Born in 1930 in Cieszyn, Poland; his father, an evangelical minister in ‰esků Téšin (Zaolzie) was a wartime prisoner of concentration camps in Auschwitz and Dachau. In 1944 Roman Berger worked as a blue-collar worker. In 1949 after graduating from the Polish gymnasium in Czech Cieszyn he entered the State Higher School of Music in Katowice. In 1952 his family was forced to move to Bratislava where he resumed studies at the Academy of Music and Drama, first as a pianist and later as a composer in the class of Dezider Kardoš (1961-66). Until 1967, he worked at the Sound Studio of the Czechoslovak Television and taught piano at the Bratislava Conservatory. >From 1969 to 1971 he taught contemporary music at the Theory Department of the Academy of Music and Drama.
As a supporter of the 'Prague Spring' he was expelled from the Union of Slovak Composers and denied employment. He turned towards research: among others he collaborated with ethnomusicologist I. Mačák, and starting in 1984 together with Prof. B. Riečan he led independent seminars on 'Music and Mathematics'. In 1977-90 he worked at the Institute of Art of the Slovak Academy of Sciences where he was barred from promotion as having refused to take an exam in Marxism he could not defend his professorial qualification thesis Logical Foundations of General Harmonic System. In 1983 political police demolished Berger's countryside studio and in 1986 his formerly published scores were destroyed.
After the collapse of communism Roman Berger chaired the committee for the reform of musical education (1990), was a member of Ministry of Culture Advisory Board (1990-91) and joined in the successful effort to revive the Czechoslovak and later Slovak Section of the International Society for Contemporary Music. In 1990 he withdrew from the 'new' Association of Slovak Composers. In 1990, 1992, 1995 and 1998 he was a member of the jury at the Witold Lutosławski International Composers' Competition in Warsaw.
In 1988 Roman Berger was awarded the prestigious Herder Prize for accomplishments in composition and music theory and in 1999 became an honorary member of the Polish Composers' Union. Other awards: Ján Levoslaw Bella Prize and Czechoslovak Critics' Prize for Transformations (1967); Honourable Mention at the International Festival of Electronic Music in Bourges for Epitaph for Nicolaus Copernicus (1974); First Prize at the Town of Piešt'any Competition for De profundis (1980); Union of Slovak Composers Prize for Exodus (1989, refused by the composer); Diploma of the Czechoslovak Critics for Adagio II (1990); Critics' Prize (1997); Grand Prix of the Slovak Copyright Society (2000).
Roman Berger wrote extensively on topics of musicology and philosophy of music. Selected texts from 1977-87 appeared as 'Hudba a Pravda'... tak tako nesmieš mysliet'/'Music and Truth'... so that is what you dare not think (Slovak Section of the European Culture Club, 1997) and selected texts written after 1990 were entitled Dráma hudby. Prolegomena k politickej muzikologii/Drama of Music. Prolegomena to Political Musicology (Bratislava Music Centre, 2001). A few titles: Music and Totalitarism ('Melos - Ethos', Bratislava 1991); Der ständige Konflikt zwischen Macht und Kunst (in: 'Verfemte Musik. Komponisten in den Diktaturen unseres Jahrhunderts', Dresden 1992), Depth - a Lost Dimension? (Club of Rome, Prague 1994); Semiotik und Praxis (Sorbonne 1, Paris 1994); The Game of Democracy ('Social Games' Symposium, Prague 1995); Structure and Meaning of Heritage ('Music in the Year 2002 - A Civilised Concert', Symposium at the Royal Academy of Art in Stockholm, 1996); Aspects of Greatness. Introduction to transpersonal aesthetics. Witold Lutosławski (in: 'Witold Lutosławski. Man and his work...', Poznań 1998); Analysis in spe (in: 'Music in the Context of Culture. In memoriam Mieczysław Tomaszewski', Cracow 2001).

Selected works: Five Very Short Pieces for piano (1959), Five Studies for piano (1959), Little Suite for piano (1961), Sonata 1960 for piano (1960), Lullaby for mezzo-soprano and chamber orchestra, to a text by Ján Stacho (1962), In Silence... for mixed choir, to a text by Tadeusz R-ýewicz (1962), Trio for Flute, Clarinet and Bassoon (1962), Suite in Ancient Style for strings, percussion and keyboard instruments (1963, new version 1979), Transformations, four pieces for large orchestra (1965), Convergence I for violin (1969), Elegy in Memoriam Ján Rśčka, electroacoustic music (1969), Convergence II (meditations inspired by Bach) for viola (1970), Sonata 'da camera' in memoriam Frico Kafenda for piano (1971), Epitaph for Nicolaus Copernicus, electroacoustic music (1972), Memento after the Death of Miro Filip for large orchestra (1973), Convergence III for cello (1974), Litany to Trees for male choir, with words by H. Jasiczek (1975), En passant, electroacoustic music (1979), De profundis for bass, piano, cello and live electronics to a text by Tadeusz R-ýewicz (1980), Exodus II with a motif by Miloslav Kabeláč for organ (1982, new version 1997), Exodus IV - Finale for organ (1982), Sonata for Violin and Piano with a motif by Karol Szymanowski (1983), Adagio for Ján Branny for violin and piano (1987), Adagio No. 2 'Repentance' for violin and piano (1988-89), Soft. November Music for piano (1989), Wiegenlied for alto and piano, to texts by Elisabeth Gutjahr and Elisabeth Maldaque (1991), Torso II, two scenes for alto, soprano or violin and piano, to a text by E. Gutjahr (1992), Transgressus I, electroacoustic music (1993), Exodus I - Musica profana. Dies irae for organ (1997), Exodus III - Psalmus for organ (1997), Requiem da camera with a theme by Lutosławski for violin, cello and piano (1998), Semplice for piano (2000), Korczak in memoriam for mezzo-soprano and nine instruments (2000).

