“I was trying to structure my forms in all [these] other ways, other than writing a timecode, or writing values. This was interesting for me: how do we stay in touch while performing something, in a way that we pace each other?”
Tímea Urban
Tímea Urban is a composer born in Košice, Slovakia in 1998, currently based in Vienna. She gained her education in composition at the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava and Universität Mozarteum Salzburg. Tímea’s central artistic focus is interactivity and temporal fluidity, with her practice ranging from instrumental and vocal pieces ranging from solo, larger ensemble, and orchestral, to electroacoustic pieces and performance. Her music has been performed at festivals and events across Europe such as Prague Spring, Aspekte Salzburg, ISCM World Music Days, Time of Music Viitasaari, and Nouvelle Vague in Philharmonie de Paris, by ensembles such as Klangforum Wien, NAMES Ensemble, Ensemble Linea, Cantando Admont, Ensemble Multilatérale, and Les Métaboles, among others. Apart from her creative activities, Tímea also currently acts as a lecturer at the State Conservatory in Bratislava.
On 10th February 2026, a portrait concert of Tímea’s work will be performed by the Prague Philharmonia as a part of their Contemporary Music Series; ahead of her portrait concert in Prague, we spoke with Tímea over Zoom, discussing performing together, creative crises, and empathetic approaches to composition…
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Zyggy/PRXLUDES: Hi Tímea! Thanks so much for joining me today. A nice place to start with our conversation might be your most recent performance in November, where organist and composer Alexander Bauer performed your work ‘Cloud 11’ in Vienna. I understand you wrote the piece for Alexander last year…
Tímea Urban: I wrote it a year ago, and premiered it in Innsbruck in September 2024. Over the last few years, I naturally adopted a work mode where I need to approach things very hands-on; physically try to execute what I’m thinking and writing. This physical awareness also shapes the way I notate and conceive music, I think. Towards the end of writing the piece, I was luckily able to work directly in the church — we finished the piece together with Alexander over the course of a few days, and premiered it directly after. ‘Cloud 11’ was something I had written after an odd creative period — I wasn’t writing a lot. So it was a strange experience, a little bit naked, because I felt like I was relearning my tools on the spot, and I was unsure.
When I learned the piece was going to be performed again, I had a hard time not trying to re-write the entire thing — a hard time actually respecting what I had written, probably also because I had felt so unsure while writing it. But I managed! I got the keys to the church for two weekends directly before the concert, and I religiously spent those days playing, listening and adjusting, and looking for what I called a fantastic chord for the end (I wish I could explain) — later also again with Alexander, which is a luxury. It’s thanks to this generous time spent with the instrument, both while originally writing it as well as now, that I was able to work in such detail — the whole sonic “painting” happens only through very sensitive changes of the registration. I think for the first time in forever, or maybe ever, I actually managed to make a piece better after touching it again — which almost never happens!
Tell me a bit about what draws you to the organ as an instrument — what properties does it have as a medium that interests you?
I wouldn’t say I have a particular fascination with the organ; but I find working with it to be a very tactile and physical experience, which lately is my main access point to music making. Any organ is a building of its own. It’s a powerful experience performing on it.
While finishing my piece, I had to think almost anatomically: how many people do I need for this situation? How can we share the task to reach what we want to hear? How do we communicate? It’s quite different every time. It’s also possible to verbally communicate during a performance, because the performance setting is so intimate — the performers essentially share a private moment away from the audience, and everyone else is deprived of any visual input, which is not common in contemporary performance. It’s very unusual. I find these physical logistics behind creating a sound environment very interesting and grounding.
Why did you choose to revise ‘Cloud 11’ — and how did you approach the revision process?
Originally, in 2024, I felt really uninspired — for the lack of a better word. I felt deaf inside my head. I ended up writing something which was great, but was technically clumsy, looking back. It didn’t sit right with me. That’s the reason why I touched it.
I made some very cosmetic, but impactful, structural changes. And I added tape, which I also originally considered doing, but it was not in the stars back then; I’d have needed more time. I only added the tape for the last three minutes [of the piece]: when the piece was rehearsed, I recorded the last chord — the fantastic one — and chopped and detuned it, in a jittering movement between 15 to 40 cents… Cheesy! Four speakers were placed around the audience — which was the setting of another piece, zero credit to me — but ended up working wonderfully for my piece. The idea of adding tape to the very end was not to make the listener suddenly aware of an extra “layer” of sound, but rather to create an inconspicuous shift of and to the original sensation, I like to call it a delusion or a tiny hallucination. You’re not sure what’s changed, you don’t have to become aware of the electronics, the intention was to create a sort of a mindfuck — if I may use that word. -laughs-
There’s a kind of liminality there, right? You don’t know exactly where the sound is coming from, or how it’s been fuzzed up — but you feel like it has…
In the space, think you’re not sure that you’re hearing right. That was my idea. You cannot put your finger on what’s changing.
