The electronic worlds of michal rataj.

Michal Rataj (1975) is not only a composer, but also a musicologist and a radio producer. When he talks about music it is clear that he doesn't just create it but also reads a great deal about it and thinks about in on a theoretical level. He is realising his vision of how contemporary music should be presented in the civic association S.H.O.C.K. (Soudoba hudba otevrena cele kulture--Contemporary Music Open to the Whole Culture), and on Czech Radio, in "his" Prime Edition Radioatelier (Radio studio) he is creating a space for the radiophonic output of his contemporaries. In fact "radiophony" and "ars acustica", and electro-acoustic music in general is also Rataj's main interest in composition.

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At Czech Radio, where you work, you initiated the intermedia project rAdioCUSTICA, which includes not only the brilliantly operated Internet portal http://www.rozhlas.cz/radiocustica, but also the programme Radioatelier, broadcast by Cro 3--Vltava. Can you explain the impulses that led to this project? What inspired you to it? And what exactly is rAdioCUSTICA trying to achieve?

Let me just clear up the nomenclature. Every week from Friday to Saturday Vltava broadcasts the programme Radioatelier as an experimental slot for new radio compositions. As a producer, every month I'm given what is known as a PremEdice (Prime Edition) of Radioatelier designed exclusively for premieres of pieces by Czech composers (mainly the younger) who have created new projects specially for this slot. My aspiration--and I admit it's not exactly humble--is to create something through this longer-term production work that might in the future be called a Czech ars acustica scene--with crossovers into visual art, the web, multimedia and so on. rAdioCUSTICA is the virtual extension of Radioatelier in the form of a database on the broadcast projects, photos, references, and there's also a sound archive there and links to other servers in the world, the spark for a kind of theoretical cell of ars acoustica ... My vision of the portal is great, but time is limited ...

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Was it hard to get the project through at Czech Radio?

If you get the support of the bosses for a certain vision, then it's not a problem--and I think that's what happened in this case and it's still happening and I'm really pleased about it. The real problem to fulfil the vision in the long-term--and here I underline the work "long-term", because in our conditions we're talking about a very long haul indeed. But I have the feeling that even just these first ten entirely new productions, specially created for the radio, represent a certain signal ... and so we shall have to wait and see how the signal strengthens after 2 years ...

What sort of response has rAdioCUSTICA had so far?

To be honest I expected a bigger response, but then again I'm a realist. It's partly that it is a very new thing and quite sophisticated, and doesn't have a very long tradition in this country. And then, and here I have to admit a bit of mea culpa--when I get the chance to devote myself just to this area, then the information quality of the portal and so the feedback too will definitely be greater, and perhaps discussion in the form will finally take off, and perhaps we shall get closer to portals of the audiohyperspace type (www.swr2.de/audiohyperspace).

One element of rAdioCUSTICa is the project "Compositor", which is a kind of appeal for universal radiophonic creativity. Can you explain what precisely this is all about? How many contributions have you received so far?

Anyone can download in mp3 several dozen sounds, effects, musical extracts and so on, and use them to create his or her own short piece, sound story. I haven't received many pieces, but those I have received are amazingly charming. I haven't closed the "competition", and I'm letting it run on although after a while I shall change the individual sounds and every so often I shall broadcast the best entries on the PremEdice of Radioatelier.

PremEdice also involves both names from the "academic" music scene (Miroslav Srnka, Slavomir Horinka, Tomas Palka and others), and groups that have come to electronic music and "ars acustica" from a rather different direction (e.g. Auvid and e.o). What in your view is the difference between the academic and non-academic electronic scene? In your programme you seem to be trying to bring them together--why?

For me as a composer and musicologist this is an exceedingly interesting experience--the confrontation between two worlds that both have a chance to gain something from the other. Very briefly: academic composers are often a little biased as far as the more abstract acoustic qualities are concerned, they think more in notes and musical structures. Non-academics (often visual artists) do the precise opposite, but then again they often have a problem with the perception of time and the formation of the acoustic material within time, which can damage the whole. I think that the confrontation of these two worlds is extremely necessary and valuable, and in this country pretty crucial for the future development of the soundart scene ...

But let's not talk only about rAdioCUSTICa and radiophony. What attracts you to electronic music in general? What do you see as its main potential? What type of electronic work with sound is the most interesting for you?

