 ‘The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.’ Isaiah Berlin, Russian-British philosopher and cultural historian, pinpointed the difference between two opposing types of human beings (including artists) by citing the Ancient Greek poet Archilochus. In one camp there are the foxes, eet of foot and adaptable, attracted by a myriad of things. In the other there are the hedgehogs: persistent, unswervingly thorough creatures, ‘who’, as Berlin puts it, ‘relate everything to a single central vision, one system, less or more coherent or articulate, in terms of which they understand, think and feel’. Milica Djordjevic´, a native of Serbia, is still in her early thirties: far too young to be pigeonholed. Nevertheless, judging by all she has achieved so far, she has to be on the side of the hedgehogs. She is pursuing her own, steady course with determination and great discipline; indeed her composi- tions are so clearly members of the same family, with numerous shared characteristics, that it might almost seem as though she were tirelessly writing and rewriting the same piece. On closer observation, however, this impression soon dissipates. By concentrating on a few, clearly de ned issues, by focusing on a comparatively small segment of perceptible reality she is honing our senses. She is sharpening them, training them to pick up – with the keenest accuracy – microscopic changes and alterations that are very slight to begin with but which almost always multiply dramatically as a piece progresses. Sky limited is the title of a piece for string orchestra that Djordjevic´ wrote in 2014; although it is certainly true that, as she herself has said, she is not transposing ‘concepts’ into sound – indeed, she only ever decides on a title once a composition is nished – the image of a ‘limited sky’ is very telling. Again and again the music turns its steadfast, rigorously constrained gaze on the complicated processes within a de ned system. The scores of these works record, with utmost precision, every single thing that comes and goes and comes back again there, and how its colours modulate in the changing light. It seems that Djordjevic´’s imagination is focussed entirely on an interior world, on the interplay of forces within a de ned space. It is impervious to external stimuli, to impulses from the outside world. Indeed her imaginati- on obeys its own physical laws: soloistic outbursts, subjective interpolations, individual gestures – these are the exception, not the rule. Barely a sound is heard that does not actively contribute to the texture. Instead of staging ‘events’ against a more or less stable backdrop, Djordjevic´ explores the formation of different densities and colour glazes in and on the sound of the ensemble. She explores its consistence, tests its gestural potential and paints a picture of an intensifying, multidimensional process: a process that is fuelled by immensely powerful energies. Thoughts come to mind of endlessly glowing rock from the Earth’s core forcing its way to the surface. There is always an unremitting sense of all or nothing.
|
Catalogue 
