Ryszard Lubieniecki
Kompozycja izorytmiczna nr 6. Opusculum monacordale (2023) 50′
world premiere

Kompozycja izorytmiczna nr 6 is an attempt to revive and activate a 600-year-old treatise using contemporary artistic means. Currently stored in the University Library in Wrocław, Opusculum monacordale begins with a description of the origins of music, before moving on to a lecture on the basics of the medieval sound system. Its source is the monochord – a single-stringed instrument used to measure proportions and thus determine the distance between sounds. The composition follows the course of the treatise, and like it, is divided into two “books,” the first of which is devoted to the components of the system, and the second to the so-called eight tones – modi, or ways of performing monophonic singing. The whole covers the path from the creation of music, the formation of its sound foundations (Monacordum) and ways of presenting them (Manus, Figura), through the study of intervals (Ter tria), the eight tones (Quatuor in locis, also shown in diagrams – Figure), to more compact sound structures (Nunc modulare – “now sing [according to the measure]”).
In its idea Kompozycja izorytmiczna nr 6. Opusculum monacordale is intended to summarize a rather loosely constructed cycle of the titular “isorhythmic compositions,” almost all of which were recorded on an album released by Nasze Nagrania in 2021. Here, too, hidden melodic-rhythmic patterns emerge, internally shaping the flow of some parts (isorhythms), multi-channel electronics recorded using magnetic tapes and containing recordings of the treatise’s content, old manuscripts used as graphic scores, and carefully written instrumental parts (including medieval keyboard instruments), full of unstable, noisy sounds and microintervals.

Performes:
Layers
Zofia Ilnicka – flutes
Ryszard Lubieniecki – portative organ, clavisimbalum
Jakub Wosik – violin

ABOUT THE ARTIST:

Ryszard Lubieniecki

Composer, musicologist, instrumentalist, improviser. He studied composition and accordion at the Academy of Music in Bydgoszcz. In 2023, he completed his doctoral thesis under the supervision of Professor Remigiusz Pośpiech at the Institute of Musicology in Wrocław (where he currently works as an assistant professor), on memory and its traces in late medieval musical and theoretical sources from the Central European region. In addition to the accordion, he also plays medieval keyboard instruments (portative organ and clavicymbalum). Co-founder of the contemporary music trio Layers and the medieval music ensemble Vox Imaginaria, as well as more ephemeral improvised music groups, including Izquierdo/Lubieniecki, Widzicie, Lubieniecki/Rupniewski and Disquiet.

https://soundcloud.com/ryszard-lubieniecki

EVENT

Kompozycja izorytmiczna nr 6. Opusculum monacordale was composed as part of the President of Wrocław Scholarship for 2023.