At the most general level probably the most interesting type of work is when every new composition gives me the chance to create a kind of virtual world, which is completely different from the world of acoustic instruments, the chance to experiment with building such a world from the first "bricks", the first played sound (acoustic and electronic). On the other hand, electronics for me isn't "something other" than the world of acoustic instruments, and what actually interests me more is to link up the two worlds, to try and transfer instrumental diction into electronics and vice versa, to find the rhythm of acoustic sound and transfer it into electronic contexts. That is maybe why I'm not as technically precise as other composers in my work with electronic material; I don't mind leaving the sound with a slight hum or buzz, and so it isn't crystal pure, but I always try to ensure that it breathes, and has some life of its own--that it shouldn't be a piece of cold electronic stone.

Apart from that--I've been keen on cables and potentiometers and data-wheels every since I was small, and I made my first synthetic art out of lego ...

One feature of your music that I find interesting is that on the one hand you exploit the most recent technology of work with sound, but at the same time you rely on certain aesthetic and intellectual principles that could be called "traditional". Your pieces usually have a carefully constructed and closed form, and sometimes tend towards the monumental (see the Vitkov Oratorio), and they typically have an intellectual seriousness, and an aspiration to spiritual and timeless communication. It is as if you were untouched by the widespread post-modern relativism ...

The worst thing is when a composer (especially one that has studied musicology) has to talk about his own pieces ... Maybe there is something in what you say. Form is generally quite important to me and maybe you could say that I'm actually very conservative as far as form is concerned. The thing is that I feel there are certain principles whereby music functions in time and that these are unchanging over the centuries. And to be honest in this respect I have no ambitions to invent anything new, since I am sure that I would get nowhere.

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On the other hand, what interests me a great deal are sharp conflicts between the themes and material that I use in the pieces. I remember how many of my teachers at the Academy of Performing Arts were shocked when I wrote a chorale with a simple three-chord harmony. It was (almost) light pop, but I liked it a lot, and what was interesting was that nobody considered why I had done it like that. Or else in my electronic piece Oratorium electronicum I took the word "krles" (Kyrie eleison in old Czech) and derived the word "lez" (lie) from it by vowel similarity, and let the two words sound in parallel. That's what I hugely enjoy--taking building blocks that are very different (musically, rhythmically, semantically) and bringing them into absolute contrast and letting them resonate. I don't want to say much about musical meanings, but if this kind of approach can be regarded as a certain type of meaning, then I can say that I really try to get it into my music and I am pleased that the meanings resonate in a different way for each listener and that--if you will--"post-modern meta-meanings" develop out of it.

You are currently president of the civic association SHOCK (www.ishock.org), which apart from openness towards new technologies also proclaims the aim of linking up contemporary music with art and architecture. On its web pages we find the statement, "Interpenetrating with the visual arts, contemporary music can open up a new artistic space." This suggests something more than just the more attractive presentation of contemporary music with the aim of gaining a larger audience. Could you tell us a bit more about this concept?

It's simple. Traditional concert performance, which developed during the 17th century, survives today in a form that in no way corresponds to the music being written today; we are applying means of presentation that are three centuries old to the music of the present. It is absurd, but that's the way it is, and I think that in this respect music is incontestably the most conservative of all the arts. SHOCK is trying to show that music produced in the present day must exist in its natural contexts (visual, productive, social). This is why it tries for more communication with artists in other fields, seeking to enrich music with a visual dimension (suitably chosen space, light design etc.) and bring it to places with which it will resonate naturally for the modern listener (i.e. somewhere other than a Baroque hall with crystal chandeliers). I think that the experience of several projects we have organised has confirmed our ideas (the most recent was "Deconstructions" at the Vitkov Monument). Contemporary music is not (or does not necessarily have to be) for a specialised public. If there are emotions in that music, then the emotions can resonate in any person who allows them to resonate. It is just necessary to create the space for the resonance, and to create it in a way adequate to the age in which we live.

What role has "bigbeat" played in your life as a musician?

A big role. And not just big beat, but jazz, ethno, country ... I've never found it a problem switching over in my brain from Messiaen to Sting, and then Chick Corea and Bill Evans, and to get from Redl right over to Varttina, for example. Maybe in time it will develop into some musical multischizophrenia, but my feeling is that if you live music to the full, then it has to be genuine and so it has to be safe. Just as it is when every so often I have a terrific need to take my "clapperboards" to some smoky club and just play blues, or three-chord bigbeat ...

You will find Michal Rataj's personal pages at: www.volny.cz/compositor/