Page 72 - Glasbenopedagoški zbornik Akademije za glasbo v Ljubljani / The Journal of Music Education of the Academy of Music in Ljubljana: Jakob Jež (1928-) Tokovi sodobne zborovske glasbe, leto 14, zvezek 29 / Year 14, Issue 29, 2018
P. 72
SBENOPEDAGOŠKI ZBORNIK, 29. zvezek
Summary
In his modernist search for the pure expression Jakob Je resorts to a clearer formal and
textural reduction, which cleanses his musical language of every redundancy. Initially, he
tests his new ideas within pure instrumental music, in the world beyond the concepts,
beyond any semantic meaning. In the consistent neglecting of tonal centres, Je
approaches dodecaphonic structures.
This leads Je to vocal music and to a more intense interaction of music with the text,
sentence, verse and word, its meaning and the sound of its syllables, morphemes and
phonemes in an elevated musical game. His music becomes a creative combination of
vocal and instrumental language. In modernistic expression, however, he remains loyal to
unique complementary and overlapping coexistence of vocal and instrumental paradigms
(Reflections of Hajam’s Verses, 1967; Iacobi Galli disticha, 1969). Music is not just a
commentary on the text or its complement; a musical narrative grows in a common
correlation between the text and the music itself.
One of the peaks of his musical expression, characterized by the exceeding of the genre
boundaries, is reached in his cantatas. There, he connects the content of a selected text
with the expressive force of modernist musical language, which eludes simple
semantisation of the textual content. His selection of texts shows an ever-intensifying and
increasingly apparent attachment to the world of the distant past, in which he understands
the wisdom that goes beyond the unpleasant reality of modern times, in which the truth
breaks along the rough boundaries of dictation, lies, and self-inflated empty vapidity. It
seems as though Je ’s withdrawal into the world of the past remains archaic, folk, and
star-like, remotely recalling the genuine man’s longing for the “pastoral” beauty of the
most fundamental issues. Je ’s cantatas Do fraig amors (1968), Bri inski spomeniki
(1970) and Pogled zvezd (1974) offer a glimpse into spatially and historically remote
worlds and are painted with a sharp contemporary musical expression in which the
composer finds, as he puts it, “spontaneity, power and conviction” of music.
72
Summary
In his modernist search for the pure expression Jakob Je resorts to a clearer formal and
textural reduction, which cleanses his musical language of every redundancy. Initially, he
tests his new ideas within pure instrumental music, in the world beyond the concepts,
beyond any semantic meaning. In the consistent neglecting of tonal centres, Je
approaches dodecaphonic structures.
This leads Je to vocal music and to a more intense interaction of music with the text,
sentence, verse and word, its meaning and the sound of its syllables, morphemes and
phonemes in an elevated musical game. His music becomes a creative combination of
vocal and instrumental language. In modernistic expression, however, he remains loyal to
unique complementary and overlapping coexistence of vocal and instrumental paradigms
(Reflections of Hajam’s Verses, 1967; Iacobi Galli disticha, 1969). Music is not just a
commentary on the text or its complement; a musical narrative grows in a common
correlation between the text and the music itself.
One of the peaks of his musical expression, characterized by the exceeding of the genre
boundaries, is reached in his cantatas. There, he connects the content of a selected text
with the expressive force of modernist musical language, which eludes simple
semantisation of the textual content. His selection of texts shows an ever-intensifying and
increasingly apparent attachment to the world of the distant past, in which he understands
the wisdom that goes beyond the unpleasant reality of modern times, in which the truth
breaks along the rough boundaries of dictation, lies, and self-inflated empty vapidity. It
seems as though Je ’s withdrawal into the world of the past remains archaic, folk, and
star-like, remotely recalling the genuine man’s longing for the “pastoral” beauty of the
most fundamental issues. Je ’s cantatas Do fraig amors (1968), Bri inski spomeniki
(1970) and Pogled zvezd (1974) offer a glimpse into spatially and historically remote
worlds and are painted with a sharp contemporary musical expression in which the
composer finds, as he puts it, “spontaneity, power and conviction” of music.
72