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A lot of your work concerns ideas of temporal fluidity — particularly these ideas of interactivity, and removing “precise” timings in your scores. How did these ideas develop for you in your work, and are they related to your own musical upbringing?
My musical background is extremely “orthodox”, let’s say. I started my composition studies when I was 15 in east Slovakia — Eastern bloc, very traditional, borderline abusive… -laughs- It had nothing to do with new music initially. It was not received well; as soon as I started thinking outside of the box of my environment, I had a bad relationship with my teachers. I was not aware of almost any contemporary music at the time, but I was struggling with traditional composition, and was looking for different approaches. I was not able to compose what was in the curriculum very well, I wasn’t particularly versatile or gifted in this area. This was seen as a lack of skill — and is something I still have somewhere at the back of my head all these years later.
I think I had my first major creative crisis around the time when I started my Masters in Salzburg, when I left Bratislava. I gradually stopped composing almost altogether for a year, and I had no idea if I ever wanted to return to it. It was very scary, because I thought I made a mistake choosing a composition major. I was considering going into musicology or music theory. I really thought I was wrong all along; I never composed particularly much even before this, I had no idea what I was doing. I was writing, and the pieces were somehow living their lives, getting into competitions and festivals. I was doing it, but I lacked any consistency and interest.
I think the unexpected moments of success were feeding me just enough to not address this indifference of my music. And then I stopped writing altogether for a year. I spent a lot of time thinking about my choices and trying to find an aspect of composing that could spark an interest. Not everything has changed — I’m still looking. But I think I’ve learned to normalise it for myself and not panic.
Was there any particular moment — particularly during or after this period where you stopped writing — that spurred your interest in these themes?
I went through this blind — I can only put my finger on this in retrospect. When I’m writing, I’m sometimes not really sure what I’m after; I’m trying, especially in the last years, to simply listen to my gut more — and then retrospectively look at my agenda.
I would say interactivity started being a point in my approach four-ish years ago, I think. I would describe this as interactivity, rather than interaction, because I think more about the potential of a system (a human — or can be a human) to react to and engage with impulses, input, or stimuli from another system, another source. I’m not sure if that’s the right expression. When I was unable to compose — or rather didn’t really want to compose — I was trying to look at what drove me to such frustration that I stopped. And the best I could describe it is [a] detachment from reality; my job felt very detached from reality.
What do you mean by “detachment from reality”?
It has many layers for me, but I felt like I was an observer in an artificial environment. I sit on my important chair in an important room, and think about all these important concepts and the ideal way to notate them. You sit on your important chair in an important institution, and you look at your part, and you do as I ask, and then we leave. We congratulate each other, and we post on social media about our inspiring evening. And of course this was all selective at the time, and my frustration took the best of me; but at one point I couldn’t help but see that this system feels absurd. I spent years of my studies borderline fetishising the discourse — philosophising and speculating about what can be done and why— but I never really got past the talking, into doing. It just hit me all at once that this is a completely different job description.
I get that. Often, the way institutions discuss composition (and the way we are taught composition) feels completely detached from the act of music-making in a more “human” sense.
I started questioning, how do I do it [compose] so it doesn’t feel so artificial to me? And so I started exploring — in ‘Safeword’, and a few earlier [pieces]… I basically stopped notating precise temporality in everything. Completely irresponsibly, I just didn’t want to decide. I only defined time in consequences, in a chain of events — “you do something when this person is finished with something”. The “something” is usually some kind of physical action limited by your body and the instrument you have in your hands.
I was trying to structure environments in ways other than writing a timecode, or determining values. This was interesting for me: how do we stay in touch while performing, in a way that we pace each other? This came from said wake up call: like, a brick hit me, and I understood that what I have been doing — the ways that I have learned to do what I am doing — feel foreign. I studied to make music, and I don’t feel like I’m making it.
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You’ve mentioned feeling disillusioned about these ways you were taught how you “make music” — when you first approached these fluid processes with ‘Safeword’, did you consciously feel like you were creating these alternate spaces for sound-making, or music-making?
