Arti musices, Vol. 54 No. 1, 2023.
Professional paper
https://doi.org/10.21857/y6zolb6zdm
Mladen Tarbuk’s Song Cycle Sanjači (The Dreamers) from the perspective of a performer
Lidija Horvat-Dunjko
; Muzička akademija Sveučilišta u Zagrebu, Zagreb, Hrvatska
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to analyze Mladen Tarbuk’s song cycle Sanjači [The Dreamers] within the context of high and low Croatian culture and on the basis of both musical parameters and the literary work of Nikola Šop. The paper also aims to place the song cycle in the realm of high, canonical culture. The paper summarizes the literature on the song cycle, as well as the perspectives that need to be established in order to critically investigate the musical style, compositional technique, performance and musical aesthetics of the work, and to position the results within the context of the data, comments and instructions of the composer. For the song cycle Sanjači the composer was inspired by the metaphysical lyricism of the great poet Nikola Šop. Under this lyrical veil, on the border between sleep and wakefulness, the composer has given us an exceptional, canonical neo-expressionist work.
The song cycle (dedicated to Lidija Horvat-Dunjko) was created over eight years, from 1993 to 2001. In it, the poet searches for the meaning of existence and senses the metaphysical fullness of being. The composer, considering the literary template’s depth, outlines this metaphysical incorporeality at the edge of possibility with his neo-expressionist music. He has given the soloist soprano a part that is both exiting and one of the most difficult in the musical literature with a duration of forty minutes. The composer uses lush instrumentation in order to foreground the difference, through instrumental timbre, between the ethereal world of dreams and the much more hectic and louder world of reality, while the metric countdown of a repeated tone symbolizes the flow of time, which, even though it passes, does not represent progress in the world of the dreamer, but the endless repetition of the same situations. It is this timelessness that permeates all songs of the cycle.
Besides possessing a high proficiency in sight-reading (because the musical structure is extremely complicated, both in rhythm as well as intonation), the soloist is required to have excellent voice control within a huge vocal and dynamic range, to be able to richly modulate and to use shading with vocal timbres, which must almost always remain light and airy in order not to compromise the atmosphere of incorporeality. It is very important to pronounce the verses as clearly as possible and to moderate as much as possible the use of vibrato in the voice. The voice of the dreamer is often in an extremely high vocal register and needs to be very fragile and quiet, which is quite demanding for any singer. After a thorough analysis of Tarbuk’s (Šop’s) Sanjači and bearing in mind all the mentioned parameters of evaluating a canonical piece of art, it is possible to conclude that this extremely valuable song cycle fulfills all the conditions of entrance to canonical culture. It is musically and poetically totally incomprehensible and unacceptable to an uneducated recipient, harmonically, rhythmically, musically and performance-wise extremely complex and very interesting and exciting in its ethereal metaphysics to an »elite« listener.
Keywords
Croatian contemporary vocal music; Mladen Tarbuk; Nikola Šop; song cycle Sanjači; high soprano; neo-expressionism; interpretation of contemporary vocal music
Hrčak ID:
306091
URI
Publication date:
14.7.2023.
Visits: 852 *