Baltakas: Poussla, für Ensemble und Orchester

The
ensemble work Pusline was the
starting point for this orchestra piece. The pusline is a Lithuanian string
instrument with an animal’s bladder for a resonating body; the sound is quite
pungent. The poussla could be called a large kind of pusline if it were not
written “pusla” in Lithuanian; therefore, poussla is a neologism, a play on
words belonging to no particular language and containing all meanings of pusten (Ger. – to puff), pousser (Fr. – to push), Blase (Ger. – bladder), blasen (Ger. – to blow), stossen (Ger. – to thrust), drängen (Ger. – to urge), an/vorantreiben (Ger. – to urge/drive
forward), etc. But I especially associate poussla with a specific directness of
expression.

In Pusline I tried to form a nonlinear
dramaturgy, an energy field prominent at every moment, constantly rotating and
providing ever-new listening perspectives. A vibrating object has its own laws
of motion; its amplitude can be large or small, it can move faster or slower,
it can come to a standstill, resume vibrating and set other oscillations in
motion. Such behaviour is very similar to the physical structure of a sound:
its make-up of many partials which themselves vibrate and which are yet have
specific ratios to one another. A sound is like a large wheel with many small
wheels in the gears. The meaning of vibration has no objective; its meaning is
the vibrating itself. This idea forms a basis of nonlinear structure.

Yet Poussla is not an illustration of this process
– I do not even know if this association applies to the essence of the piece at
all. Such an image can be a mode of thought for a composer, but that does not
mean that the resultant music is actually identical to it or even has anything
to do with it. Music is a living entity; it has its own will and the composer
does not have sole power over controlling that entity completely. He can
influence it, initiate it, give it direction, make decisions – but composing is
more of an interplay between the composer and the organism, viz. music. One
gives impulses but receives other impulses back, in turn, which one processes
and which then swing back.

Therefore
I am very skeptical about attempts to describe music in words. Many listeners
are practically obsessed with “understanding,” in the sense of rational,
verbally oriented (“logical”) thinking. Every composer is repeatedly obliged to
write explanatory texts; this is a tradition which developed from the rationalistic
utopia of the 1950s and 1960s and which has transformed onto a kind of
production routine.

This is
senseless, in my opinion, since once does not “understand” music better for
knowing the structure or random details. Nor does the story of the work’s
genesis say anything about the music itself; that is as if describing butter
would bring one closer to the essence of bread, just because they have a “bread
and butter” relationship.

You’re
smiling, aren’t you? – but that is I how I feel when I am supposed to describe
my music. My way out of this situation is to say, “Of course, I’ll do it – but
first, you describe the colour ‘green’ to me. That is necessary for me,”
whereupon the conversation ends and we start to talk about other things.

We must
be clear on the fact that there are various kinds of “understanding.” Music is
a different medium which affects another, non-logical-verbal level. Music only exists
when it is sounding; it does not exist in the thought preceding it, or in the
description of its characteristics, in critiques or analysis. It does not even
exist in the score, which is only a collation of “performance instructions.” It
is only possible to “think” about music within the medium of music itself. A
sound can only be described in terms of another one, and only one sound can be
recalled, not the description of a sound. In that case, one remembers the
description, not the sound. Music is only “understandable” with the help of the
music itself, from within itself.

Besides,
an attempt to approach music on the level of language is doomed to failure
before it even begins, since it develops a “fiction” of music. Very often,
talking about music leads to extremely complex texts which few people can even
read and which entail no greater profit. And believing that one has expressed
anything in words is nothing other than self-deception of perhaps a cry for
help from someone who, in fact, has no grasp of music.

I do not
wish to take that path. I do not proceed on the assumption that listeners can
only perceive a work when they have acquired information about it. No –
listeners need not know anything! They need only be inwardly open to the sound,
to the unknown, to something which they can perhaps capture with the help of
conventional notions. They must also be unafraid if something confronts them
which destabilises their ideological principles or makes them feel
uncomfortable; they must decisively plunge into the world of sound.

Vykintas Baltakas

Translation:
Grant Chorley, 2013