Composers on their disabilities: Jānis Petraškevičs on stuttering
Read my interview with contemporary art music composer Jānis Petraškevičs who has stuttering. He lives and works in Rīga, works for acoustic instrumentations. His music has been performed in Austria, Belgium, Canada, Estonia, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK, including once each at the Centre Pompidou, the Biennale di Venezia, Wigmore Hall (London), the ISCM World Music Days, the concert series Musica Viva in Munich, the festival Warsaw Autumn, the festival Ultraschall Berlin, the festival Archipel, Donaueschinger Musiktage, the festival Skaņu mežs (Sound Forest), and as featured composer in AFEKT (festival in Estonia). He has lectured on aspects of contemporary music at the Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music since 2011.
This interviews is part of my collaboration with Berlin based new music magazine POSITIONEN where as guest editor have focused on topics covering music and disabilities. Please read my interviews with JĀNIS PETRAŠKEVIČS, CARLIE SCHOONEES, BENJAMIN STAERN, AILÍS NÍ RÍAIN, MARCO DONNARUMMA, and GEORGIA SCOTT in POSITIONEN print version (in German).
What is your disability?
My disability is stuttering. Since the age of 10 when it really became prominent, I have always had better and worse periods. It is impossible to predict when a better or worse period will come.
Does your disability impact your creative work? If yes, then how?
In my professional life I work as a composer and as a teacher. It has always been important for me to consider my professional life as not being limited by stuttering in any way. It’s true that it doesn’t always work like that in reality, notably, due to stuttering I find it quite challenging to speak at musicological conferences where one is strictly confined to a certain time-span. However, I teach at the Latvian Academy of Music, where I have prepared my lectures in such a way that I always have lots of visual sample materials to back my speech in case the stuttering gets harder.
In relation with my composer’s career — of course, the stuttering is evident whenever I have to communicate — either it’s with the musicians of some ensemble, or a conductor, or a festival director. But I never allow myself to see it as an obstacle for pursuing my artistic goals. It’s true that there are certain situations that I prefer to replace with others, notably, it’s quite hard for me to talk on phone, so I rather carry out the communication via emails instead if possible.
What new things did you discover/learn due to your disability?
My stuttering has made me more aware of the fact that there can be a number of ways for doing certain things. I regard stuttering as not necessarily a bad thing, although I would not choose it deliberately; yet, it is a certain way of speeking, albeit not deliberate. I believe that stuttering has also developed my empathy towards otherness and towards other people in general.
Has your disability affected/shaped your music? If so, how, and which work would you say shows this?
I have a feeling that stuttering has a significant impact on the way I deal with time in music.
More generally, for me music first and foremost is about the density of an extended moment as well as the potentiality that such a moment bears for a new moment to take shape.
I contemplate on the inside of the sound texture — on each and every cell, listening as carefully as possible to their momentum. Is it possible for music to sound like taking birth in front of the eyes of a listener? Such a musical process involves every tiny detail — a harmonic shift, a timbral nuance, a specific articulation — being inspected meticulously.
Perhaps it is my stuttering that has urged me to seek for fluency and connectedness of sonic materials. Yet the attained musical flow is never easy: just like my speech, it is not without obstructions or inner frictions.
The piece that I would like to mention as an example is “Dead Wind” for large orchestra that I composed in 2017/18 on the commission from Donaueschinger Musiktage. There the music unfolds in slow time, which, however, is full of tension, rolling with hitches in a stuttering manner. The piece is about the struggle caused by an inner or outer force which restrains one from moving on smoothly. There are different pressures of varying degrees and changing states of resistence. As the title indicates, dead wind (Gegenwind) is chosen as the main metaphor here. Only when the resistance surpases the power of the dead wind, the music overcomes the fear of stuttering — it stutters freely, turning into a distorted tune.
In what way your disability has shaped your career? Give one example from your career.
In answering to this question, I would like to remember an episode from my life when I managed to overcome stuttering most convincingly. It was during the defense of my doctoral thesis: I had to present my work and to give a 20 minute speech in front of a pretty large audience. I prepared the content of the speech meticulously, however, I was still frightned of how I will manage to deliver it. Yet in some miraculous way I managed to inspire and almost hypnotize myself to such a degree that I delivered the speech with almost no stuttering at all. That is to this day my biggest personal victory over my struggle with stuttering.
How do you imagine a more accessible musical world? What else comes to your mind when thinking about accessibility?
As for my own experience, I have received much warmth and understanding from my colleagues and students. So I can’t complain. More generally, I think it is important to be aware and open to otherness, to the fact that there are many ways people can do certain things.
What principles could be used for creating musical composition for musicians who have your disability?
Regarding stuttering, I don’t think it puts any constraints for performing musicians, except perhaps if the musician is expected to narate during the performance. In such a case I would probably provide the musician with an alternative way to realize the relevant passage.
Does new music have a role to make our musical landscape more accessible? What can it be?
As Latvian composer Gustavs Fridrihsons once said, “all art should be humanitarian, that is the primary aspect of art”. In my view, new music in its very essence positions itself as dealing with otherness, with liminal regions of existence, with subtle emotions, colors and nuances. Thus new music certainly has a role towards inclusivity of composers and musicians with diverse disabilities.
Selection of music composed by Jānis Petraškevičs:
