Tension, climax, release. That’s not simply familiar but one of the most fundamental progressions we encounter in all forms of art. So it’s been fascinating to hear how Lithuanian composer Justina Repečkaitė sidesteps and reconfigures this most basic dramatic contour repeatedly on the first album devoted to her music, Tapestries. That’s not the point of her music, i hasten to add, and in fact Repečkaitė goes to great lengths to articulate the conceptual thinking behind each of the eight works included here. Yet those backstories, while important (and interesting), nonetheless also come to feel like so many starting points, moments of ignition leading to music that travels far beyond their inspirational origins, occupying sustained, demonstrably heightened states.
That’s true even of the humblest work on the album, the barely two-minute Datura for solo trombone. In some ways this miniature succinctly encapsulates a lot of what we hear in the other pieces. It’s music caught in a weird in-between behaviour, as if the instrument were trying to speak, and the player trying to sing, both at once. What emerges is an amusingly unhinged music that’s tense and at ease simultaneously, trapped and free, constrained yet determined, bristling with energy, never letting up.
Something similar can be heard in the flute and tape piece Incantare, composed in 2018. When i heard this piece a couple of years ago, in a new bass flute configuration, my impression was of a melding of acoustic and electronic, but heard in its original form, it speaks differently. As in Datura, there’s a perpetual tension, not simply between flute and tape, but more fundamental notions of articulation. Vocal sounds are reduced to an uncanny, fry-like croak – like a single vowel infinitely stretched out – and low growls, against which the breath and notes of the flute could hardly sound more effortless. And like the trombone, the flute also tends toward song, its buzzing tones blending with and vibrating against the ongoing croak wall. Heightened from the outset, there’s a whiff of something ritualistic about it – suggestive of throat singing and drones – before the flute abruptly launches into action. Filigree percussive key noises and wild pitches are projected in front of a new backdrop of high hovering tones, their source and nature unidentifiable. The work’s title comes to the fore when, following a lovely sequence where it’s as if the entire music has become fixated, a mix of quiet and abrupt blurts ensues. There’s the impression here that what went before was incantation, with the hypnotic results now coming into being. An act of spell-casting that, as the tranquillity dissipates, overflows with energy once more.
A different kind of tension arises in Sturnus vulgaris cohibitus, a work for piano embellished by transducers placed within it. The latter generate a panoply of unusual calls that sound animalistic; a menagerie lurking beneath the piano lid. The pianist picks out shapes in its midst, establishing another tension between these two, seemingly utterly different sonic entities. Yet together, though incongruous, they’re compelling, continually begging questions about relationship: independent? parallel? responsive? One thing seems clear, that over time the transduced ‘animal’ world increasingly takes over, confined but, like a synthetic skylark, emitting ever more emphatic streams of life-filled song.
The intoxicating effect of this work is echoed in La Cité des Dames, where six sopranos theoretically vocalise a mediaeval text about female virtue. In practice, here too is tension, oscillating between two seemingly irreconcilable articulations, one sustained, the other staccato. The same questions arise about relationship: do the staccato notes tease out overtones, indicate direction, place structural markers – or are they just the polar opposite of the cloud of pitches stretched out before them, or even antagonistic? Repečkaitė provides an answer through an unexpected gradual homogenisation, leading to a wonderful, high-register blending, where the accents are absorbed and assimilated into the texture. Later, when they re-emerge, they now speak as loud calls from a place of ecstasy. It’s an extraordinary sequence, and as it continues the accents increasingly take on an implication curiously absent hitherto: communication. Where previously they felt like abstract bullets fired into the soft flesh of the music, now they’re revealed as shots of pure syllable. The text is atomised beyond our ability to parse, but as their register falls and the staccatos take over, we’re left with a prevailing sense that the entire elevated atmosphere was impelled by these unknowable words.
The ensemble work Tapisserie also harnesses short and sustained notes to different but no less effective ends. Forceful staccatos from the piano are the default position here, becoming reinforced and extended by various instruments. What ensues is an uncomfortable mode of momentum, combining force and hesitancy. There’s no tension between the players here – everyone’s evidently working closely together, almost obsessively – but in the continuity, the music’s progress coming in so many lurches and pauses. As the ensemble starts pushing, one senses pent-up frustration, as if everyone were channelling all their energy into each and every surge. In between them, sparse motes of pointillism, the nothing surrounding the all. The fact that the players persist so doggedly and so fervently – ultimately thwarted, crashing out at the end – is what makes the tension in this piece so unique and so palpable.
