IN MEMORIAM COMPOSER JAAN RÄÄTS (15.10.1932–25.12.2020)

 

 

BIOGRAPHY

 

October 15, 1932, Tartu - December 25, 2020, Tallinn

Member of the Estonian Composer's Union since 1957

 

In the 1960s, a markedly anti-Romantic, active and playful style was brought into Estonian music by Jaan Rääts, a composer of neo-classicist orientation. His youthful and rhythmic Concerto for Chamber Orchestra from 1961 became a landmark achievement in Estonian new music.

 

Rääts studied piano at the Tartu Music High School and graduated in 1957 as a composition student of professors Mart Saar and Heino Eller from the Tallinn Conservatoire. 1955–1966 he worked as a recording engineer at the Estonian Radio, 1966–1970 as chief editor of music programs and 1970–1974 as chief director and music manager of the Estonian Television. From 1974 to 1993, he served as chairman of the Estonian Composers’ Union and was also a long-time member of high party and government bodies. 1968–1970 and again 1974–2003, Rääts has taught composition at the Estonian Academy of Music (professor since 1990). Among his many students there were Raimo Kangro, Erkki-Sven Tüür, Rauno Remme, Tõnu Kõrvits, Mihkel Kerem,  Avi Benjamin Nedzvetski, Kerri Kotta, Toomas Trass, Vsevolod Posdejev, Tõnis Kaumann and Timo Steiner.

 

Jaan Rääts is a composer with a fairly constant sound and style. The bulk of his work consists of instrumental music. From 1957–1993, Rääts completed ten symphonies. He has also written 24 concertos for orchestra and soloist(s) and two concertos for chamber orchestra, symphonic pieces and a lot of chamber music.

 

In general, Rääts avoids dramaturgical development and storytelling. Vigorous rhythmic pulse is the basic element of his music, in which the various stylistic fragments revolve as if in a drum mixer: Mozartian triads and modernist clusters, baroque and folk music motifs, linear polyphony and pop music rhythms. His terse form is the glue that holds together his kaleidoscopic style and balances its rapid contrasts with the symmetries of the overall scheme. Sometimes, lyrical and neo-Romantic figures will flit by in his works but they do not define the general character of the works. Rääts’ playful style generally emanates subtle humour or (self-)irony. On the background of the national romantic main trend of 1950s Estonian music, the rhythmic energy and crisp free tonal melodic of Rääts’ works seemed extraordinary.

 

The pulsating rhythm and angular melodies of Rääts’ first symphonies (No. 1 1957, No. 2 1958/1987, No. 3 1959) seemed revolutionary at first, but his energetic style was actually fairly well suited to conveying the spirit of Soviet life and work ethic. In the music of the late 1960s and early 1970s, namely, in Symphonies No. 6 (1967) and No. 7 (1972), the "snapshot technique" in Rääts’ music assumed feverish forms. His material became diverse – a mosaic-like texture filled with many fleeting stylistic references, quotations and motifs from different musical styles including folk music. In the 1980s, a more aphoristic, minimalist-influenced style gained ground.

 

Rääts’ playful style proved especially well suited to the concerto – he has written concertos for violin (1963, 1979, 1995) and piano (1968, 1971, 1983, 1989, 1992 – for 4 hands), as well as for piano duo (1986), cello (1966, 1997), guitar (1992) and various other instrumental duos – for trumpet and piano (1993), violin and guitar (1998) and two guitars (1999). Rääts’ orchestral works also include two concertos for chamber orchestra (1961, 1987) and shorter orchestra works, including Intrata for chamber orchestra (1997) and Five Sketches for Requiem ("Viis eskiisi reekviemile", 1997) as some of the most attractive ones.

