Lukas Sukharev

Good afternoon, Lukas! Today, in the Republic of Komi, there is no established compositional tradition and incorporating folk music into contemporary academic music remains the exception rather than the rule. Tell us about the context and motivations behind your composition.

(LS) — Indeed, Komi folklore is not integrated into the contemporary compositional practice at all. To fill this creative gap is my main motivation. Those few professional composers that live in the Republic either work within conservative composing traditions, which took shape during the Soviet era before the avant-garde movement emerged, or do not actively compose. The young generation of professional Komi composers is practically nonexistent. Thus, contemporary Komi art offers a vast space for the most diverse kinds of music.

I was also very keen to work with the Assya Kya ensemble ["Асъя Кыа" in the Komi language — Trans.] affiliated with the Komi Republican Philharmonic. I have a personal connection to the ensemble; my percussion teacher of 13 years, Alexander Titarenko, is the creative director of Assya Kya. He first commissioned me to write for the ensemble during my third year at the conservatory. The offer imposed certain requirements on the aesthetics and the complexity of music, both in terms of performance and reception. Not all folk performers have formal musical training, and the repertoire of a regional philharmonic, especially for a folk ensemble, noticeably differs from the contemporary music scene in federal culture hubs like Moscow or St. Petersburg. As part of this commission, I wrote music for dance numbers, for a choir piece as well as for a short play. The experience immersed me in traditional intonational and sound material, thus instilling in me a general sense and understanding of the national philosophy.

I felt the urge to engage with folk music like this again, but this time do it outside of narrative and timing constraints, compose freely, write a piece exactly as I hear it, independent of institutional requirements. These are the two motivations that led me to write the piece we are talking about.

In your opinion, what is the way to incorporate traditional, folk, indigenous material into contemporary art? To what extent does the tradition change or get distorted, when it gets displaced and transplanted into a foreign context?

(LS) — This is an age-old question that dates back to the very moment when composers first began to reinterpret folk material. My composing teacher used to jokingly misquote Mikhail Glinka and say: "The people create music, and we are composers." ["It is the people who create music; we artists merely arrange it." — Mikhail Glinka, Trans.] In a way, this is very apt. To outline my ethical position roughly, I would say that, for me, working with folk music is not an attempt to reconstruct the tradition or to represent it "authentically", but a way to reflect on my own origins, my memories, and my connection to the place where I grew up. Here, the folk source material acts as a medium for personal artistic expression rather than a subject of ethnographic study. Folklore as such suffers no damage and serves as a starting point for the composer's subjective reflections. My piece is neither a documentation of a ritual nor a reconstruction of a tradition — it is original music born from contact with folk material.

Here I must clarify: I am only part-Komi, perhaps a quarter at most on my mother's side. Nevertheless, I was born, raised and educated in the Republic of Komi so I can confidently say that I am connected to the land, I am not foreign to Komi culture. This particular act is intended to shine light on what is happening to Komi heritage today — the gradual decline, erasure, and blurring of the culture — and to document some of its original texts, melodies, and traditions.

Today, many regional musical and linguistic traditions are fading from everyday life. It happens for a variety of reasons: urbanisation, globalisation, the evolution of communication, and the extinction of rural environments, where these traditional practices existed naturally. Komi culture is no exception. I find it important to, at least partially, document and reinterpret such material in art, to offer a connection to it, to maintain its place in modern culture.

When it comes to attempts at translating tradition into art, discussions and criticism around appropriation occur predictably and reasonably. It is vital to maintain a distance and remember that any individual art — and a composer is always an individualist — will inevitably lean toward the subjective. Engaging with tradition in the realm of art is always an act of reimagining and, therefore, of distortion. Nevertheless, a great deal still depends on the composer's intention. If the intention is to tell someone, anyone at all, about the tradition — in conversation or during an exam — that is a path worth taking.

When we were discussing your piece with Ekaterina Antonenko, the director of the Intrada choir, we agreed that even a cursory glance at the score is enough to notice how extremely challenging your music is to perform. How would you describe the specific complexity of this piece?

(LS) — I knew from the start that the music would be complex. However, I see that complexity as inseparable from the very content of the music. I sense no disharmony in the deliberately complex musical language.

My composition includes texts of traditional laments for dying husbands, fathers, and sons. Those texts exist in the context of extreme human experiences and are inevitably marked by the highest degree of expressive intensity, which stems from the very situation of profound, irreversible change. Thus, the complexity of my piece is to convey the emotional essence of this music in its original setting. It helps to preserve the internal energy of the material through transferring it into contemporary music.

