In the First World War, a battle took place on the territory of present-day Albania, where the British army was on one side of the front, and the Bulgarian army on the other. Alexander Tomas Matjusson’s Scottish great-grandfather fought on one side, his Bulgarian great-grandfather on the other. “Only because these two guys survived there, I’m here. And if the Berlin Wall hadn’t fallen, my parents wouldn’t have met either. This is how world history has affected the fact that I’m here at all and this conversation can happen right now,” says 31-year-old Aleksandrs, a musician and composer with Scottish and Bulgarian blood, but we speak Latvian. The common feature of the Bulgarian and Latvian languages is that there are not many hisses, so it is easier, and Aleksandrs – unlike many who have lived in Latvia for much longer – learned it surprisingly quickly. Otherwise, he has not allowed his friends to talk to him at all since he moved to Latvia, because he also found love here and recently got engaged – the hands of Aleksandar and his chosen one are decorated with vintage rings. The grandmother – a scion of Bulgarian aristocrats – discovered the location of the treasure chest of her ancestors, which was hidden during the communist era, shortly before her death and said that one half of it belongs to Alexander, the other to his brother.
Our conversation is followed by many more fascinating stories about Alexander’s ancestors, most of all about his grandfather, who, when he was almost a child, survived the camps, where he was tortured with electric shocks and saw his friends die before his eyes. Once he ran away and swam down the Danube in winter, when the water was ice cold. Fortunately, he was freed, went to Sofia, studied to be a dentist, and one of the instructions he left to Alexander, how to survive in any conditions, is to be excellent in some field, because then you will always be needed by others.
Munich temper
Since October 2023, Aleksandrs Matjussons has been the head of the Musical Department of the Latvian National Theatre. He avoids commenting on what happened in the theater before he started working, but now he gets to know the people of the theater, who received him very responsively, and the performances with great interest. Before going to watch I play, I dance production, Aleksandrs has carefully read Raini’s original.
Aleksandar’s education and experience allowed him to occupy this position, also during our conversation at the House of Culture Awakening In the sound selection of Latvian popular music of different times, there is almost no song he is not familiar with. While living in Munich, he met the Latvian Linards Kalniņas, who was a member of the Latvian choir during his studies in this city. Lime conductor and invited Alexander to accompany the choir with the piano. When Linards returned to Latvia, his place as conductor in the choir was taken by Aleksandrs for two years. Here again, history must be invoked – Aleksander would not have been able to get to know and fall in love with Latvian culture if it had not been for the occupation and the course of Latvian refugees in the forties, and if there had not been a movement of Latvians in exile in Munich, which had actively maintained Latvianness there since the time of the USSR.
Arriving in Munich can also be explained by a happy coincidence of circumstances: Alexander had chosen to learn German at school, because English is one of his native languages, and both parents – both his father is Scottish and his mother is Bulgarian – have successfully connected their lives with English philology. Having learned the German language, Alexander was able to study in it, besides, education in Germany was relatively cheap and he could afford it.
Realizing early on that he wanted to do music, he initially trained as a concert pianist, and at the same time gained comprehensive knowledge by reading his parents’ entire library and growing up in five countries where his parents went as English language teachers. Alexander has also enjoyed the possibilities of electronic musical instruments, but now prefers acoustic instruments, stressing that if they are fully mastered, no less interesting sounds can be obtained.
During his studies in Munich, Alexander has participated in more than thirty theater performances, both as a composer and a performer. “It was a very valuable experience and also a challenge, because I often had to work with people who had a completely different understanding of things, but I’m glad that I managed to be open, to find a way to work together, even if we disagreed with each other on many issues. Today it’s a problem because people only want to talk to those who have the same opinion as them. Why do I like working in theater? Because you get to know yourself better by creating something with others. There has to be a dialogue – the wise Greeks already said before Plato, for whom all books are dialogues.”
With pancy lightness
One of Aleksandar’s plans is to attract young Latvian composers to write music for theater performances, but he emphasizes that he wants to work with professionals. It is possible that cooperation will be formed with the students of the Latvian Academy of Music and they will be given the opportunity to write music for the thesis performances – Aleksandrs with his experience will help them understand the dramaturgy of performances, bring good ideas to compositions.
Once, Alexander could be seen in action at the club Aleponia, in which Linard Kalniņas group DJ Ambulance invited to take a look at the process of making an arrangement of a song, and it was visible how professionally apt, at the same time, with Pancian lightness and enthusiasm, rhythmically and gracefully gesturing, Alexander explained his suggestions and corrections.
Alexander also has a music project with Linard Fucked I Meyk the Heavy Metal, which is witty and bold not only with the uncomfortable name: the musicians have recorded one album and performed concerts in Latvia, each of which is considered an amazing mix of different genres and cultures of peoples, which has never been experienced before. Aleksandrs, however, wants to put his activity aside in our conversation, because now his priority is work at the National Theater. Before composing, Aleksandrs also studied musicology in Munich and worked as a music critic. Just before our conversation, he received a happy message from the editors of a serious magazine – an article about musical psychology, which he wrote two years ago and had already forgotten, but now it has waited its turn, will finally be published.
