Inside and outside, perception and reality, composing in the space of difference
The musical exploration of the spaces between inside and outside, between body and soul, the subtle illumination of the fragile wandering of the human soul in its real, heterogeneous variety of seemingly infinite possibilities, that is the nucleus of Jakub Rataj's compositional work. Researching without concepts, withdrawing from the haptic outside, opening up spaces for emotions, this search is a musical wandering into the discontinuous open, withdrawn from the measurable time factor, from the categorically quantifiable. The soul, beginning its journey with the phenomenon of experiential time, fractalizes the time factor in the direction of an infinite and at the same time broken dimensionality. Jakub Rataj's compositions accordingly demonstrate the fragility of this movement. Structure does not play a particularly dominant role in Rataj's compositions. For him, it does not have the upper hand over the intentional intuitiveness of creative action. It is never hierarchical, but rather open in the multitude of possibilities of movement and, not least - "doubt is inherent in the creative mind" (René Descartes) - is therefore fragile and breakable. The pulse of perceptual time - the pulsation of certainties - often making itself heard imperiously at the beginning of Rataj's works, is usually very quickly broken by what Rataj describes as a "combined mixture of perceptions of the outside world" and the inside.
In H, the piano quintet, this pulse initially appears as a coarse, pounding, dull, percussive, denatured, dying sound in a low register. What is the counterworld from the composer's perspective, which always inspires Rataj to compose in at least two layers? "One could compare the human body [and soul] to an unstable filter between the two worlds." (Jakub Rataj)
For Rataj, movement results from the relationship between breath and pulse and their difference in relation to the (mechanized) meter presented musically. For Rataj, movement, as something pointing towards the infinitely open, is a far more diverse phenomenon than polyphony in the traditional sense. Movement is therefore, thought of heterogeneously, more than a linear progression. Movement also takes place rhythmically and harmonically in pausing as a human emotion, in which sequences of notes initially appear differentiated in short bursts in counter-movement. The process of constant change (Heraclitus) is also inscribed in pausing. Movement later appears in a more complex way in subsequent variants, for example in the most recent 2nd string quartet. scratch circling around itself in a broken dimension. The pause as such should therefore not be misinterpreted as a standstill. In Rataj's work, movement very often arises rhythmically from the static momentum of the meter - and this is his unique selling point - as a compositionally self-generating development of a cyclical rhythmic structure. This takes shape in a variety of ways from a primal cell that develops consistently against the meter, particularly at the beginning of his three-part composition H for piano quintet, created in 2017.
In accordance with Rataj's image of the human body (in other words: the individual) as an unstable filter between the inner world and the outside, his compositions are not only rhythmically and, as will be seen below, also in texture and articulation as well as in dynamic disposition, as finely chiseled as well as varied, but also harmonically and in the dynamic area. Axiomatically, the autonomously self-generated harmony is based on a tight four-tone cluster at quarter-tone intervals. This is divided in the piano quintet H sometimes in two groups of three tones each, with a similar microharmonic distance. The resulting tones, and later also song-like melodic sequences with high emotional potential, play around each other permutatively, resulting in a complementary, coherent microharmonic equidistance. Ideally, this leads contrapuntally to a quarter-tone cluster. In the variance of the wide range, these tones open up resonance spaces in two ways: in both string quartets, unusual pitch constellations of the individual instruments expand the spectrum of timbres. From a semantical perspective, reality appears to be both infinite and limitless.
While such sequences of notes in the piano quintet have only slight phase shifts, in the string quartet they already serve second breath – and later, for example in the 2nd String Quartet scratch more radically emancipated, as the compositional execution is more differentiated and at the same time more complex – as the basis for an independent polyphonic structure that is in opposition to the homophonic layer of the respective work's beginnings. In the contrasting middle section in H and in more developed variants in the later works for string instruments, in which there are always smaller formal sections, the initially exposed structure is augmented many times over, that is to say, in a strong overstretch. This takes place initially additively in the simple form, later - more complex - consistently proportionally, dominated by cluster surfaces over long drawn-out glissandi, which are always subject to a microharmonic relationship. Even flat tone repetitions, sometimes denatured into noise, give variants of the augmented morphology. All of these techniques are characterized by finely chiseled sound textures, in the reprise of H and later more differentiated in the subsequent works, for example in the string quartet Kratzer spread over the entire course of the work. Scratches – its large form is divided into many different microformal structures – uses these textures, especially those with a larger noise component, percussively in the sense of its basic rhythmic structure. This title thus derives its legitimacy not least from the way the work is composed. These microformal structures appear to paint an asymmetrical picture, but as parts of a quasi-hidden symmetry, their sequence is only reversed.
Spherically finely chiselled passages of harmonics and microglissandi at the limit of audibility, sound filter techniques in the truest sense of the word, not only create a screen of spectrality on a microharmonic basis, but also illuminate the delicacy of the spaces in between microscopically. In this texture, the composer resorts to compression (prolatio minor) of the rhythmic structures, as opposed to overstretching. The potential for sound painting contained therein refers in the crystalline sense in the string quartet scratch on a sharply cut notch in a building, surrounded by leaden clouds in the blazing evening sun; further into H the icy temperatures of winter on Gotland, the sight of the "steel" sea. Such potential serves the composer again and again as an inspiring source of sound, fed by the landscape around him. In doing so, he ties in with the tradition of his cultural origins in the best sense, and not just emotionally: with his Bohemian ancestors Dvořák and Janáček.
When it comes to generating form and structure in the space of difference between homophony and polyphony, this composer has a variety of musical possibilities that only a few of his colleagues have. This is not the only thing that makes him, born in 1984, the most important representative of his age group in the Czech Republic.
String instruments and string techniques offer a wealth of potential for the emotional and thematic development of this theme, which was very important to him. It is therefore anything but coincidental that he chose this instrumentation for his subject.
In striae, In his work for solo cello, written in 2023/24, Jakub Rataj cybernetically advances his material, which is very similar to his other works, in a direction of game-theoretical experimentation. This astonishingly creative and highly individual path of transforming vertical structures onto a horizontal level of solo music-making is nevertheless immediately obvious.
Ernst Helmuth Flammer (October 20, 2024)