I first approached this idea in another piece — ‘AN I.’. It was the first piece I had written after my block. This was performed by NAMES Ensemble; it was the beginning of a beautiful professional collaboration and a personal friendship. I was not indicating any timecode; I only notated whether the performers are supposed to communicate and synchronise, or each decide individually. I was not intentionally starting a “research on how I make my performers interact” — this only came out of trying to strip my thinking down to a point where it doesn’t feel strange anymore. It doesn’t feel like it’s not working, it doesn’t hit a certain wall. And this is where I got. I was comfortable choosing the harmonic progression, the instrumentation, but I was not comfy writing values. -laughs- So I decided — again, completely irresponsibly — that I won’t do it, and let’s see what happens. It was not a particularly great piece, but it was an important one; [and] it was beautiful.
Through this, in retrospect, it was a little bit clearer to me what I was attempting to do. And then I was writing ‘Safeword’ in spring 2023, also for NAMES Ensemble. This was a piece for my Masters concert. There, I really went into an extreme, which I don’t necessarily need to do again in this way. I had the luxury of time, because I could write an hour long piece, so I did — when do I ever get to do this?
You performed in ‘Safeword’, as well. Now we’ve talked about interactivity in performance, how did performing with the ensemble work for you in real-time?
It felt very validating. I had not been a performer, at that time, for years. My music journey started in rock bands — I was a singer — but during my studies I gradually completely dropped this. It was foreign, in a way; but it reminded me of times when it wasn’t. I went years back, psychologically.
It felt like I [was] a bit more in control, outside of writing a score — and also, that I simply don’t care much about writing a score. The score is not the finished product. This is a little bit what my whole craft was about: the score [is] the representation of the product, and I decided that it’s not. And it wasn’t. It was a valuable experience, and since then I’ve only performed more. I always thought I [would] be happy to be the creative motor in the background, and then “you guys do it”; but this was a safety measure, because I didn’t feel like I could, or should, get my hands dirty. I’ve decided to trust myself more.
Tell me a bit about your relationship to the score — how important is notation, for you, in the compositional and performance process? How much is instructional for you?
I think in my last pieces, there has been some consistency to my notation; but I think this is because I’ve written somewhat “consistent” music. Maybe even redone the same concept over and over until it no longer worked. I try to approach and think about notation as a vehicle, to explain my idea to whoever reads it next. It by no means has to be absolute. In the score, I try to anticipate as much as I can, and [then] put this down and leave space for what might happen. Calibrate where I leave space for serendipity, let’s say.
I really wouldn’t say that I write open scores. But I always question what I actually need to write — how much I need to write — and how do I say it? I don’t restrain myself, I only use the things I need to use, even if it’s unorthodox. The score is a language for my piece to later become — this is not the thing to be framed. I think [my] scores are quite understated; they are definitely not an “orthodox” score that you can sight-read.
That reminds me of something Corey Mwamba said to me about notation a number of years ago — thinking about it [notation] primarily as a form of communication. Is that idea something that resonates with you?
Absolutely — especially the word “communication”. It didn’t occur to me for most of my creative life, up until four, five years ago; this concept of the system communicat[ing] a situation. It’s a language. This really changed my thinking. I am always thinking “what does the situation I’m imagining need me to write down?”, not the other way around. Before, I remember clearly that I would reduce, bend, and compromise the idea that I had, just so I had the concept of how to write it down — which is twisted.
I’ve definitely felt that — that the notation we use can often feel totally unfit for purpose.
Exactly. To me it felt like like surgically removing life out of a process. I remember I was taught when I was younger, that the score needs to be so full that once you die, everybody knows what to do. But — really? I don’t give a crap about this, because I’m still here, and I’m happy to communicate about and participate in the music I am writing. I don’t think the score has to be that absolute.
There’s something very honest about that approach — your music is an extension of you, and lives through you.
It’s also grounding. It puts the music-making in perspective: at least for me, music is not this transcendental, magical gift — not at all — it’s just my medium. A painter has their paints, and I have sounds, and I just make things. I can’t treat it as a sacred, emotional activity, my process has to be grounded, and real. No holiness, no pressure. It has to be a part of my everyday life; it’s not an extraordinary thing, this is simply the thing that I do.
Let’s explore that a bit more — this kind of everydayness in music. Do you feel like treating composition as a kind of “banal” process has helped your process?
