer) the whispered formula of the alchemists Visita Inferiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem/VITRIOLin translation Visit the interior of the earth, by cleansing you will find a hidden stone (meaning Philosopher’s Stone) – which was unheard of. According to the author in the program, Prague was able to withstand the coexistence of Christianity and Hermeticism.
The composition continues with a part Praga Astrologica/Astrological Prague with a subtitle Musica mundana/Music of the spheres. The “music of the spheres” was part of the medieval ontology, anchored in his work for a long time by Boëthius (5th-6th century). Audible music (Musica humana) was perceived as a desirable sensory manifestation if it was in accordance with mathematically expressible harmonic ratios, which are also assumed for the “music of the spheres”. From this analogy, “musica humana” also drew its pathos and position within the quadrivium of higher mathematical sciences.
The composer orchestrated Jacob Handel Gall’s beautiful five-part motet with bold harmonies from 1590 Mirabile Mysterium/Wonderful-miraculous mystery. Instrumentation of a strange harmony in a strange wording, the motet is difficult to identify. Regarding the topic, the author recalls the legacy of Johannes Kepler, who formulated two of the three so-called Kepler’s laws in Prague, and the astronomer Rudolf II. Tycho de Brahe.
Praga alchymica/Alchymistic Pragueas a subtitle Panta Rhei/Everything flows (written inaccurately in the program Pantha Rei), is an alleged saying of Heraclitus (6th–5th century BC), whose idea Drizal embodies in a flowing fugue and refers to the work of the alchemists Edward Kelly and John Dee, who sought to master the transmutation of matter and soul. This part, despite its complex color impressiveness and thinking in bands, maintains its organicity and sounds like an accordion.
Praga masonica/Prague Masonic with a subtitle Gnóthi seauton / Know thyself (Greek inscription at Delphi) begins mysteriously in a low position and resonance from which emerges a solo trumpet melody representing (according to the author) the inner voice seeking the “Light of Reason” (a reference to the Masonic song Finden Sie das Licht/Find the Light). The trumpet flows into a classicizing traditional melody – perhaps because of the expression of the mentioned “Reason”. But it’s not supposed to be that simple. Self-discovery happens, like music, in waves and cycles. In the program, the author recalls the legacy of Ignác Antonín Born (1742–1791), who as a scientist and freemason worked in Bohemia and contributed to the first “academy of sciences” here in 1773–1774.