Zahradní Ateliér / Garden Atelier

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Forfest Put the Emphasis on the Individual Testimony of the Composer
Radim Bačuvčík

Zdenka and Václav Vaculovič are the husband and wife team that has headed the Forfest’s organisational committee since the festival’s birth fourteen years ago. The future paths that might be taken not just by the Forfest but by contemporary music in general in the future are the subject of this interview. .

What do you see as the greatest success of this year’s Forfest? And what didn’t work so well, what caused you problems?

It would probably be impossible to imagine a festival of contemporary art without problems, Usually there are so many that we don’t even want to talk about them...So I prefer to talk about the good sides, and the performance of Zemek’s 2nd Symphony “the Passion” was – you could say – a satisfaction not just for the composer but for us as well. Of course, with such a monumental work, which in its uncut form represents ninety minutes of music for large orchestra, choir and soloists, you could hardly expect there to be no problems at all putting it on, but all the performers and listeners felt that it was a great idea, and that’s no small achievement.

Forfest is characterised as a festival of contemporary art with a spiritual focus. But from a certain perspective any kind of artistic work is spiritual, if it springs up from the spirit of the author...How would you define spirituality in art and what are your criteria, from this point of view, for the choice of works for the festival?

You’re right. Every creation arising from the spirit can be considered spiritual, but contemporary art is dominated by anything but the spirit. Of course we don’t want to play at being referees who “unerringly” separate the wheat from the chaff. To put it a little frivolously, our activities might be better characterised by paraphrasing the famous voice crying in the wilderness “Prepare ye a way for an art that has not yet lost content and meaning”. It is in this spirit that we praise and encourage every author who doesn’t want to contribute to the general devastation of human values. But back to your question: naturally the problem has many different levels, and that is why we’ve started a colloquium, which every two years provides space for the opinions and visions of leading musicologists and art historians from this country and abroad. There is no answer to your question that would fit into one paragraph in a magazine…

Although the Forfest also involves visual art and poetry, it remains above all a music festival. Do you intend to carry on giving priority to the music element, or will you be trying to give the other fields of the arts a more balanced share in the event?

Today it’s also a financial question, since a good exhibition, with good advertising, costs at least 2-300 000 crown. Also taking into account the well-known inflexibility of fine arts funds and the „caution“ of curators, it seems to us that the music festival model is really more feasible for the moment. Internationally speaking, the music world is linking up much faster, all kinds of things are discussed, and the position of the composer isn’t determined by the incredible caste system that prevails in the art world especially in this country. On the other hand, in the history of art the linking-up of different disciplines has always been enriching for all of them, and that is a direction we want to move in....
 
Unlike last year, this year there was no opera. Was its replacement this year with a play deliberate or is it difficult to find a good quality opera production?

The Forfest is first and foremost a composers‘ festival,. In recent years the operas Coronide by Vít Zouhar and Endymio by Tomáš Hanzlík have appeared on the programme as particular kinds of innovative development in music. Similarly, this year’s “deviation” into spoken drama was a decision based on the fact that the play in question had music by Martin Dohnal. Our primary concern was to follow the line of the middle generation of Czech composers. Our having operas is therefore a matter of exceptions – we leave systematic mapping of this area to others.

At the colloquium there was talk of the spiritual element in non-classical music. What is your attitude to the possibility of extending the musical range of the Forfest and for example presenting alternative or jazz ensembles that have an accent on spirituality in their music?

Today the term “alternative” includes almost anything you can think of. It’s an area in which you can find plenty of marvellous and inspired music, but also plenty of toothless music as well. Even so-called „relaxation music“, with its very obvious commercial subject, flirts with spirituality – so how can one get one’s bearings? Obviously the existing labels aren’t much help here. We need to take a case-by-case approach. In the course of the years we’ve had groups here from the MCH Band to DAMA DAMA or AGON, and soloists like Iva Bittová and Jessicy Karraker from the USA. And for example we should like to invite Ensemble Jouissance fro, Australia, Aleph from France, the British Hilliard Ensemble – the list would be a long one and there’s no need to weary readers. We don’t think this area of contemporary music can reproach us for ignoring it.
As far as Jazz is concerned, that first needs some definition of terms. For example Emil Viklický’s career leaves us wondering what jazz actually still is today. In principle of course we’ve nothing against jazz, but we want to prevent a certain commercialisation of the festival.