Inventory and Credo
(To Tadeusz Wielecki and his team)

I received a challenging 'homework': to write notes to my works. I find it hard because 'when the day is at dusk and evening draws closer' one must stop and wonder how was the day. One tries to see the whole, as it was confronted with obligations, undertakings, conscience. At an advanced age when the whole life seems to be at dusk the need for an 'inventory' becomes urgent. The special situation created by the proposal from the 'Warsaw Autumn' to present several works made this need that much more pressing. I realized that only a reflection on the totality of traversed path can provide me with insights about its various stages and works associated with them as if 'traces on the path'. Regretfully, the traces are not numerous, hence the reflection could also address a question: 'why so few? '
Every path was supposed to become the Path. A path leading to the Transcendent - Infinite - Profound - Mysterious. Is this what happened? Or was it mere roaming in the 'world's labyrinth'? Unintended participation in the construction of the Tower of Babel? A battle with windmills? The answers to the most important questions are not given here and now - we will learn them on Judgement Day.
The path to the Sacred leads through the world of the Profane. The primal, harmoniously 'tuned' (Heidegger) microcosm was invaded by dissonance: by experience of violence, destruction, escape and 'excommunication' (from home, from Zaolzie region, from Poland, where I began my studies, finally from musical and social life). It brought about an insistent need to understand: why is the world 'the way it is'.
The germ of an answer came thanks to being an outsider, a status that directed my attention to the limits of accessible reality and permitted distancing from the immediate one. It allowed, among others, to avoid the temptations of a 'career' and its often problematic consequences. It brought to the surface a truth that was buried in consciousness, that music is not only the environment of production (arena, racing) but also a sphere of cognition, based not on observation but on penetration-listening of its mysteries (plain listening is not enough). It permitted to perceive the problem of creation, turned often into production, manipulation.
Finally, the result was a conviction that the world - culture and art included - sunk deeply into a crisis without precedence. That among the principal reasons for this crisis is a paradigm of cognition formed by the Western civilization that consists of such elements as anthropocentrism, Cartesian opposition of 'subject versus object', rationalistic reductionism, mechanistic 'fragmentation of reality' (D. Bohm) etc. This paradigm formed our understanding of art, but it appeared rather obvious that it was inadequate.
We began however to see signs of a new paradigm, pars pro toto - holonomic (D. Bohm), organic (A. N. Whitehead), related to the anti-Cartesian sum, ergo cogito (P. Ricoeur). It seemed that new premises were born that would solve problems in all spheres of existence.
It seemed that spirituality would not be pushed aside (as the Bolsheviks and their heirs wished), that it will finally become the regulating force for life of individuals and society. It seemed that one was obliged to act in a way that would bring about a fundamental change. I believed then that through analogy-homology one could transfer the experiences from the sphere of music, that everything can be seen as a problem of 'composing'. Next to the issues of music theory more and more general problems emerged (creative education, culture, civilization, finally power - violence - 'politics').
The new paradigm became my 'privileged metaphor' (J. Bruner) also due to the conflict of 'old' and 'new' music. As someone who arrived at art in music rather late and in less then supportive circumstances, it was hard for me to let go of 'old' wonders in the name of 'progress'. On the other hand the fascination with several of the new phenomena was too strong to refuse it with an excuse of 'protecting values', staying faithful to tradition etc. Thus a cognitive conflict of ethical character was born, one that found no resolution in the context of 'natural' reflection.
Here, the new paradigm suggested that the most ambitious of new music was not a negation of tradition, as the common interpretations would have it, but rather that we witnessed a return to the sources of expression, hidden behind the limits of history and psychology of music. Messiaen claimed that his work was a development of Gregorian chant, while Xenakis stated simply that 'we are all Pythagoreans'.
