The world is in a crisis of creativity as technology marches forward

Although he first learned to play the violin, the works of the composer Veljko Kuzmancevica most often they are created on the piano.

He recently presented his new work "Samo kap" at Jahorina Fashion Week, and with this particular composition he wanted to present all the power that only one drop carries.

It is also not the first time that he makes music for fashion events. Almost in recent years, the shows of his wife are designers Verice Rakočević unimaginable without Veljko's music. However, Kuzmančević is very busy, so he also writes for plays, ballet, and films, but he still likes to compose for large orchestras the most. The fact that he is a multi-instrumentalist makes it easier for him, so in addition to violin and piano, he also plays guitar and bass guitar, harp, and wind instruments - Bulgarian kaval and Armenian duduk.

Kuzmančević talks about all this for Magazin...

Your new composition "Samo kap" was recently presented at Fashion Week in Jahorina. Pisaliste is just for this occasion. The name of the composition is interesting, so I wonder if you imagined it as a "drop" that is necessary for such an event?

"Just a drop" is a name that is synonymous with something that is clean, simple and reduced, yet as strong and powerful as the drop itself. Sometimes just one is enough to trigger an avalanche and a series of emotions that are impossible to control. In one drop is contained all our emotions, both good and bad, which forms a tear. The drop circulates in nature and returns to us again and again, falling from a great height. and yet he cannot hurt us. It gives us life, and just such a small thing is sometimes crucial. This event was held on Jahorina, one of the most beautiful mountains whose nature gives birth anew to that miraculous drop that means life.

Most artists also express their ego through their work. How difficult is it sometimes to overcome the same and create a work that will be, say in this case, in the service of fashion?

The ego of every artist stops the moment he becomes realized and aware of himself and his possibilities, without the need to constantly prove himself. An artist grows, and his best allies are time and patience. I wrote a lot of compositions that were performed at my wife's fashion shows, because her fashion shows are mostly thematic and very meaningful, so those themes are also inspiring for working on music. It's kind of natural that her shows have live music if you consider that it's not a practice, just like the studious research and treatment of the subject from which her collection is born is not a practice.

As you said, this is not the first time that fashion has inspired you. Namely, you often make music for the revues of your wife Verica Rakočević. Does this mean that music and fashion cannot do without each other?

No segment of life can be complete without music. I somehow always saw it as the soundtrack of our life. With it we are born and die, we celebrate and mourn... And for me, as the author of program music, it is always a challenge to complete and accompany an event with music, especially if it has a specific theme and message.

You are a violinist, but you also know how to play other instruments - piano, bass guitar, double bass..... Are all the compositions created on the violin and while you are writing, do you try to create a composition that can easily be played, no matter what instrument they are written for to transcribe?

I spend most of my time at piano lessons, because the piano as a polyphonic instrument allows me to play the score I wrote and at the same time hear the main theme and harmony. All my compositions are written mainly in the form of a large symphony orchestra or a smaller string ensemble, where I add wind instruments as soloists, and the smaller forms of quartets or quintets are purposefully written and as such there is no need to rework them for another composition. For me, the most important thing in creating is to be able to hear the orchestra as one organism and unit, and I determine the structure of the orchestra based on the color and tone I want to achieve.

Composer Aleksandar Sedlar emphasized in an interview that when someone says that he plays a lot of instruments, and all of them are strings, for example, it means that thanks to one he has mastered the skill of playing the others as well. However, although they are mostly stringed instruments that you play - violin, double bass, guitar and piano - they do not play the same way. You also play brass instruments. How difficult is it to switch from the violin, which is your main instrument, to, say, the double bass or the piano, and why did you become interested in learning to play the Bulgarian kaval?

It is true that when you master one string instrument, by that analogy you should be able to easily understand other string instruments, with the fact that if someone plays the guitar, it is easy for him to play the bass guitar, but the violin is very difficult. However, the violin is a stringed instrument without frets. People have always said that the violin is the queen of instruments, not so much sonically, but because of its expression and precisely the most complex way of playing. And it really is. For all of us, at some point in our education, the piano is a relatively mandatory instrument, some master it better, some less well and remain only on their native instrument. I've always felt the need for more instruments, and I think that helped me a lot later in writing music, because it was a way to get into the soul of the instrument I'm writing for. To feel its color and to know what its possibilities are. I think it's not enough to just know the tonal range of an instrument, you have to know a lot more about it. What attracted me to the Bulgarian kaval was its color, the tone through which breath and air can be heard, there is also the Armenian duduk, which attracted me with its perfect tenor and dreamy sound, which is the most similar to the human soul. I spent a lot of time with the harp because it gave me a huge width and a sound image where every space is small and tight.

Thanks to the advancement of technology and various programs, today anyone can be a composer. But the fact that a virtual orchestra can play a program is often not practical even when real musicians play a piece. How much does the fact that the author of the composition he wrote know how to play it mean for the one who will interpret that work? How many times do you go through a piece of yours before you officially finish it, even though you wrote it for an orchestra or solo performer?

