Brno Contemporary Orchestra

Emil František Burian: War (a folk play with songs and dances, based on folk poetry collected by K. J. Erben)

Frederic Rzewski: Coming Together for narrator and open instrumentation ensemble

• Part 1: Coming Together (1971)
• Part 2: Atica (1972)

Emil František Burian (1904–1957) ranks among the most remarkable Czech artists of his generation. A representative of avant-garde tendencies in the interwar period, he was a member of the Devětsil group, collaborated with the Liberated Theatre, and founded the theatres DADA and D34. He gained renown as an original playwright, director, and composer. Among his music-dramatic works we may mention the experimental jazz opera Bubu from Montparnasse and the opera Maryša, inspired by Janáček’s Jenůfa.

The folk play with songs War, composed in 1935, is yet another testimony to Burian’s ability to seek new forms of the music-dramatic genre. In his pursuit of so-called “synthetic theatre,” he drew on his experience with the voiceband, dance, chamber ensemble, folk music, and jazz. The work was premiered in 1935 at Theatre D35 under Burian’s direction, but was banned during the Protectorate. In the 1950s Burian returned to it, revised the instrumentation, and staged it again in 1955. War is one of the most distinctive Czech music projects rooted in folk poetry, placing Burian alongside composers such as Bohuslav Martinů, who explored similar themes in the same period.

This interpretatively demanding work will be performed in its 1935 version, and it should be noted that with its strong anti-war message, it resonates with particular urgency today.

Text: Jiří Zahrádka

The roots of folk music are anchored in a lack of freedom. It was created by a people tied to estates, the land, and industry—people imprisoned and conscripted into armies. Their desire for liberation has been exploited countless times by demagogues and populists, yet it has also led to spontaneous revolts, revolutions, uprisings, and subsequent social progress. It has led both to totalitarianism and to democracy. A perhaps even sociocentrically uncritical appeal for the liberation of the collective and the individual is the ideological prerequisite for much of the life and work of American pianist and composer Frederic Rzewski (1938–2021).

The compositions Coming Together and Attica from the early 1970s form a compositional whole inspired by the prison riot and its bloody suppression at Attica Prison in New York State, where 43 people lost their lives.

Coming Together (1971) is based on the recitation of a posthumously published letter by the uprising’s leader, Samuel Melville. A constantly and fixedly repeating bass rhythmic-melodic motif moves forward with relentless persistence, yet its twists are unexpected—there is nothing to be done, this is how it is now. The other instruments, for which the composer prescribed open instrumentation, move freely according to the score, though their steps are clearly trodden by the bass line. The narrator strikes into the musical flow without any possibility of influencing it.

Attica (1972) is usually performed as the second part of the composition Coming Together. It is also written for an unspecified instrumentation and is similarly built on a recited text. This time, Rzewski quotes Richard X. Clark, a fellow inmate of Melville and one of the leaders of the uprising who survived. Upon his release, as he was leaving the prison, he stated: “Attica is in front of me.” Rzewski once again deconstructs the text: Attica…, Attica is…, Attica is in…, and so on. The text is intoned on a single note, and a monophonic melody is written for the ensemble, which, through instructions, is harmonically expanded by improvisations where individual players hold a tone or repeat a previously played motif. What is essentially a sweet song ends on a collectively held C—yet that sweetness is rather tragic. After all, the struggle is not yet over.

Text: Viktor Pantůček