Author: jstevuliak

written for members of Ensemble Modern on the occasion of 2025 International Young Composers and Conductors Academy in Ticino, Switzerland, this is important as it was challenging; the idea for this work stems from anxiety of composing for such occasion

i think about breathing, inhaling, exhaling, departure and consequent arrival to the starting point

togetherness and individuality, the process from one to another is the main drive

James Tenney’s writing ‘On form’ was inspiring in terms of form, how I can create a work that includes multiple pieces but is still a unified time continuum

Synopsis

River flows through the pearl forest, where clams produce jewels and sing in eternal peace. Their idyll is disturbed by a forester, coming from the city, longing to take their beauty back to his lover. A biologist with emotional ties to clam’s ecosystem tries to prevent irreversible damage taking place. Horror unfolds as the forester takes the riches of the forest. The shattered biologist calls for the forces of nature to unleash its revenge on the forester’s actions, leading to a storm.

part i., they would move under the ground

for symphony orchestra (2024)

part i., they would move under the ground, is a recreation of a situation in which I experienced a feeling of transformed reality. A bicycle rave, attended by over 1000 cyclists, took to the streets of Helsinki at night, carrying portable boom boxes playing techno music, decorated with fairy and disco lights. When this rave made it to a tunnel, a dystopian shadow descended upon the way I felt the present. I pondered a situation where cars would no longer play a role in transport, but the infrastructure would remain. The environment above ground would be hardly habitable, and people would take subterranean space into use.

A clan, a tribe, a new form of organising society holds a celebratory feast in my piece. I recreate the soundscape of a bike rave passing through a tunnel and leaving it- every dream has its end. I work with contrast in wet and dry acoustics as a continuous process, which also influences the form. Inspired by computer-aided orchestration tools that analysed my recordings, I zoom in and out of the environment, focus micro to macro, time slows down or stops.

we choose

to other, to lead or to follow, to stay, to fall behind, to leave

the idea for this piece came progressively with the task of writing for percussion instruments with the orchestra

i have been thinking a lot about rituals, about the need to repeat, and the place of music in strengthening rituals
the need for stability
i thought of (sub)cultures and religions creating a feel of belonging by exclusion, by othering
i thought of bunraku, i thought of ragavardhana
i appropriated aspects of different cultures, i wish i knew more, i wish i was perhaps born somewhere else
i thought of me accompanying (?) or leading (?) the congregation in my home village
i dismembered a lent-time hymn i love to sing with the community and with my sister
i strived to revive a choir i heard

the choir members could not tune into one key together at first
during the hymn, a beautiful clarification occurred- the voices, initially as many as singers, progressively joined together into one line
it was a transforming experience, being able to tell by observing people sing, that

1) there was a huge problem that could be only overcome by all acting together
2) there arose different roles within this microscopic society
3) there were leaders, there were false leaders that led astray
4) overall, there were people that did their best. it was an important day and they considered themselves subordinate to the task they had to carry out

i thought of the organ and its quint stop
i am obsessed with the fifth and the sweet seventh
i thought of roots being taken away and put back
roots as in a root of a chord and roots as in that i often do not know where i am standing, what to leave and what to retain
can i uproot myself
i thought a lot about nothing recently
i thought of being suspended in water, being suspended in void that does not develop
i thought of hierarchies, all kinds of them, and i made one for the musicians to make my life easier
i wondered about agency, when do the hierarchies break, shuffle, how do the individuals act within them
i have mistreated the agents in these hierarchies
i thought about taking the privilege to grant you a melody
i dreaded the thought of having to predict and control 10 minutes of the future

written for Avanti! chamber orchestra

conducted by Jukka Rantamäki

Premiered on 12 December 2023 by Avanti! chamber orchestra at Sonore Hall of Musiikkitalo Helsinki

Special thanks to Anna Huuskonen and Lotta Vartiainen

Area, where this piece has been recorded, the Maple Mountains, is rich in its pastoral and agricultural history. Being only less than 5 miles away from the Slovak-Czech border, these lone settlements in the mountains were mostly built by settlers of Moravian Wallachian background, an ethnicity which is to this day present in both the Moravian part of Czechia and in North-Western Slovakia. Some of them still upkeep traditions and language traits. Maple mountains used to be bare and deforested, an ideal place for Wallachians to live in, as their main domain in surviving hard mountainous and outback conditions was keeping livestock.

Herdsmen and herdswomen out in the mountains often communicated between themselves by singing or using various wind instruments. Later on, during the communist era, on top of urbanizing the population, comrades aggressively forested the Maple Mountains with spruce in pursuit of quick wood mass production. The ecosystem, sonic and visual, has been irreversibly transformed. This piece contemplates various interventions- traditional wind instruments and techniques used to generate sound are altered with recent technology, the recent technology present in a place without electricity or other infrastructure, or, an individual intervening in the silence of the mountain environment, as in the past.

Recorded at Badačovský Grúň, Papradno, Slovakia, 2020

Featured on Trinity Laban’s Tunes From Home covid-time series

Name of this performance- ‘reality’ is variable and takes its name as a date of the day, when it is actually to be performed. This piece is a musical-theatrical response to the HAPPSOC manifesto, devised in 1965 by Stano Filko, Zita Kostrová and Alex Mlynárčik, Slovak Modernist/Avantgarde/Nouveau Réalisme artists. It is also inspired by features from the documentary movie Happsoc, directed by Kvetoslav Hečko, created for Slovak Television in 1996. Performers and the audience are invited to enjoy and take part in extended, out-of-ordinary reality, yet try to perceive it as an ordinary reality, as if creating another dimension and accustomizing to live in it.