The development of technology has opened the door for everyone to have the possibility to hear the orchestra in their room, but of course this is not enough and often becomes meaningless when the piece needs to be performed live. You should only take as much of the technology as is sufficient to facilitate your work in some segments. It is impossible to write a serious score and work if you do not know music in a theoretical sense. On the other hand, in contemporary and program music, technology with its virtual instruments and recording method plays an important role because you get a range of sounds that cannot be performed with live instruments. But the most important segment has always been and will remain creativity and ideas. The world is in a crisis of creativity, and technology is marching inexorably forward and advancing by giant steps. I try to never change my first and original theme, because it is the strongest emotion for me in its original form, and while writing the orchestration and building the piece I can play with it. I don't like going over the score a hundred times and rewriting or writing, let it come out...

At the beginning of your career, you worked as an assistant in the studio of Kornelija Kovač. Given that it is tied to some more commercial notes, how do you remember that period and what was that experience like?

I had the privilege of meeting Korneliya and I work with him. I started working with him at a time when the studio was analog, on a technique that was then only available to a few, and when you had to sell your house to buy a serious mixing desk. I learned from him that all that is just a tool and a tool with which we need to take all that emotion out of us and materialize it into sound. Kornelija is a great author and composer who, in addition to popular hits, has serious instrumental works in his oeuvre which, unfortunately, do not have their own place in this area where we live, but that is why they are all over Europe.

Unlike the compositions that were created in the Baroque, Classicism, Romanticism, author's works that were written at the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century, most often do not have an easily memorable melody, or some motif by which we can easily recognize the work, and often the authors tried to introduce some novelty, combine different genres. But that does not apply to your works.

The contemporary music of today's authors and young composers coming out of the academy is the chewed and recycled music of their professors and mentors who hide their average behind the institution and title. If you are a professor of composition whose works are not performed by anyone, you have not asserted yourself and created an audience that loves and respects it, and at the same time you direct every young author who comes to your class and stifle anything that is authentic creativity and freedom in him, I don't know then what is it about. I think that the most important thing for every author is to have his own established style, to be recognizable and to have his own stamp. Those who should take care of music don't do it, we no longer have serious critics and people who are authorities to characterize a work. I do not compromise with my music, neither with the audience nor with critics. It comes out in its original form and the emotion it carries is palatable, understandable and accessible to everyone. I don't need to explain why I built on parallel fifths and whether my seconds are just passing through or I'm deliberately dissonant. Music carries you or it doesn't.

Your all-night concert "Lazarus" is named after a medical syndrome. What did you want to awaken with it and how "dormant" is art in our country?

Lazarus is strength, defiance, hope, resistance to all the anomalies that surround us. He gives life with his emotion and carries in himself a kind of pride and kindness that should be the biggest part of our life. As much as man is a complex being, life puts him in traps until he realizes all the beauty of simplicity. Love and kindness is all that should be on the plate to which we surrender our life and all that we have done and achieved during it. That's the only thing I want to awaken through my music creation and writing. What is a special honor and pleasure for me is that Lazarus was recognized in Carnegie Hall as a work of artistic value, so I received an official invitation from them to be performed there. Maybe at some point, when all the programs of fun character and superficial music are arranged, there will come a moment when someone in this country will recognize that and support our going there.

Your author's opus is rich, but how many of your works are represented in the orchestra's repertoire and do you have to collaborate with them to play them or do they sometimes come to them on their own?

I am lucky and extremely grateful that for several years now, once a year, I have been bringing a large symphony orchestra on stage and presenting my new work. Playing for years with various orchestras and conductors, I managed to have my own orchestra today, made up of the best and most serious musicians this country has. The string section gathers the largest number of people from the RTS symphony orchestra, while the wind players are mainly from the Belgrade Philharmonic, some of them come from Novi Sad. I am very proud of all of them and they are the only relevant indicator and critic for me all these years.

You are no stranger to performing your works with an orchestra as a soloist. Are you always destined to be a soloist, or are you sometimes ready to be part of an orchestra?

I don't like being on stage and I try to appear as a soloist as little as possible, I only do that when it comes to a specific instrument or when I'm with my quintet, then I'm on the piano. I feel the best when I'm in the audience, although the performance of the concert itself is more important for the audience than for me. My moment with the orchestra is after all the rehearsals, in an empty hall during the dress rehearsal, these are the moments when I am moved from the roots and when, despite all the fatigue and preparations, I know why I am doing all this.

The biggest challenge was writing music for the ballet

You wrote a lot for orchestras, but during your career you also had the opportunity to compose for plays and films. Given that applied art is said to be quite demanding because you have to accompany various emotional states and events with music, especially in films and plays, can those moments be inspiring and how difficult is it sometimes to place them in a segment that should last a few seconds each emotion?

Writing music for a ballet, a play or a film is a demanding thing because you are a segment of a work that, when put together, should be a whole. In the film, you have the main theme that runs through different atmospheres, and there the biggest challenge is to guess, in addition to the script, the characters of those characters, the visual experience, the atmosphere... But certainly the biggest challenge for me was the music for the ballet. "Process" created by Kafka novel, it is a wonderful story. Ballet is music, movement, visuals and ambience. That smell of the theater and the stage, the costumes, all that is an integral part of the music as much as the music of the ballet.