Modernity of Čiurlionis music in the context of cultural theory of parataxis

Straipsnis bando atsakyti į klausimą, kaip XX a. muzikos modernizmo paradigma išsilydė konkrečios tautos muzikoje. Ką apie modernizmą gali byloti tos nacionalinės kultūros, kurios plėtojosi kompozicinių inovacijų centrų pakraščiuose ir neturėjo įtakos svarbiausioms XX a. modernizmo bei avangardo patirtims. Ar tokios kultūros tėra tik pasyvios naujų idėjų vartotojos ir meno inovacijų stebėtojos, kaip manė „didžiųjų“ modernizmo istorijų pasakotojai. Nenuostabu, kad modernizmo istorijose buvo stebimi ir adoruojami centrai (the West), o į likusio pasaulio (the Rest) lokalias modernizmo formas žvelgiama kaip į imperinių metropolijų menininkų atradimų perėmimą, imitavimą bei plagiavimą. Straipsnio autorė renkasi Vakaruose iškilusią Susanos S. Friedman kultūrinės parataksės idėją bei teorinę prieigą (Friedman, 2001; 2006; 2007), kurią galima interpretuoti kaip naująją kultūros tekstų „skaitymo“ strategiją. Postmodernizmo akivaizdoje ji pabrėžė imperinių ir periferinių modernizmų lygiagretumą ir iškėlė geomodernizmo postkolonialinės menotyrinės žvalgos konceptus. Naujai perskaityti „periferinės“ (the Rest) kultūros tekstai atskleidžia sudėtingesnį muzikinio modernizmo formavimosi bei ankstyvosios raidos transkultūrinį vaizdą. Mikalojaus Konstantino Čiurlionio 1904-1909 m. muzikos kompozicijos, apie kurias laiškuose buvo užsimenama raktažodžiais „sava“ ir „nauja“, yra šio straipsnio analizės objektai. Šešios mikroistorijos bando argumentuoti teiginį, kad kultūrinės parataksės požiūriu perspektyvesnis heterogeniškos modernybės modelis, kuris XX a. modernizmą suvokia kaip įvairių ir skirtingų modernizmų įvairiose pasaulio dalyse visumą.The concept of "cultural parataxis” which has been developed in the works by Susan Stanford Friedman (Friedman, 2007) describes the phenomenon of the one “going besides” (Gr. Parataxis - aligning side by side). The conception of parataxis was started to be applied by theoreticians of culture in describing cultural texts (the works of art) and their creators presenting them in an unusual order or hierarchy. It is believed that within the context of European musical modernism Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis’s creative work illustrates the main statements of the theory of cultural parataxis. The author of the article studies Mikalojus K. Čiurlionis’s music looking for preconditions, arguments to substantiate at least two presumptions: first, what Čiurlionis had in mind when he said that nobody understood his music (neither Reinecke 1901-1902, nor the Commission for Organising Evenings of Contemporary Music set up by Nurok and Nouvel in St Petersburg in 1908) and what he could say to himself identifying what was “his own” and what was "new” in his creative work? This encouraged the author to study Čiurlionis’s “creative laboratory” - his piano compositions - more thoroughly. The latter are considered within the context of the general movement of progressive musical ideas of Čiurlionis’s time - late romanticism - modern - modernism. The study represents the newest “brushstroke” in the criticism of Čiurlionis’s musical creation. The focus was on the analysis of the features of Čiurlionis’s composing process and searching for the peculiarities of his individual composing manner recorded in Čiurlionis manuscripts, sketches, drawings, pictures, and finished works. Čiurlionis himself sought modernity of music as a necessity for exceptional sound or historical fate. He was in the ranks of modernists who employed more or less systematic 12-tone compositional techniques or individual methods. Secession of score ornaments, pre-optic flashes, cryptographic themes and magical palindromes, cycles of transpositions of the basic structures created by Čiurlionis as early as 1904-1906, Webern’s group (PC set [0, 1, 4]), the rudiments of inversion spirals, and the kernel of the series of all intervals were those material documents, which manifested the vision of emerging modernism in his creative work. In this way, the creative personality of Čiurlionis is seen as an exceptionally minded, a truly lonely genius who had left the traces of a modernist vision in his compositional texts. In the reconstruction of the real picture of the modernisation of European music, Čiurlionis’s creation should deserve a respectable place. On the grounds of the theory of cultural parataxis, Čiurlionis is appreciated as another figure among those who created modernism, though Čiurlionis musical compositions were not known while he was alive. It re-sounds the main ideas of S. Friedman’s theory of cultural parataxis, which underline a transnational and heterogeneous nature of modernity, transcultural migration and hybridisation of modernism. This ignores the geographical or cultural subordination to so-called centres of modernism - the Western artists and artists of the other part - the periphery world (such as Druskininkai), who has long been interpreted as passive imitators of modernist ideas. Supplemented with six micro-histories of Čiurlionis’s music creation 1) the modernist Materialdenken; 2) the rise of Webern group; 3) the kernel of the of all-interval series; 4) the embryo of the principle of symmetrical permutation; 5) cryptography and palindromes; 6) appearance of the micro ostinato form), the article justifies the panorama of Čiurlionis’s modernist investigations during the first hundred years of the studies. The discussion of what the next hundred years of Čiurlionis music analysis may bring concludes the article