Daniel Moreira was born in Porto in 1983. He holds a PhD in Music Composition (King’s College, University of London, 2017), which was supported through a scholarship by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia; a M. A. in Music Theory and Composition (Escola Superior de Música e das Artes do Espectáculo, Instituto Politécnico do Porto, 2010); and a B. A. in Economics (Faculdade de Economia, Universidade do Porto, 2006).
His main teachers include Sir George Benjamin, Fernando C. Lapa, Dimitris Andrikopoulos and João-Heitor Rigaud (Composition); Carlos Guedes (Electronic Music); and Miguel Ribeiro-Pereira, José Oliveira Martins and Silvina Milstein (Music Theory and Analysis). He also participated in a number of seminars and/ or had occasional one-to-one classes with Helmut Lachenmann, Klaas de Vries, Magnus Lindberg, Jonathan Harvey and Kaija Saariaho; and his music has been read in workshops with the Remix Ensemble Casa da Música, Diotima Quartet, Lontano Ensemble and the Gulbenkian Orchestra. In 2015, he was one of the few composers selected to integrate the “LSO Panufnik Composers Scheme”, a one-year BIGINT set of workshops with the London Symphony Orchestra, which culminated with the public presentation of a new orchestral piece in 2016.
In 2009, he was awarded a Young-Composer-in-Residence at Casa da Música. Since then, he has regularly been commissioned to compose new music by institutions such as Casa da Música, Festival Musica Strasbourg, European Concert Hall Organisation-ECHO, Chester & Novello, Antena 2/ RDP, MPMP Património Musical Vivo, the “Criatório” Program and Kölner Philarmonie, among others. His music has been performed both in Portugal and abroad. Worth of particular mention, in this regard, is the participation in three new music festivals with works written for the resident ensembles of Casa da Música (Witten, 2009; Strasbourg, 2010; Strasbourg, 2012); and the premiere of the choral work Poema para a padeira at three European concert halls (Cité de la Musique, Paris; Sage Gateshead, UK; Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon), in the context of ECHO's “Rising Stars” programme (in 2014).
His music embraces multiple genres – from orchestral to chamber music – with a special emphasis, more recently, on choral music (Poema para a padeira, 2013; Do Desconcerto do mundo, 2016); opera (Cai uma Rosa..., 2015; Ninguém & Todo-o-Mundo: ópera lírico-turística em torno de Gil Vicente, 2018); and music for large ensemble and orchestra (Beethoven quasi una fantasia op. 27 n.º 2, for large ensemble, 2018; Isto não é um filme, concerto for orchestra and electronics, 2020). Works in progress include the composition of the opening music for the Portuguese Pavilion in Dubai's EXPO 2020 (As ondas que a maré conta, ninguém as pode contar, for electronics); the composition of music for silent movies (with piano and electronics); and a new work for amplified vocal octet (Quadras Pessoanas).
As a music theorist and analyst, he is mainly devoted to the analysis of film music (with a special focus in Bernard Herrmann's music) and to the study of the idea of musicality in cinema (with a special focus on David Lynch's films); he also approaches matters of harmony and temporality in music of the 20th and 21st centuries of both the erudite and popular traditions. His main published articles include: Nondirected Linearity and Modulatory Networks in Webern’s op. 10/4 (Revista Portuguesa de Musicologia, 2016); The Spiral of Time: the Crystal-Image in Herrmann’s Music for Hitchcock’s Vertigo (Music Analysis, 2021); Chaos, Madness and Distorted Mirrors in Herrmann’s Music for Hitchcock’s Psycho (Journal of Film Music; the article has been accepted for publication and is currently under revision).
Since 2009, he has been teaching classes of Analysis, Aesthetics and Composition at ESMAE-IPP, where he is, since 2020, the coordinator of the Theory area. He also taught at the University of Minho (2017-19), and, as a visiting teacher, at the Xiquitsi Project in Maputo, Mozambique (2015-17). Since 2020, he is an integrated researcher at University of Coimbra's Centro de Estudos Interdisciplinares – CEIS20 –, where he is, since 2021, one of the coordinators of the research group “Art Currents and Intelectual Movements”. He is also, since 2021, a member of the Fiscal Council of the Sociedade Portuguesa de Investigação em Música. Finally, he collaborates often with Casa da Música and other Portuguese institutions writing programme notes for concerts and CDs, and presenting free courses and pre-concert talks to non-specialized audiences.