Classic reconstruction
Aleksandrs started researching the National Theater sheet music archive, which has not been touched for decades. “I don’t understand how it never occurred to anyone to organize and digitize it before, because the archive contains extremely valuable materials: the manuscripts of Jāzep Vītola and Alfrēdas Kalniņš – music that has not been played since the time of the first independent state of Latvia. There is not only Latvian music there – I also find such wonders that have been lost to European culture. For example, there is one Austrian composer represented in the archive, who is not one of the most famous, but was known in his time, and I found orchestral parts composed by him, it is music from a show, probably still from Russia of the tsar’s time, and it does not appear in the lists of his compositions at all. String parts are missing there, Vitol also has orchestral compositions in which several parts are missing. I have an idea to reconstruct them – to compose them in his style, analyzing his other compositions. Maybe we could also organize concerts, in which these works are heard. This culture is not only ours, but the culture of the whole of Europe and the world. Right now, in times of crisis, it is important how we preserve it and do not leave it forgotten,” says Alexander.
The head of the Musical Department of the National Theater intends to supplement the archive with musical notes of the new performances, so that they do not disappear and are available in 2222. “That’s why writing sheet music is a very important skill for composers, because it builds abstract thinking – you can imagine the sound in your head. A sheet music is not music, it’s an instruction. If you write it down exactly, another person can play it exactly as you imagined it,” he adds.
Technique allows you to let go
Aleksandr points out that there is a particular tendency in the modern music environment – there are people who are called composers, even though they don’t know how to play any instrument, because they work only with electronics. Technology has become much cheaper, everyone can record and publish something. “They are not professionals, but amateurs, but they do not understand it themselves, and the general level falls. These people lose touch with reality and are not ready to put in the work if success can be achieved in the same way. It is very bad if success is the goal. If you need attention, then is your personal problem – everyone needs attention, but the moment you make art a tool to get attention, it loses its value and dies. It’s probably always been that way, but thanks to technology, it’s now visible to everyone. They is ninety percent of all music that is made today, and I’m not just talking about pop music – there are composers who study at music academies and they have the same problem. It’s not fair that a composer doesn’t write music that’s in his head, but thinking about what others will like. It may sound brutal, but in this case you make the music a mush and you are a pimp. The task of art is not to please, but to communicate with us. Why is Rainis still powerful, like Shakespeare and Orwell? There is something human in their works a depth that will always be relevant,” says Alexander. He is critical, but there is no note of hopelessness in what he said, but a belief that he can turn something for the better with his work. And he has chosen Latvia as the country in which to implement it.
“Bulgarians often say – and Latvians do the same – if there were no years of communism, Bulgaria would be like Switzerland now… You know, it would probably be better, but we are all products of history. Therefore, it is more important to look ahead and think about what we can do now. We can cry about the past, which we cannot change, but we can change what is now and, hopefully, influence the future with it,” concludes the musician.
At least I won’t be eaten
Alexander also has a very skeptical attitude towards artists who constantly count on the support of various foundations and often create works with the money obtained there, which no one needs afterwards. “This problem is not so relevant in Latvia yet. For example, in Germany there are a lot of funds and it is easy to get funding. There are artists who work just to show their colleagues how cool they are, because no one else is interested, and they don’t do any advertising either. Asking tax money for something like that is just shameless. What right do I have to play a big artist who knows everything better than others? People often want to avoid responsibility. If you want to realize your ideas, go find the money yourself or put yours in. I always say what my grandpa told me: be great, never stop learning, try to do something better today than you did yesterday. I hope I stick to it until my last breath. The moment you start thinking that you you can’t do that, you’re done,” says Alexander harshly, who decided not to cooperate with foundations at all during his studies in order to be completely independent.
“My existence depended on the jobs I found myself, because then I could be sure that I would not be lazy. I worked all kinds of jobs and found orders in my field as well – one was so good that I finally got rid of money anxiety. With this money, I am currently building for myself studies in Riga. Yes, now I work for state money, so I feel even more responsible to people for quality. I live here and feel myself a part of Latvian society. It is important how we want to present ourselves to Europe and the world. As people who sleep post-Soviet hangover, or as those who are proud of having survived, preserved their identity, language, music. Bulgarians had the Ottoman Empire for 500 years, Latvians – the Russian Empire and German nobles, but through all those times – they are still Bulgarians and Latvians in the world. It doesn’t matter if I’m a foreigner here or what, the main thing is attitude and responsibility. There are many Latvians who don’t have this attitude. There is a joke in Bulgaria that Bulgarians themselves love Bulgarian culture the least. In Latvia, I think, it’s not that crazy,” says Aleksandrs.
I contrast our popular saying that every Latvian’s favorite food is another Latvian, and my conversation partner is happy about that: “That’s very good – at least they won’t eat me!”
2024-01-14 10:38:59
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