 

Rääts’ chamber music is even more extensive. He has composed six string quartets and seven piano trios, piano quartets, sextets and works for other ensembles. His prolific work for the piano includes 10 sonatas and the cycles 24 Preludes (1968), 24 Preludes to Estonian Folk Melodies ("24 prelüüdi eesti rahvaviisidele", 1977), 24 Estonian Preludes ("24 eesti prelüüdi", 1989) and three miniature series entitled 24 Marginalia ("24 marginaali" – 1979 for piano, 1980 for electronics – the first electronic work to be put on LP in Estonia, and in 1982 for two pianos). Of Rääts’ few vocal works, the most notable are the oratorio Karl Marx (1964, Enn Vetemaa) for narrator, mixed choir and symphony orchestra, Small Oratorio ("Väike oratoorium", 1973, Enn Vetemaa) for male choir, organ and symphony orchestra and Magic Square ("Maagiline ruut", 1999) for chamber choir and chamber orchestra. Rääts has also written music for 14 Estonian films.

 

Rääts’ music has remained concerto-like and playful right up to the present day, irrespective of the genre. He says: "I don’t like rigid systems. I like absorbing musical material, filtering it, emotionally developing it as needed. Using it as a springboard for my imagination..."

 

Rääts’ rhythm-centred idiom, developed in the 1960s, was exerting an influence on Estonian music as a whole as late as in the end of the 1980s. Although he started as a composer during the era of (re)discovering modernism and avant-garde compositional techniques, his mosaic-like, playful personal style signified the advent of postmodernist thought in Estonian music.

 

More than 40 vinyl records and CD-s have been released by several companies including Melodija, Antes Edition, Finlandia Records, Capriccio Records, Kreuzberg Records and Eurodisc. By Antes Edition two personal collections (1995, 1996) have produced. Rääts’s works have been published by Sovetski Kompozitor, Muzõka, Estonian Music Foundation, Edition Peters, Sikorski Verlag, G. Schirmer Inc., Antes Edition, Edition 49, Eres Edition a.o.

 

Jaan Rääts has received the honorary titles of Estonian SSR Merited Art Worker (1965) and People’s Artist (1977). He has deserved the Prize of Soviet Estonia (1972), Literature and Art Award of the Estonian Soviet Communist Youth Organisation (1970) and Annual Music award of the ESSR (1974). In the Republic of Estonia he has been awarded the Estonian State Cultural Award (1995), the Annual Prize of Endowment for Music of Culture Endowment of Estonia (2002), the Annual Award of the Cultural Endowment of Estonia (2007), The Lifetime Achievement Award of the Estonian National Culture Foundation (2011), The Lifetime Achievement Award of the Republic of Estonia (2011) and the third class order of the White Star.

 

© EMIC 2011

 

 

 

HIS MUSIC

 

(pp41-42 from the book : Helilooja Jaan Rääts)

 

Jaan Rääts was together with Veljo Tormis, Eino Tamberg and Arvo Pärt one of these young composers to come forth in 1960ies, whose works brought Estonian music out of the post-war stagnation and re-established the bond with tendencies of the music of the 20th century. It is paradoxical that while experimenting more actively or safely new compostition techniques, almost all reformers of Estonian music sooner or later became also restorers: Estonian folksong runolaul quite soon turned out as the source of inspiration of Veljo Tormis, traditional symphonism with psychologicised metaphors stayed a long time as the axis of Eino Tamberg’s music, Arvo Pärt found universal musical logic from early sacral polyphony in 1970ies.

 

In early works of Jaan Rääts, there are traits of traditional conflict dramaturgy, but already in the end of 1950ies the neoclassicist orientation became dominating in his music, the main characteristics being lively  ostinato-like rhythmic pulse, usage of melody and facture types borrowed from Baroque music and Viennese classic, and caleidoscopical mode of develpoment based on quick contrasts without conflict. Like this, Estonian music innovator Jaan Rääts continued the restorative tendency that had quite large influence in Europe in the first half of the 20th century, and which representers were also Sergey Prokofiev, Dmitri Shostakovich, Igor Stravinsky, Béla Bartók, Paul Hindemith, Arthur Honegger and others, including Eduard Tubin, everyone in his own fashion.

 

Rääts’s creative method took shape under the remarkable influences of the 20th century traditions, first of all the objective genre affiliation of Prokofiev and Stravinsky and kind of rigid dynamics peculiar to Hindemith.