This is something which I absolutely need — because otherwise, I am not doing it. This is why I initially stopped doing it for so long, and I questioned doing something else; it felt like too big of a deal every single time, and I lost touch with it. Doing it the same way as I eat breakfast… This sounds maybe a bit cliché, but it didn’t feel real to me — it felt like an appendage, a role which I was not interested in.
At the time, I was making my way in a circle of composers who lived exactly like this. There’s nothing wrong with that in itself, it’s also a beautiful thought, but for me, this is so alien — just so foreign. I was so young, and I thought this is how I’m supposed to work to become successful, and I just wasn’t able. For me, making music has to be a banality, or I’m not doing it: regular, tiny, and grounded. It has to have the same qualities as the rest of my day.
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You’ve written a number of vocal works, including ‘voda je voda’ in 2022 and ‘PYRO’ in 2024 — how do you tend to treat text in your work?
Working with text for me is always very challenging. It carries too much of a particularity — it already has a connotation which carries a meaning, [which] which is not abstract enough for my comfort. I have so far only looked for ways to make it a tiny bit more abstract for myself; I treat the text in various destructive ways. Although lately I think it’s clearly just another safety measure, and it’s time to gain the confidence to tell stories again.
Before ‘PYRO’ — some one and a half years before — I wrote a piece called ‘voda je voda’ for vocal trio, clarinet, and cello. I discovered a resource with correspondence between people in the late 19th and early 20th Century; mostly families and friends separated during the mass movement of people from Europe overseas. This correspondence was about the most “everyday” things: recipes, gossip, relationships, weddings and funerals… And all of these people are already dead. It carries semantic meaning, but no real “attachment” to the narrative for us. I picked some of these letters, and further stripped [them] of names and addresses; I was left with blank slate of content. I gave the singers a list of 10-15 letters, and instructed them to use a different letter every time they perform the piece — including the rehearsals. My idea was that they are interacting with the meaning of these texts as they are performing them. It worked very well, in my opinion. -laughs- It was really interesting how this came out; [and] psychologically, how the singers experienced the whole situation.
How did this approach inform the way you set text with your most recent vocal work, ‘PYRO’?
I did a similar thing in ‘PYRO’, but a tiny bit different. I chose story of Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta from Dante’s Divine Comedy. The story is about a forced marriage, a love affair with the younger brother of the husband, and a violent end — the husband murdered them both after discovering them kissing over a book.
The narrative resonated with me in the life stage, or the life situation, which I was in. In my opinion, while telling her story to Dante, Francesca was almost victimising herself; she was taken by the power of love… For me, this was so pathetic. A complete absence of agency, no responsibility and confidence in her choices. It simply felt pathetic to me; it pissed me off. -laughs- So I decided to take this story — her description, her expression of why she did this — and I decided to completely crush it. To return the agency back to her. I replaced every time [the text] was mentioning this higher power, with something else, I can’t remember anymore — but it didn’t make any sense, because it was already crushed. It was just a pool of words, basically. Looking back, I don’t think it worked very well. If the piece ever gets performed again, I’d love to retouch the vocal part.
How did you end up notating for the singer, and how was their part treated within the piece’s temporality?
I was notating only the speed of declamations; how many syllables within the given pulse. She had a separate document with the text — the crushed version of the text — and she was supposed to be pacing through it with a set number of syllables, according to what was written in the score. The rhythm in the score is not notated by any values. The rhythmic structure was composed based on the electric organ; the two manuals were detuned in a way which produced a very distinct pulse, due to the frequency interference of the pitches in the low register. This is what I used as a base for the rhythm the whole ensemble was following; when there was a change of speed, it was done by retuning. The pulse was a byproduct.
Can you tell me a bit about how you develop structures over time? Listening to much of your work, it oftentimes feels like an unfurling, or an unraveling, within your compositional process…
I haven’t thought about it this way, but I guess you’re absolutely right. I don’t like the word “fragile structures”, but “unfurling” is a very nice word — you physically make one action, but the sound has an inner development inside of it. The sound lives on its own for me, somehow. That’s the thing I gravitate towards.
I think about gates: you open and close a gate, as a musician, but the sound has a structure of its own as a result of the technique. You don’t need to control everything about it. I think this is the perk of having live musicians. Even when I write solo pieces, that’s so important to me: the musician isn’t entirely in control of the situation, the musician has to interact with the situation as it’s unfolding. You have to react off of what you’re hearing. This is how I like to write structures — they are developing over time, they are not absolute, and not 100% controllable.
