Milan Adamčiak

PhDr. Milan Adamčiak was a composer, cellist, musicologist, and the first Slovak intermedia artist. He was the author of acoustic objects, installations, and unconventional musical instruments; a performer, visual artist, and experimental poet. His work, in its time, defied conventional norms and resisted classification.

“Milan Adamčiak was an intermedia artist. His work represented not only the intersection of visual art and music, but also of science, poetry, conceptual art, and performance art. He was not only a composer but also a performer and a creator of graphic scores… Without him, the art of the so-called major conceptual generation of the Slovak visual arts scene would not have the face it has today.”

Lucia Gregorová Stach, curator of the exhibition Adamčiak, Start!, quoted in PRAVDA, January 18, 2017, No. 14, vol. 23, p. 33

“Adamčiak’s musical thinking, after his initial post-Webern poetic foundations in the second half of the 1960s (the DAD group), marked a radical and, in the Slovak artistic context, unique break with tradition, moving toward conceptually oriented creation. This developmental process was accompanied by a systematic deconstruction of ‘pure’ media and the intermedialization of creative activities. In the field of music, his typical expressive means included open form, broadly conceived sonority, unconventional notation, improvisation, and action, all contributing in varying degrees to the resulting synergistic form, oscillating between expressive and minimalist aesthetics. Adamčiak’s scores not only abandon conventional methods of pitch notation but often lack any instructions leading to specific sounds. His variable instrumentation offers equal space for both musicians and non-musicians.”

Jozef Cseres: “Milan Adamčiak.” In: 100 slovenských skladateľov (100 Slovak Composers). Ed. Marián Jurík, Peter Zagar. National Music Centre, Bratislava, 1998, p. 11