November, 2003

In 1999, Serbian composer Aleksandra Vrebalov was working on a composition while bombs fell outside her window. “I was struggling with the fact that I was full of fear,” she says, “but at the same time, the work that I was doing needed to be just the opposite.” Since, Vrebalov's struggles have become less perilous but no less important: “Music,” she says, “can reinforce order, an order that is spiritual. It can tell us how we can create that order.”

An anecdote like this could be the apotheosis for what might drive an artist like Vrebalov. After all, witnessing the chaos of war could inspire a desire for order in anyone. But Vrebalov's music is not ultimately a reaction; it is, in fact, a mission.

“There is musica mundana (music of the world) and musica humana (music of people),” she explains. “The first comes from a celestial source, the sounds we do not create such as those from nature. The other is what we create. But we have become too immersed in the physical world and the material world [to hear musica mundana.] Our senses have become dulled.” Too dulled to care about bombs exploding? Possibly. But what seems even more provocative in Vrebalov's mission to present musica mundana is the question that if we did hear it, how might we then hear the sounds of mankind?

“Being more spiritual and thinking about things that are connected to our soul and not our body presents more challenges. It can be painful. We like the easier path. But then we miss experiences that enrich us. And we are then not fragile and not pure anymore. Fragility is what it's about.”

It's intriguing to hear someone from a war-torn country embrace the concept of fragility. And yet, as Vrebalov explains the reason she became a musician, it's easy to see it was because music was the only thing to offer it. “Misunderstandings are much more likely in verbal language. If we hear unpleasant words, we just shut them off. But it's much easier to express things in music because we are open-hearted and ready to accept experience even if it is unpleasant.”

In a lot of ways, Vrebalov could be a long-lost Transcendentalist, who, like those artists, is reacting to an age where the sounds of mankind were the most exalted and those of the numinous shunted aside. In this new age - with the cacophony of media and entertainment reaching a deafening range - Vrebalov's mission is to hunt for the sounds that disarm us and return to us the fragility of an open soul.