For me, there is usually one “first” idea — this can be a particular technique on an instrument, a multiphonic, anything — [which is] usually something that starts the process. And then I need to try things out. In my bedroom I have a cello, I have a viola, I have an organ, a lot of things. I tend to get very confused in my imagination, I anticipate so many of the things I’m imagining not to work — because I’m a self-sabotaging princess. But this is how I create structures: I try things, and the work that happens in my head is layering them. I need this physical contact with the [sound] I’m imagining first, so I can develop it. Sometimes it’s based on one technique which I’m interested in, and then I create an environment around it — as long as it stays, as long as possible, outside of my head. My head is a very dry space; everything sounds shit in it. -laughs- I need to have contact with reality, and then I can calibrate.
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From what we’ve discussed, it feels like there’s quite a kind and empathetic approach to your practice. Are ideas of empathy important to your work?
I mean, hard to say. You can tell the human aspect to this is very important. In the last years, after how my life was unfolding, I had a lot of potential to become callous. And at one point I really made a conscious decision to try to be more kind to people in everyday life. To wish “have a nice day” to somebody, to smile in the street… This sounds very cliché, but this is really what I did, because I was on the fast track to becoming bitter and cold. So this feels really nice that somebody uses this word to describe me or my work… -laughs- How did you come upon this thought, what do you think this is?
I think for me, your approach feels very inviting — like, a “come and experience this together, and in your own time”. Giving space for the audience, the performers, and yourself, to feel this thing together in your music.
For me, this was never a question of “how do I become more inviting to the audience?”. I think this has not been intentional — but in an egoistic sense, I was looking for a good enough reason to still do this. I constantly question the importance of doing the job that I’m doing, in the world that we have now. The world is burning, people are starving and dying, and would you like to buy my score… you know?
I don’t remember why I actually started to do this — and I don’t think I will ever find this out. It was just a chain of coincidences that brought me to [composition]. I don’t come from a family of artists at all; I didn’t have a clear path, or at least an open door like many of my colleagues had — coming from mostly wealthier families, musician families — I didn’t have this. And so I don’t think I ever found a “why” which was satisfactory enough. I still don’t have it. I’m not sure if I’ll ever know.
But I already have my degree, and I am only qualified in the world to do this — so let’s see how I make this work, and make this feel like it’s worth doing. I’m trying not to question it too much. I’m honestly searching for things that resonate with me as a person in the first place — not necessarily as an artist. I never really looked for an interesting topic to research artistically. I was just writing things, and learning to interact with my surroundings. This is probably the reason why writing and making music has to be as much of a banality, as everyday a thing, as possible. Having a life, things which I am dealing with and ruminating [on], and writing music — I cannot separate the two.
You mentioned that you aren’t necessarily thinking about the interaction with the audience in your practice — but I’m wondering if you have thoughts about how you perceive your work in the wider context of society, or the world we’re currently living in?
That’s an interesting thought. For me, I don’t think I need my music to change space[s] for the better — I think for me, any kind of impact is enough. Even if it pisses you off: fantastic. Anything other than [being] left indifferent, or ambivalent.
But first of all, I am interested about how this feels to me. I know that’s quite egoistic, but I think this is the way I figure out my views on the world, and living. I struggle immensely with staying calm, and not being scared and completely baffled by the things that are happening in the world… And also what’s happening in my home country at the moment. You know, I come from east Slovakia, from a very regular family — I was working full-time for my entire Bachelors, and for my Masters I was (knock on wood) able to stay freelance and had a scholarship. I’m lucky enough to live in Vienna now, to live a life I could not imagine 10 years ago, but I worked very hard for this. I know how thin the line is: I made this work, [but] if it works now, it doesn’t mean that tomorrow it works still.
I’ve been through a lot of loss in the last year or two. This idea that “things cannot happen to me”, that bubble of taking my current life for granted because it works for me — I don’t have that. Everything can change in an instant. So I think about this every day. I’m pondering many things, and this is a part of it for me: I don’t need a positive impact, I just need an impact on myself — impact of any kind — and this honesty is what I want to then share with the people that I work with.
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On 10 February 2026, the Prague Philharmonia are putting on a portrait concert of Tímea Urban’s works in Prague, Czechia – learn more and get tickets at:
Learn more about Tímea and her practice:
References/Links:
- Dante, Divine Comedy (c. 1321)
Header photo credit: Veronika Klimonová
