Ľubor Bačík: Exploring the Unconscious Through Music in “Conversation with a Poet”
- WOMCO
- 2 hours ago
- 3 min read
Ľubor Bačík, a composer from the Slovak Republic, was awarded the Platinum Prize for his composition Conversations with a Poet at the 15th edition of the Universal Stars Music Competition (2025 Season 3). The competition ran from May 14 to August 14, 2025, with results announced on September 3.
What would you say about your award winning composition Conversation with a Poet, how did you create it?
Ľubor Bačík:
"My process of creating music is very unique. It is a kind of attempt to communicate with the unconscious with subsequent analysis and final completion on the formal side. First, I record musical ideas without assigning content to them, at that moment I am more interested in absolute music, although of course I can have images. Then I let the unconscious 'process' the thing and I try to guess what I wanted to say. This is followed by a very selective selection of musical ideas, which I try to 'put together' so that it also makes some sense on the formal side. If I manage to 'read' it, or at least I think I understood it, I try to create the final version of the composition. In the composition Conversation with a Poet, I try to develop a dialogue between a romantically inclined musician and a paradoxically philosophically based poet. The musician who performs with melodic parts represents the romantic with lofty ideals and the poet is aware of the 'dark' side of the psyche, which is intellectually well processed and counters the musician with often deep tones, which corresponds to the integration of Jung's 'shadow' into consciousness. Of course, their contents have parallels with the actual experience and understanding of experience, it is a personal phenomenological statement with its rational processing. I realize that my self-reflection may not exactly correspond to the tone that it thinks it corresponds to, but to me it is actually about music and ultimately when listening to it back I am more interested in musical ideas than in the content of the statement. However, the idea of the composition is not lost and I am aware of this, but 'musicality' is essential for me."
Would you tell us something about your life?
Ľubor Bačík:
"I studied mathematical analysis and then did postgraduate studies in algebraic topology, which I did not finish because I started having problems with my spine. A divorce followed, which deeply affected me, and a long period of incapacity for work, and as it turned out later, it was psychosomatics. I have been intensively involved in music for about twelve years. I have "big" ideals, only the future will show me whether they will be fulfilled at least to some extent. I am currently studying the fourth year of homeopathy, homeopathy is holistic medicine and I would like to help people regain their authentic being and thus free them from their somatic symptoms. Last but not least, I am interested in physics, its basics, and at night I think about the reality that is apparently very well hidden from us. It's just a dream....or I dream...so I am."
How do you see the position of a composer in today’s digital world?
Ľubor Bačík:
"I am afraid of digitalization. It creates the possibility of a deep alienation of a person from his roots, his subconscious sources, a rationally incomprehensible depth that is well expressed by art, by the pictorial symbolism that art creates. It is a reduction of the psyche to a formal structure, abstracts from units of content and replaces the relationships between them with content-wise ontologically empty mathematical relations. I think that the essence of the human spirit, its true reality is not reducible to a sequence of algorithmic steps, the authenticity of human being is ontologically higher than a mathematically structured set of information. Our era is losing the core of personality, its beauty and depth through digitalization, a machine will never create the Moonlight Sonata. The world needs beauty but also technology, but beauty should not only be a stronger category, technology should serve beauty and not vice versa."