Teoriniai ir kompoziciniai Ryčio Mažulio mikrostruktūrinės kūrybos kontekstai

LTStraipsnyje tyrinėjama pastarojo dešimtmečio mikrostruk- tūrinė R. Mažulio kūryba, ji interpretuojama kūrybinių ir technologinių muzikos idėjų kontekste. Taikomi rekonstrukcinis, komparatyvistinis ir preskriptyvinės analizės metodai.

ENBy focusing view on the Rytis Mažulis' microdimensional compositions, written in the last decade, I will try to spotlight three different aspects of their creative background: the technological inventio (that is, the things invented or, more generally, inventiveness as such), premises for compositional integrity, and creative resonances. When exploring the microstructural space of Mažulis pieces, one is struck with the sudden revelation that it is not quite the daring undertakings of Nicola Vicentino, Alois Haba, Jeronimas Kačinskas or a number of spectralist composers that encouraged Mažulis to deal with the unexploited measurements of sound, but the insistent genetic obligation, which had been fortuitously encrypted in the name of the composer. “Matutinus parvulus” - was both a witty and a meaningful Latin reference to the composer's name and surname, made during a presentation by Jonas Vilimas. The friendly jest could in fact serve as a conceptual code underlying Mažulis’ microstructures. His varied pitch vocabulary ranges from the structures made of piles of superimposed thirds (“Clavier of Pure Reason"; “Canon aenigmaticus”), spiral series of whole-tone scales (endless spiral canon for 4 equal voices “The Dazzled Eye Has Lost Its Speech") and chromatic scale to the microtones obtained by the 30-fold fraction of a semitone. A number of pieces written in the last decade, although put in unchronological succession, make up the picture of progressivelly increasing division of a semitone into still smaller microintervals, starting with the semitones in “Hanon virtualis", quartertones in “Mensurations”, quartertones and octatones in “Palindrome", decatones in “Cum essem parvulus" and ending up with the irrational 30-fold fractions into 29 intervals spanning the 3,448275862 cents (cent being the 1OOth part of a semitone) in “Talita cumi' and “ajapajapam”.The first of Mažulis’ decisions invariably had to follow on the choice between the two possibilities - equal and unequal - of decomposing semitones. Which in fact is a conceptual choice between two influential traditions - let’s say, on the one hand, we can have the small or large diesis of Vicentino and unequal micro-intervals in harmonic spectral zones of the spectralists. And, at the same time, we can choose between an equal (aquidistance) prerogative vis-a-vis division, and its tradition - starting with the logarithmic (aquidistance) decomposition of the octave, an improvement in 1666 by Lemme Rossi on Vicentino’s 31 divisions of sound. Hence another two possibilities: the first indicates the direction regarding sound increase from the 12 sound system (E. Kfenek) and a tendency to decrease sounds, relative to the 12 sound octave idiom (Sylvia Fomina’s equidistant pentatonic system). Falling in with Lemme Rossi and Ernst Kfenek at this juncture, Rytis Mažulis goes on to arrange his own micro-interval opuses.The sounding of his canons and inherent beauty of their structural buildup often betrays the coded input of the author, unmistakably pointing to his cultural milieu and role models - Josquin des Prės, Johannes Ockeghem, Olivier Mesiaen, Conlon Nancarrow, Silvia Fomina, Ričardas Kabelis and Alvin Lucier - and representing a paradoxically well-adjusted combination of most diverse cultural traditions. The recent works of Rytis Mažulis, written in the last decade, witness the gradual transformation of the proportional-mensural principle and the increasing tendency towards fractal organization of polytemporal canons. Along with these developments, his micro- and macrodimensional canons came to resonate with the guidelines of some pioneering artistic and scientific hypotheses: Olivier Mesiaen’s interversion technique, Ivan Wyshnegradski’s ultrachromatic analogies between pitch and duration, Henry Cowell’s theory of chromatic tempos as well as their practical applications in the music of Sylvano Bussotti and Conlon Nancarrow. Recklessly intricate, as it may seem at first sight, the clear sounding of Rytis Mažulis’ music obviously reflects the cultural environment of the time filled with all kinds of artistic intelligence, insights, thoughts and general ideas. It is perhaps the nonrhetorical nature of its grammar and the whole aggregate of procedures involved in numerical progressions, which create the genuine art of sounds imbued with the strong feeling that can only be achieved through the extreme formal restrictions.