Animistic Rituals is an ongoing collaboration between composer Þorkell Nordal and guitarist Mark Reid Bulatović. It comprises a series of six pieces for guitar and electronics.
As the composer-guitarist collaboration indicates, this work explores the relationship between performer and their instrument – the agency of a guitarist when they play the guitar. It unfolds the very moment before a string is plucked on the instrument.
The early stage of the work was first presented when Bulatović played Animistic Rituals I, II and III in his master’s degree concert “Dismissal of the Great I” at Sibelius Academy in April 2024.
Ritual I is a study of the sound world that opens up when changing the strings of the guitar.
Ritual II is a short exploration for guitar that exploits a severe limitation: the sounds produced cannot be in open strings or use the fingers of the left hand – a traditional way of playing is not possible.
Ritual III is a study of the guitar’s resonance through a series of percussive actions on the body of the instrument.
As the work develops, five of the six pieces were presented as a full concert in August 2024, when Nordal was chosen as part of the Kesän Nuoret Taiteilijat (“Young Artists of Summer”) concert series organised by Sibelius Academy.
The space of Organo in Helsinki Music Centre was used to its fullest – Bulatović started from the third-floor balcony with his guitar case and gradually walked down as the concert proceeded.
Ritual IV and Ritual V were presented for the first time, which showcased the process of the simultaneous metamorphosis of the instrument and the performer.
At the beginning of Ritual IV, the filtered voice performed by the guitarist blended with the sound of tapping the fretboard – both sounds were seemingly from non-human devices.
Life was bestowed to the performer and instrument in Ritual V, when more colours were added to the performing voice, and melody started to appear on the instrument. In the end, the performer was singing while playing the guitar.
Ritual V finished with the performer dancing with the guitar and leaving the concert hall, as if the sets of rituals had activated the spirits of the guitar that possessed the performer and made him into an agent of music – the sound of the instrument.
The collaboration between composer Þorkell Nordal and guitarist Mark Reid Bulatović is a crucial aspect of the work, both in terms of dialogue during the composition process and in shaping the ritual of the performance.
On top of the exploration of performer-instrument relationship, the work unveils the mysterious composer-performer relationship that adds to another layer of mechanism when one sound is about to be made on the guitar – the composer’s dominant agency of gestures and movements written on the musical score, and the performer’s decision-making in the execution.
There is a constant shift of power in the work, which shakes the hierarchy of composer’s absolute control over performer’s subjectivity during the performance. Thus, the written musical text and the performer’s interpretation can continually evolve.
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