Programme note and notes to the project

“Marie Nečasová’s composition Otevírání (Opening) is a quiet dialogue with the drawings of Stanislav Kolíbal. Kolíbal is known primarily as a sculptor, but in these drawings, now half a century old, Marie Nečasová found a clear connection with two compositional elements that are fundamental to her: “indeterminate clouds of textural surfaces” and “clear lines of melody.” “They speak to me quietly and tenderly; even a certain brutality of the black lines, which cut through the silent white space, does not frighten me. In their loudness, they are still a quiet part of it.” The composition itself then follows a process of a certain kind of cleansing:

“From the cotton-wool grey in which the mind is sometimes wrapped, in order to protect itself from the sharp nagging of everything that ‘must’ be done. A kind of ‘opening of the ears’, when the world around us remains exactly the same, but by remembering our own attention, it becomes sharper and clearer; something similar then happens within the inner world as well. It is that moment when, on a walk, I stop and realise that I exist. Suddenly I notice that dusk is falling differently, that this is a small piece of summer evening gifted to me at the end of a grey February. I hear a blackbird singing, and that means spring, and that means beauty, and that means sadness.”

(written by Ian Mikyska)

As this was a project with a strong connection to visual arts, I made use of my new bookbinding skills and created handwritten parts for each player, along with the hardcover and illustrations. I believe that, even in instances that are not so extreme, performers create a connection with the musical text they perform from, whether they realise it or not. I wanted to create a very special relationship for this piece.

Because plane baggage regulations are merciless, in 2025 I made a “travel edition” of the scores to be performed by the ensemble in Sweden.