(Tiina Šubin, 1981)

 

Unlike Arvo Pärt and Kuldar Sink, Jaan Rääts didn’t take an interest in systemic techniques of new music. Like the early music, new styles became in his music above all the object of generalized imitation.

 

I haven’t used any system consistently. I have tried the means of serial music but making them a method would have been too restrictive. I want to govern musical material freely, on the basis of intuition. Timbres and combinations established in the creation of dodecaphonists are interesting. Sometimes I imitate these by applying other techinques. In principle I don’t dispise anything, but I don’t want to fall a something’s victim as well. I am a sort of „neoconservative“ – in the view of score I strongly like to preserve beautiful traditions, use old methods etc.

(Jaan Rääts, 1968)

 

 

 

RECOLLECTIONS

 

 

Eino Tamberg : When to think of Jaan Rääts’s music, its powerful energy of motion first comes in mind. And right after that Concerto for Chamber Orchestra – Jaan’s youthful work that is one of the most performed Estonian pieces in the world. This concert presents convincingly the principle of contrast that governs all his music – altering of energetically moving and slow movements (whereby these slow parts may be quite tense at the same time).

During more than fourty years , this initially pretty black-and-white contract, has become more rich in shades. Slow movements have gained warmth and flexibility. Fast movements have changed even more witty and exciting in orchestration.

But the main core of the music has stayed quite close to the beginning of the creation. Like this, Rääts is one of the creators of most idiosyncratic and recognisable musical language. Rääts’s music is stably on the high level – both by bright ideas as well as technical realization. I have always

kept an eye on Jaan’s work with great interest and often felt burning joy of his highly witty ideas of intonation, orchestration or form. And in the main, I have always been fascinated the great joy of motion of this music.

 

Neeme Järvi : Me and Jaan Rääts were colleagues already in salad days. I have the best memories of him since 1960ies. Rääts’s music is interesting, full of contingencies, with its own specific style. His Concerto for Chamber Orchestra is written by Master and got popular right after the premiere with Tallinn Chamber Orchestra. Rudolf Barshai has performed it together with Moscow Chamber Orchestra all over the world. Rääts’s symphonies and instrumental concertos were consistently in the repertoire of our orchestras. While working with Estonian Radio Symphony Orchestra, I was happy to record all Jaan’s new works. Presently I’m thinking of making couple of new discs of his reknown works like Ode to the First Cosmonaut, Concerto for Chamber Orchestra, Fourth and Fifth Symphony etc.

 

Florian Meierott : Jaan Rääts is undoubtly one of the greatest Estonian composers. His unique and incomparable style reminds the caleidiscope of feelings: every single, barely comprehendable picture in it changes the shape and color already at the next moment. For the interpreter he allows a wide artistic and mental freedom, not giving in what is musically important to him as a composer.

 

Mihhail Aranovski, 1979 : Every contrast is a image. Rääts’s thinking is very concrete. The core of his music is mundane, sensory, muscular. It overflows with energy and power, one can felt the lively temperament, will and virility. His music is characterized mostly by sort of imperative mood but also lyrism and subtle artistry at the same time.

 

Raimo Kangro, 1982 : What is fascinating in Jaan Rääts’s music? Perhaps the way he tells the listener: you live, live this only, occasional, wonderful and meaningless time. What is fascinating in Jaan Rääts himself? Perhaps his independence from the great idol – fashion.

 

Kalle Randalu : Jaan Rääts is a person of vivacious thinking and reacting. He has a great knowledge of music, he knows well musical instruments, is good orchestrator and great admirer of music by Mozart. Jaan belongs to those composers who gives the musicians freedom to interpret his music. Maybe it’s because musicians, performing the same piece, could positively surprise the composer again and again. 

Jaan always likes to follow the interpretation of his works. During the creative process, he improvises the very last moment.  For example, I remember the birth of “Electronic Marignals” – experimenting and finding interesting solutions in the studio with composer reminded almost happening.  In 1981, I mentioned to Jaan that I was going to the army. He quickly took action and instead of army I ended up participating in Robert Schumann competition. 

 

 

[many thanks to Mme. Evi Arujärv for sharing all the required materials]