On 5 June 2026, the second edition of the seminar “Musical and Cultural Practices” took place. Prof. Miglena Tzenova delivered a lecture entitled “The Invisible Form of Things / Air”【形隐】 by Composer Assen Avramov and the Cosmological “Relation” of Nature and Music in Chinese and Japanese Cultures.
Prof. Tzenova is an established scholar whose research interests encompass Bulgarian music theatre, opera and choral art, East Asian performing traditions (particularly Peking Opera Jīng Jù 京剧), as well as processes of cultural exchange between Europe and Asia. Earlier this year, at the “Art Readings” conference held at the Institute of Art Studies (23–25 April 2026), she attracted considerable attention with her original paper on the relationship between music and nature in the works of Assen Avramov. During the seminar, this topic was developed within a broader framework through an in-depth analysis of “The Invisible Form of Things / Air” and the philosophical and aesthetic ideas embedded in the composition.
Assen Avramov is among the most distinguished contemporary Bulgarian composers. His oeuvre spans a wide range of genres—from music for theatre, ballet, film, radio, and television to chamber, vocal, and symphonic works, as well as multimedia projects. A distinctive feature of his artistic language is his interest in European, African, and Asian musical traditions, which he creatively integrates into his compositions.
In Chinese and Japanese aesthetic thought, music is not conceived as an autonomous art form but as part of a broader system of natural and cosmic processes involving movement, breathing, silence, and harmony between human beings and the world. Within this context, Prof. Tzenova traced how such concepts are transformed into compositional principles in Assen Avramov’s creative explorations.
Prof. Tzenova’s research is based on a substantial body of primary sources directly related to the creation of the work: the score, the composer’s notes accompanying it, audio recordings, and interviews with the composer conducted between 2024 and 2026. In her lecture, she also devoted special attention to the circumstances surrounding the composition’s creation and to the intercultural dialogue that led to the final formulation of its title in both Bulgarian and Chinese.
She reconstructed the context of a creative expedition to China in 2018, organised to introduce European composers to traditional Chinese musical culture, instruments, and performance practices. During this journey, Assen Avramov had an inspiring encounter with the Chamber Orchestra of the Forbidden City under the direction of Liu Shun. Particular emphasis was placed on the exceptional professional level of the performers, who are not only concert musicians but also university professors with complete mastery of their instruments.
Miglena Tzenova focused on the way in which the composer interprets the Chinese musical tradition. Particularly revealing is his choice of instrumental groups according to the traditional Chinese classification of materials: silk, bamboo, leather, wood, and metal. Through audio examples, the lecture demonstrated several specific sonic solutions and highlighted musical representations of birds and various natural phenomena. Especially noteworthy is the composer’s use of sheets of paper of different densities to create sound-imitative effects—assigned not to the percussion section but to the string instruments. Such solutions reveal an aspiration to blur the boundaries between musical and natural sound.
Particularly compelling was Tzenova’s interpretation of the concept of “breath,” which permeates the entire work. Quoting the composer’s notes, she observed that this breath appears alternately as human respiration and as a gust of wind, before ultimately transforming into the sound of sea waves at the conclusion of the composition. Musical tones and harmonies gradually dissolve into natural sonorities, while the individual performers create the impression of the universal breathing of nature and the world. According to the interpretation presented, this process represents a form of purification and a return to the primordial state of matter—an idea that resonates with Chinese and Japanese aesthetic concepts of sound returning to silence as its original source.
In this regard, one of the most significant conclusions of the lecture was that the cosmological interconnectedness of nature and music, characteristic of Chinese and Japanese culture, appears in the work not as an external musical quotation but as an internal creative experience. Assen Avramov arrives at these ideas through his own artistic worldview and through his profound understanding of East Asian cultural traditions.
Prof. Miglena Tzenova’s lecture impressed the audience through its meticulous use of primary sources in Chinese and Japanese, its rigorous analytical approach, and its ability to situate specific musical observations within a broader cultural and philosophical framework. It also stimulated an important discussion concerning contemporary forms of musical reconstruction and reception.
It was noted that, unfortunately, the work has never been performed live. Today, access to it is possible through a sampled realisation of the score created by Kalin Nikolov and Assen Avramov as a reference recording intended for future performers. This circumstance raises an intriguing issue, articulated by Prof. Ventsislav Dimov, D.Sc.: how can the sacred attitude toward sound characteristic of Chinese musical practices be reconciled with the technologically mediated mode of reproduction achieved through computer sampling? The question concerning the boundaries between original sonority, its digital representation, and the manner in which Western listeners perceive such cultural meanings opens promising avenues for future research.
The lecture made a substantial contribution both to the understanding of Assen Avramov’s oeuvre and to the study of intercultural exchange in contemporary music. The original and engaging presentation of this fascinating topic can also be experienced through the video recording of the lecture produced by Kamen Tabakov. Photographs were kindly provided by Yulia Staneva.