At this years Forfest a recording of the student composers’ group from AMU known as Konvergence was a great success. Have you considered giving more space to students and graduates of the academies and conservatories, including the Kroměříž schools, and perhaps opening workshops for the musical public and for composers who are not yet established?

Togetehr with Andreas Kröper and Víte Zouhar we’re thinking of holding simultaneous composing and performance courses focused on contemporary music. The orientation of the festival could give such courses the necessary distinctive identity, but for a project like that to survive given the huge competition, it has to have an international dimension from the very beginning. And that’s no easy matter, as I’m sure you can imagine.

The prestige of the festival has been growing from year to year. Have you thought of prolonging it or expanding it to include other towns?

In fact this year we held the exhibition of works by Californian artists, Mind Trips, in the chateau in nearby Chropyň, which is part of the Kroměříž Museum Complex. The local town hall was very forthcoming and so the collaboration was a pleasant experience and shows the possibility of further projects in future years. The participation of the Zlín Bohuslav Martinů Philharmonic in the opening concert is a sign that future premiere concerts could be held in Zlín as well. Here we could also mention the rather curious offer we have received from Mr. Theodore Wiprud of New York, who suggests that his festival of spiritually orientated music, Beyond Words, could play host to some Forfest concerts in America.
Generally it seems to be the case that anyone who thinks and plans in more than purely regional terms sooner or later has to start considering co-operation between more than one town or country. The possibilities could be fantastic - who wouldn’t be interested in something like that? On the other hand, looking at several mega-projects in Western Europe based on the same principle, we’ve noticed that they often doesn’t work. Ideas can be transmitted, but they can’t be blown up like airbeds. Our primary concern is not the prestige of the event, but just putting across a diametrically different view of contemporary art. Large concerns are self-congratulatory and pay no attention to the quest whisper of the muses. In contrast, however, contemporary arts projects would immediately collapse if dependent only on local sources of support. It is quite clear that international link-up is essential and the direction of the future, and by the way it is already the only argument that all the funds, local authorities or ministries listen to everywhere in Europe. Practice has taught us how to economise, and we are beginning to have an inkling of how such a thing might work without the unnecessary bureaucratic ballast...

The problem of contemporary serious music is the very limited response it gets from the public. What in your view could music do to succeed against the competition of the lighter muses and given the media pressures?

One might have an interesting argument about what it is really is today that gets public response. And is the indifference of the broader public a problem for people who honour good art? If tens of thousands of fans come to a stadium to see a football or music star, then the television population of the country is interested for a few short minutes. And let us not be mistaken – such phenomena have one interesting characteristic – they are not linked up in time or space. After a week they don’t interest anyone at all at home or abroad. But Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony flew round the whole world in an incredibly short time after it was written and every time it has been performed since then it has been a major event. What does it matter that it is for a supposedly negligible percent of the public? Genuine art is interesting even after centuries – that is how the optimistic conclusion should sound more ot less. We are well aware that the television programme planners are giving themselves headaches night and day over today’s depressing reality. How can the chain of all possible dependences be broken? Does the consumerist majority really have the right to push the cultural minority to the margins of broadcasting time? And looked at from the point of view of decades maybe the minority of today is not such a minority, because what remains as generations pass is neither football nor pop music

Many world class composers and performers have been coming to the Forfest for more than a decade. In your view where is contemporary music moving today? In the last decade do you think there have been signs of any general trend, for example to a new wave of minimalism, regional inspirations of a return or tonality? Or has creation become an entirely individualised matter? Would you say that there is a more pronounced spiritual elements in contemporary serious music today than there was a decade ago?
 
Your questions, which are all very complicated, also contain a ready answer. Yes, although these returns testify to a tenacious search; 21st-century man urgently needs something, lacks something, and his hunger has the proverbial hundred heads. We are evidently the witnesses of a turning point, a period in which the borders of time, space, styles and genres are all breaking down. In the concept behind our festival it is the composer who has the key position. Emphasis on the entirely particular individual personality, truly authentic testimony free of media pressures and tendentious distortions necessarily reveals the spiritual “reverse face” of contemporary art.
As far as your last question is concerned, one certainly can’t ignore the enormous growth in spiritual themes. Of course, one can ask whether the interest wasn’t in fact there before, and hasn’t only come to light as a result of the more rapid communications of contemporary globalisation. But you will find hidden or open allusions to the spiritual practically everywhere. And so this hunger for something else will certainly grow....