Classical music is harder to subject to analysis than any other sphere of art. The modern representative art would often be hermetic if it remained without the framework that gives it meaning and explains it by referring to its conceptions of philosophical or theoretical origin. The knowledge of the story of art has an important impact on its reception and appreciation and, just as in any other field, here too exists a circle of established interpreters or critics. If we want to exaggerate, we can say that the event of experiencing a work of art is giving way to the creation of the circulation value of the work. But, since music, differing from a representation or a text, does not signify anything or refer to anything else besides sounds, and makes no attempt at social transformation of anything, it is more difficult to discuss it without getting too technical.

Just because of this insubordination, music remains visionary, reaching beyond speech and symbolic order. Tones and qualities can create unexpected associations, almost becoming the process of "signification", but most probably, the sensing of it is only a personal experience and does not mean anything to anybody else. For me, the two incontestable peaks of Estonian music - Pärt and Tormis - are able to talk differently from the majority of the modern composers of music. Having for several decades explored the streams and the jungles of popular music, I can find only a few key words to map the essence of these two masters, but for me, they are located on one and the same plateau, "a sacred fear".

veljo tormis

Geographically, both of them have their roots in Estonia. But whereas Arvo Pärt has been drawn to the Christian tradition and away from Estonia, Veljo Tormis is positioned so deeply in the essence of Estonia as to become the archetype of the national character of music. I believe that both of them have been influenced by the gravitational force of their creative sources. The music of Veljo Tormis is known outside Estonia as well, but there is a hard-to-describe quality in the core of his work, which is entirely local. The listener from outside may be interested in the strangeness of this feature, but only an Estonian can recognise it and claim it as his own. When we listen carefully to Tormis's music, we can recognise its authenticity and national character at a time when only recognition from abroad can convince Estonians of the value of their culture.

At the beginning of the documentary made by Sulev Keedus, "Tormise regi" (Runic Songs of Tormis), the composer says that, in the current language, it is difficult to differentiate between Nazism and nationalism. This may also hide a feeling of neglect regarding the modern language of music. Tormis's fundamentalism is still expressed in such a way that it cannot be confused with ideology, but it is related to beliefs and to the traditional, wider, un- Christian culture. "Eesti balladid" (Estonian Ballads), staged by Peeter Jalakas at Soorinna near Kahala Lake in 2004, magnificently visualises the central urge of Tormis's work to reach an authenticity that borders on the traumatic. Watching the production, the audience gets the feeling that its characters could well have risen from the neighbouring ancient burial ground, only a kilometre off, to come to remind us of the tens of generations of forgotten ancestors. And the audience can find in themselves the traces of this lost mentality, which needs only an impulse to surface again - an impulse in the form of Tormis's music, which convincingly expresses the things that were natural and routine for ancient Estonians and which could well be sacred to us even now. Nature and its irrefutable power, inseparable from the sacred, are again with us for a moment. Estonia lacks written documents from the time preceding Christianisation in the 13th century, but still the interest in this period is great. Some fragments can be reconstructed based on archaeological finds and burial traditions, but we cannot immediately penetrate the consciousness of the people of the time. Naturally, Tormis's music is a construction, too, a translation into the language of modern composed music, and it does not aim at total authenticity. But it is a voice, seemingly talking to us from the past, which we do not know and will never know which makes it traumatic and even frightening. The modern culture carefully hides individual death or converts it into a social message. Using repetition and a certain monotony, Tormis's music confronts us with death - the traumatic Real, the void that relates us to our culture, which has been left without sanctity. Runic verse moves without variations, its flow is enlivened only by pauses for inhaling and the stresses that may fall on unexpected parts of the text. This monotony is nothing less than the repetition of minimalism with only microscopic variations. In Keedus's documentary, Tormis tells us how the repetitive writing of one and the same notes extending over pages tired him physically, but the compulsion was strong and he overcame his fatigue.

Great masters in Estonian culture have often borrowed, imitated and compensated for our missing history. Therefore, there has always remained the question: what are the truly singular and original features of Estonian culture that can reach farther than the simple popular culture? The features that are fundamental to culture and identity differ from those fundamental to ideology. The latter attempt to use the authentic and original cultural features to lay a foundation for power. But if creative work is not drawn into the net of ideology, the fundamental remains an artistic discovery, in the Rortian sense, and does not come into conflict with a liberal way of thinking.

Another discovery that Tormis made in his works could be called the avoidance of mythologizing the past. Touching upon extraordinary events that extend beyond the boundaries of moral norms, the music switches into the flow of consciousness rather than trying to stress events with opera-like dramatics. Just as opera must be sung in the Italian language, Tormis's runic songs can be fitted into music only when they are in their mother tongue. Visually, Tormis's works could be personified in a painting by JŸri Arrak, where the disharmony of colours and images borders on the intuitional and frightening. Music gives voice to lost generations, whose continuation we are not allowed to believe in, according to our world image, but whose reproaches for having forgotten them we subconsciously expect. This sacral dimension is the space that music creates in order to sound like more than mere music.

The sacral dimension of music, reaching beyond time toward the transcendental, can be understood also by listeners from other cultures, for whom the tradition is obviously mediated in some other musical language. In a couple of centuries, an unknown lover of music may, when finding the texts in an unknown language together with notes, be as surprised at what he hears as he is now.

Karlo Funk (1971), PR specialist of the Estonian Film Foundation, publicist, film and cultural critic.