Written originally for the Rude Health festival of new music, organized by the Composition department of Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, it also features the thematic concept of the evening, that being ‘Distant Apertures-’ sonic feed from the drum, the aperture in the visual feed, or aperture to the desired ‘other dimension’ of perceiving reality.

Colours and their traits are as follows- red, as natural, spontaneous; orange, symbolising creativity; yellow, as sensible and intellectual; green- bizarre, naive happy socialist (with no political association); blue, representing space, cosmos of the reality; black- egocentric, featuring a third eye and finally, white symbolising an eternal light, a timeless spirit. All these aforementioned features are adhered to when devising the performance, either absolutely or metaphorically.

In line with the television documentary, the number of performers is 7 and they are assigned different colours coming with different traits. Secondly, in line with the manifesto and the seeking of extra-ordinary, the actions, music and features of the performance bring an unusual atmosphere. The graphic language facilitating the whole performance strengthens this from the side of the performers.

The graphic sign language used in this realisation is greatly inspired by the work of Milan Adamčiak, composer, conceptual artist, musicologist and musician, whose career was rooted in the relationship of visual and musical aspects inside the performance.

Premiered on 7th November 2020, part of Rude Health New Music Festival

Scenography | Ján Števuliak
Video | Benjamín Števuliak, Viktor Ptáček, Maxwell Higdon

Thanks to Max for big help with his car

Performers

Yellow | Guitar | Anders Waller
Green | Act | Benjamín Števuliak
Orange | Clarinet | Ján Števuliak
White | Trombone | Maxwell Higdon
Red | Voice | Ona Černiauskaitė
Blue | Facilitator | Rebecca Galian Castello
Black | Percussion | Viktor Ptáček

487 000 000 000 GPB Gross Domestic Product
4 475 817 Males
4 486 172 Females
3 592 000 Households
1572 Square Kilometers
5 171 642 TfL Journeys
10550 Homeless
89 021 Positive Covid-19 Cases
6 800 000 Parking Spaces
107 Higher Education Institutions
356 200 Students
160 000 metres of Sewers
3000 Parks
97 Cemeteries
1 Tower Bridge
1 London Eye
2 Houses of Parliament
32 Boroughs
37 Skyscrapers
73 Railway Lines
369 Train Stations
19 174 Listed Buildings
116 Cinemas
42 Shopping Centers
165 Museums and Public Galleries
263 Theatres
345 Libraries

1262 + 1 Performance Venues

A formal experiment, subjectively utilizing extramusical material. Stemming from an interest in geology, I apply a geological cross-section of the London area as a formal outline for producing the piece and the score. Its layers serve as a basis for organizing events in time, and organizing material and ultimately, they give the piece its sonic shape.

Ecomusicology is ‘the study of music, culture and nature, it considers musical and sonic issues related to ecology and natural environment.’ This piece ponders on natural issues- the geological structures under London, which we as inhabitants of the city are mostly not concerned with as all we can see is the surface. It probes cultural associations- using the organ- the contrast of primitive medieval-sounding intervals and progressions, stretched pitches vs. live processing.

Performed by Ján Števuliak

Tape and Live Electronics by Ján Števuliak

Recorded in 2021

An image that keeps lingering in my mind after my past visits to Lake District and Snowdonia is the vastness of slate mines and quarries, particularly the Dinorwic quarry. The impact of resourcing has continuously influenced many of my musical works. Slate keeps our homes dry, carries our food, paves our walkways or reminds us of our loved ones. The by-product of our utilisation takes shape of what I would like to call an inverted cathedral, in an allusion to John Ruskin’s words. One is surrounded by soaring stone walls and a sheer space with reverberant acoustics. Musical aspects of this work are inspired by real places in the Lake District- flooded tunnels of the Hodge Close Quarry, the Yew Crag incline in Honister, the airy acoustics of the Cathedral Cave or the terraces of the Elterwater Quarry. Music is also subjectively responding to the work of Julian Cooper, a Lakeland painter- his landscapes are related to the aforementioned places and have a unifying element of a rocky grey colour- conveyed by the recurrence of motives and harmonies. An underlining acoustic theme throughout the quartet is a sound that is supposed to revive a stone-chipping soundscape of a Slate tile workshop.

Score (issuu)

Premiered by the Waldstein Quartet at Lake District Summer Music Festival 2022, Kendall Town Hall, Cumbria, UK

With thanks to Steve Threlfall, Nic Pendlebury and Dominic Murcott

Special thanks to Cecilia McDowall for valuable ideas during the workshop and for the engaging introduction of this piece at the premiere

A triptych based on transformative power resourcing exerts on our surroundings.
Material prompting the performance is developed from satellite images or relevant video footage and leaves space for performers to decide on some aspects of the performance- eg. instrument choice, techniques, dynamics etc.
Environments, which inspired this piece are, among others, The Dinorwic and Penrhyn slate quarries in Wales (material for the litophone- a stone percussion instrument built for this work, comes from Penrhyn Quarry) or the National Park Low Tatras, which is being continuously deforested at a rapid speed.

More details in the score (link below)

-First recording by Ján Števuliak (SoundCloud below)

-Second recording released on BandCamp, under Orbweavers Collective in 2021

Score (issuu)