As for the musical language, its complexity can be broken down into several components that, on their own, are rather simple. First of all, the language of the performance is unfamiliar to musicians. The Komi language is not studied in conservatories; it is neither English, nor Italian, nor German, nor even Russian. The pronunciation is rather specific, which poses a difficulty in this particular context.

Secondly, the rhythm. A complex rhythm is a recurring component of my compositions, owing to my background as a percussionist. However, that is not the only reason. If you look through a book of folk laments, you will find that they are usually notated in odd time signatures, like 13/8 or 17/8, which has to do with the organic flow of spoken lamentations, the natural rhythm of spoken text. The very act of, first, conveying the tradition on paper through notation and, then, translating it into the language of contemporary music adds to the overall complexity. While the natural rhythmic flow is inherent in traditional performance, here it is imposed by the composer. Perceiving the organic rhythm together with other musical components proves to be a complex challenge.

Thirdly, the harmonic language. Ritual practice does not include any harmonic structures, so I shape them in a way that seems fitting and beautiful. Modal trichords and tetrachords float and flicker, barely relate to one another, share no tonal centre and no intonational ground.

Finally, a rapid tempo. This composition is a flow that is meant to unsettle, to shift between points of tension and resolution. All this combined produces complexity as a whole.

I must emphasize, this complexity is not complexity for its own sake, it has nothing to do with a desire to make the music "difficult" for show. The goal is to create an acoustic atmosphere where the performance could at least approximate the emotional and psychological intensity of the ritual context from which this material emerged.

You have said that your piece does not have distinct sectioning, though within this monolith there is a clear opposition of two genres: laments and lullabies. Tell us more about the role of this juxtaposition.

(LS) — I am not an expert in ethnomusicology, so I perceive laments and lullabies, first and foremost, as a listener or as an accidental witness to a ritual, driven by curiosity. In my opinion, the genres are surprisingly similar yet simultaneously opposite.

The main difference lies in the fact that these genres exist in very different stages of a human life. Lullabies are sung to a child before sleep up to the age of ten or twelve, while laments are sung during death, immediately after, or at a wake. Between them there are wedding laments that mark a third point in life.

In addition to the context of performance, the genres are different musically. A lament is usually an improvised verbal flow, with no fixed words, harmonic or rhythmic patterns. Its purpose is not musical but ritual; to accompany a transition — of a woman from one home to another, of a man from this life into the next. For example, some laments are recorded without any musical notation, they are represented by extensive passages of text simply because there is nothing to be notated. A lullaby is different. It is always a clear, simple, repetitive melody with fixed text and imagery, the music of lullabies is not improvised.

Nevertheless, laments and lullabies have a lot in common. Mainly, the motif of transition, from life to death or from wakefulness into sleep, oblivion, nothingness. A more surprising point of connection are the so-called "death lullabies" during which the singer wishes illness and misfortune upon the child in order to deceive evil spirits and drive them away. Such imagery brings lullabies and laments closer to each other. Additionally, even though the melodies are fixed, the lyrics of lullabies can sometimes be improvised, which is similar to the improvisation of laments — these are the examples I incorporated into my piece. Finally, the genres are close in their recitative structure; both are a kind of speech, with different levels of expression, yet without a drawn-out lyrical quality.

The contrast between the repetitiveness of the lullaby and the improvisational verbal flow of the lament is where I started from. I set these genres free and watched them interact.

Within these genres you use the so-called extended vocal techniques — tell us more about them.

(LS) — The vocal techniques can easily be added to the list of complexities in my piece. Speaking of them separately, they were not intended to complicate the music. On one hand, they are a part of my personal musical language; on the other, they are an indispensable element of contemporary music which often lacks a stable form and a consistent harmonic system.

There is a different explanation: the complex vocal techniques add to the emotional aspect of the ritual context. They evoke the tension of the ritual without accurately reconstructing it. The abrupt vocal shifts and various combinations serve as a challenge both for the singers and the listeners. Those listeners who are not deeply acquainted with contemporary music encounter a new imagery, a new type of listening that throws them off balance and provokes discomfort. I think music has to raise questions, be in a way uncomfortable for the listener, encourage them to reflect on what they are hearing.

Many techniques are inherent to the tradition. If you study old phonographic recordings, you will notice that the singing itself is rather extreme. There are women that wail in a high voice in the chest register, there are special "lamenters" that imitate real weeping, the sounds of strained vocal cords, voicing literal sobs and whimpers. Such singing sounds expressive and unusual in the realm of academic music, the techniques are considered "extended" — however, in folk music, they are a part of the invisible, unwritten score that only exists in the singer's imagination.

Many of such techniques, among which there are various sighs, microglissandi, subtones, can be considered extended, when taken out of their original context. In the score for my piece, I try to make these peculiarities audible, to transfer them into contemporary music, where they are articulated and perceived differently