A dramatic Path brings the need to express drama. Conventional musical means could not fulfil this task. The assimilation of new techniques, styles, aesthetic approaches is not sufficient either - cannot suffice the Heideggerian 'one' ('so one composes these days!'). Expression demands authenticity. Personal exploration of foundations of expression and meaning (in a semiotic sense) cannot be avoided. It is necessary to search and find one's own agents of resonance - Depth resonance from the Depth of the soul. Return to the sources becomes a return to a 'Polemos' principle. It shows itself in moments when the 'archaic man' awakens in us (M. Eliade) - a memory of ancient catastrophes or dramas that took place illo tempore resurfaces.
It is probably this kind of memory that pointed me to the fact that even in its various stylistical approaches the substance of the musical avantgarde does not have a dialectic character, that it does not permit formation of diverse qualities of tension, gradation, conflict etc.; that it specifically disallows games of ambiguity of multi-layered modulations, the way it was found in music of the past thanks to hierarchically and dialectically polarized structures of harmonic substance. And it was probably this kind of memory that prompted me with a 'wild idea' ('la pensée sauvage', C. Lévi-Strauss), to integrate mutually exclusive rules: harmony and a-harmonic structures (dodecaphony, serialism, Messiaen's modality, sonorism, stochastic and electronic music). The goal was to create foundations for a generalized harmonic system. It would mean a universal system, within which functional harmony was a subsystem and the whole was structurally open ad infinitum.
It may happen that when one is lost among 'forces' (routine, bon-ton or frivolity), lost within mists of illusion and a smog of slogans a signpost will emerge with a shining idea - the universal, timeless 'code of Transcendence' (K. Jaspers).
This idea, even though dressed as a secular notion, is different from an abstraction in that it 'shines through'. Its light gives energy, which guides to the Path, towards the Omega Point - the Absolute Unity.
My principal idea was integration. Others followed: in the Sixties - ideas of transformation and convergence, in the Seventies - ideas of continuum and Depth, as of early Eighties - ideas of path and transgression. Under these constellations I looked for 'new epiphanies of beauty' (John Paul II: Letter to artists), convinced that objectively speaking they are a function of the synthesis of basic structures of musical substance.
This is how a chain of works originated (more numerous via facti), all of them indissoluble from my point of view, since they resulted from the same 'basic enquiry' and the same reflection that in their turn were derived from the same empiria, which confirmed that 'The entire world is against art' (V. Droppa). For 'honest art is an expression of the true situation of man in the world' (P. Tillich).
The symphonic cycle Transformations (a sui generis polemics with Boulez's Structures) was the first attempt at integrating 'pulverized matter' (W. Lutosławski); it used one, simple dodecaphonic series as point of departure, while the twelve-note technique and serialism were rejected. The Convergences cycle (with a motto: 'From Xenakis to the diatonic system', dedicated years later to Jerzy Stankiewicz) was an attempt to integrate randomness and determinism; it utilized a random list as point of departure, while aleatorism was rejected. The electronic Epitaph for Nicolaus Copernicus was guided by the idea of an harmonic/sonoristic continuum and extreme differences in expressive character. In De Profundis the depth of hierarchical structures of substance met with time-honoured sense of Depth.
The remaining works originated in the same circle of ideas. The shock caused by friend's salto mortale brought to the fore 'ratiomorphic' intuition (K. Lorenz) - a direct and holistic grasp of 'expressive structures' (Memento after the death of Miro Filip). Since then composing was accompanied by the awareness that even though works of art are supposed to be 'cosmic exploration vessels' sui generis, they are held by the gravitational pull of Earth, which never became the Promised Land.
Sonata with a motive by Karol Szymanowski was written in the midst of the anti-Solidarity witch-hunt in what used to be Czechoslovakia that culminated after the imposition of martial law in Poland. The motive from Fourth Symphony is not introduced in the form of a collage but as a result of organic evolution complemented by the Dies irae motive. I dedicated the sonata to Krystyna Tarnawska-Kaczorowska.
I wrote Soft. November Music, a work dedicated to my wife, during the turbulent final weeks of 1989. It is composed in a strict variation form with a four note diatonic theme; the lyrical character cannot be sustained under 'atmospheric pressure' and 'modulates' to brutality. It ends with the sos code!
Wiegenlied is a 'paradox-lullaby' for the late mother of Elisabeth Maldaque, the protagonist of a chamber opera, which via facti I did not finish. E. Maldaque is a historical figure - one of the first victims of Nazism, a young teacher, imprisoned in a psychiatric hospital for her anti-Nazi convictions, who died there a few days later. The piece is dedicated to Mieczysław Tomaszewski.
Summa summarum: in a world that did not become the Promised Land the vision of music that crystallized does not see its goal in modeling 'holomovement' (Lévi-Strauss: 'Work of art is a model of reality'), but rather in the projection of Paths within mysterious time-space continua. Projections of paths of a man who as homo viator as well as homo patiens (V. Frankl) discovers his place in the Universe only to a certain degree (at times hoping that he is part of Divine Creation).

Roman Berger