Signum – Kofroň Petr (2019)

A new, genre-diverse publication by composer and essayist Petr Kofroň. The surprising composition of the book, moving from the music-theoretical exposition "Simplicity and Naivety in Music" to the final playful piece "Heavenly Ferda Mravenec," invites the reader to play: what rules might the next chapter have? Will it be an analysis of a work, a manifesto, a diary entry, an essay, a reconstruction of an event with many contemporary documents, a poem, a guide, an anecdote, a ritual text, or a prayer? What connects all these texts? The fact that they explore the relationship between language and "the language of music." Here we find classic musicological analysis of musical works as well as reflections on the processing of some stimuli from the field of New Music. There are also texts dealing with the relationship between literature and music or the place of music in human society. Some texts seemingly detach from musical issues, yet they describe the composer's position in society or present the transfer of compositional principles into literature. Thus, the author guides the reader from purely musicological texts through musical and literary essays to "pure" literature, which, through playfulness, forms a counterpart to the same techniques within music.