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'Aporia' for 13 instruments (2001)
'In Greek philosophy, "aporia" (απορία; impasse, blind alley, a path that is impossible to pass through) means a hardly soluble or insoluble problem, arising as a result of equally plausible or contradictory premises. It can also denote the state of being perplexed, or at a loss when one has to face the puzzles and paradoxes of life and universe. According to the ancient philosophers, aporia is "neither a poison, nor a remedy; neither evil, nor good; neither inside, nor outside." It was this particular way of reasoning by which Socrates and many other ancient philosophers sought to teach young men to think in philosophical terms and to comprehend aporias inherent in the very nature of phenomena, instead of giving plain answers to complex questions'.
'Aporia' is a multi-ensemble piece written for three separate groups of instruments, led by two or three conductors. Three different combinations of instruments facilitate the comprehension of music and symbolise three different methods of composition: 'natural', 'artificial' and ‘traditional’. The composer as if withdraws from inventing his sound vocabulary, and seems more inclined to arrange and juxtapose things, which have either existed as certain abstract images, or have been preserved over centuries in some tradition.
The string quartet plays gentle chords throughout the piece in a contrapuntal combination with vibraphone and marimba. Harmonies slide successively up and down the tones of natural harmonic series and its inversion. By turns ascending and descending, the strings form an overarching lightning pattern en-crusted with the ornaments of Indian rhythms: they play all 120 of the Sharngadeva's deci-tala patterns, while percussion instruments duplicate these patterns, accelerating twice or thrice the original tempo and then decelerating back to it at regular intervals.
The aggressive ‘monorhythmic’ throbbing of the woodwind quartet, which plays scales shrinking from The half-tones to quartertones, disrupts the orderly sequences of strings, but offers no way out. Divided by periodically intervening rests, six woodwind sections are gradually slowing and cooling down, contracting like a celestial body that initially scatters its energy and then absorbs it back.
Mournful and sepulchral, the brass trio and a bass drum imitate the sound of Lithuanian funereal 'orchestras,' almost extinct nowadays. Unlike the strings and woodwinds, which display entirely abstract material, this last group represents a specific tradition, rhetoric and performance style. The shreds of Catholic hymns are like the scattered debris, left by some decaying culture, a remedy and poison at once, like dilapidated wooden altars in deserted rural churches, which seem to be flaking off at the slightest touch.
Šarūnas Nakas
credits
from Nude,
released December 31, 2007
Gaida Ensemble
Conductor - Jussi Jaatinen