To an extent it’s hard not to hear Vellum, for orchestra, as a kind of alternate reality of that piece. Its highly arresting opening is filled with notes that sag or suspend, interspersed with sharp thuds. Again that long-short duality, yet here momentum is irrelevant. No force, no hesitancy; in its place yet another form of tension, at once restrained and volatile. As the accents were melded into the broader texture in La Cité des Dames, here too they’re integrated, energetic surface elements of an electrified musical condition. Structurally, Vellum is fascinating; the tension gives the work the most curious impression yet of a kind of dramatic simultaneity: both building to something climactic while maintaining a state of plateau. Not so much anti-climactic as almost tantric. Throughout much of it, there’s a suggestion of potential uproar, of an orchestra ready and able to let rip. Yet not willing; Repečkaitė focuses on the ongoing intensity, never releasing it but instead sculpting and channelling it, until finally calming it.
There’s a lot going on throughout Tapestries – it is, in the best sense, a lot to take in, and every piece benefits from being heard numerous times, to savour and appreciate its intricacies. Yet the works that start and end the album, though no less involved, nonetheless have an immediacy that sets them apart. Chartres for string orchestra is the earliest work included here, composed in 2012. It speaks with a sonorist directness and intensity, opening with fixed, strident, radiant notes. As they slide downwards, they slip through new chord configurations, though instances where they appear to resolve are fuzzy and / or imaginary. One or two high pitches protrude, other make their presence known, and when lower registers enter there’s more sense of clarity. Like a fan slowly closing up, the texture appears to move inward, in the process obfuscating chordal certainty again. Until, that is, a focal point of sorts, around a third of the way through, and also a catalytic moment, triggering slashes to begin. Weirdly, though the bow slashes feel volatile, the music seems to have mysteriously attained some kind of harmonic resolution, though once more it’s proved illusory. Pulsations start, the whole texture growing tremulous and swollen. It reaches a point not unlike parts of La Cité des Dames, high and sustained, peppered with sharp pizzicato accents, suggestive of a higher state, something euphoric. As everything evaporates, just the pizzicatos remaining, it feels like the complete opposite of a fizzle: rather, a whelming, an overload of feeling and expression, echoing Incantare, each pizzicato a single iota of croak from a voice pushed beyond articulation.
That might also be an apt summation of the most sonically complex (and most recent) work here, La muë, composed in 2024 for the unlikely combination of serpent, children’s choir and electronics. The music is already in an elevated state of suspension from its inception. The serpent acts to modulate this, causing rumble below and vibration within, as the texture adjusts and responds to its presence. Again a soundworld of radiance, again an interplay of suspension and attack, though here they feel like opposite ends of the same continuum, acting in sympathy. The serpent unleashes the most extravagantly striking series of loud buzzing accents, so startling it has the effect of silencing everything. The voices are reduced to bare vestiges of whisper; minutes pass before they begin again.
What’s so captivating about La muë is its synthesis of the key elements from the other works on the album, above all a tense interplay between mellifluous and granular sounds. It’s less polarised, more subtle; suspensions purr gorgeously, low tones ripple, gurgle and growl, post-dronal, and the whole takes on the profound air of a rite, momentous and ceremonial. The serpent, performed in this incredible recording by Patrick Wibart, brings to mind the trombone of Datura, expanded from that miniature act of expression into this massive convoluted display. The choir, meanwhile, though more verbally discernible than that of La Cité des Dames nonetheless keeps meaning at a distance, more about the act of vocalising than conveying isolated packets of meaning. If anything, the serpent speaks more directly in its angular song than words ever could, riding the work’s plateau to a place beyond pitch, perhaps beyond music. A stunning conclusion of focused noise, like a vast, epic exhalation.
This is music of challenging, rewarding complexity. These works are bold and unforgettable, mingling strangeness and immediacy in a way that’s not merely extremely uncommon, but extremely hard to achieve. The album’s title, Tapestries, is ideal; the fabric of these pieces is substantial, sumptuous, weighty, laden with abstruse designs and patterns, and above all, shockingly beautiful.
Released by Music Information Centre Lithuania, Tapestries is available on CD and download.