Last update: August 16th, 2021
Biography
Daniel Moreira was born in Porto in 1983. He holds a PhD in Music Composition (King’s College, University of London, 2017), which was supported through a scholarship by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia; a M. A. in Music Theory and Composition (Escola Superior de Música e das Artes do Espectáculo, Instituto Politécnico do Porto, 2010); and a B. A. in Economics (Faculdade de Economia, Universidade do Porto, 2006).
His main teachers include Sir George Benjamin, Fernando C. Lapa, Dimitris Andrikopoulos and João-Heitor Rigaud (Composition); Carlos Guedes (Electronic Music); and Miguel Ribeiro-Pereira, José Oliveira Martins and Silvina Milstein (Music Theory and Analysis). He also participated in a number of seminars and/ or had occasional one-to-one classes with Helmut Lachenmann, Klaas de Vries, Magnus Lindberg, Jonathan Harvey and Kaija Saariaho; and his music has been read in workshops with the Remix Ensemble Casa da Música, Diotima Quartet, Lontano Ensemble and the Gulbenkian Orchestra. In 2015, he was one of the few composers selected to integrate the “LSO Panufnik Composers Scheme”, a one-year BIGINT set of workshops with the London Symphony Orchestra, which culminated with the public presentation of a new orchestral piece in 2016.
In 2009, he was awarded a Young-Composer-in-Residence at Casa da Música. Since then, he has regularly been commissioned to compose new music by institutions such as Casa da Música, Festival Musica Strasbourg, European Concert Hall Organisation-ECHO, Chester & Novello, Antena 2/ RDP, MPMP Património Musical Vivo, the “Criatório” Program and Kölner Philarmonie, among others. His music has been performed both in Portugal and abroad. Worth of particular mention, in this regard, is the participation in three new music festivals with works written for the resident ensembles of Casa da Música (Witten, 2009; Strasbourg, 2010; Strasbourg, 2012); and the premiere of the choral work Poema para a padeira at three European concert halls (Cité de la Musique, Paris; Sage Gateshead, UK; Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon), in the context of ECHO's “Rising Stars” programme (in 2014).
His music embraces multiple genres – from orchestral to chamber music – with a special emphasis, more recently, on choral music (Poema para a padeira, 2013; Do Desconcerto do mundo, 2016); opera (Cai uma Rosa..., 2015; Ninguém & Todo-o-Mundo: ópera lírico-turística em torno de Gil Vicente, 2018); and music for large ensemble and orchestra (Beethoven quasi una fantasia op. 27 n.º 2, for large ensemble, 2018; Isto não é um filme, concerto for orchestra and electronics, 2020). Works in progress include the composition of the opening music for the Portuguese Pavilion in Dubai's EXPO 2020 (As ondas que a maré conta, ninguém as pode contar, for electronics); the composition of music for silent movies (with piano and electronics); and a new work for amplified vocal octet (Quadras Pessoanas).
As a music theorist and analyst, he is mainly devoted to the analysis of film music (with a special focus in Bernard Herrmann's music) and to the study of the idea of musicality in cinema (with a special focus on David Lynch's films); he also approaches matters of harmony and temporality in music of the 20th and 21st centuries of both the erudite and popular traditions. His main published articles include: Nondirected Linearity and Modulatory Networks in Webern’s op. 10/4 (Revista Portuguesa de Musicologia, 2016); The Spiral of Time: the Crystal-Image in Herrmann’s Music for Hitchcock’s Vertigo (Music Analysis, 2021); Chaos, Madness and Distorted Mirrors in Herrmann’s Music for Hitchcock’s Psycho (Journal of Film Music; the article has been accepted for publication and is currently under revision).
Since 2009, he has been teaching classes of Analysis, Aesthetics and Composition at ESMAE-IPP, where he is, since 2020, the coordinator of the Theory area. He also taught at the University of Minho (2017-19), and, as a visiting teacher, at the Xiquitsi Project in Maputo, Mozambique (2015-17). Since 2020, he is an integrated researcher at University of Coimbra's Centro de Estudos Interdisciplinares – CEIS20 –, where he is, since 2021, one of the coordinators of the research group “Art Currents and Intelectual Movements”. He is also, since 2021, a member of the Fiscal Council of the Sociedade Portuguesa de Investigação em Música. Finally, he collaborates often with Casa da Música and other Portuguese institutions writing programme notes for concerts and CDs, and presenting free courses and pre-concert talks to non-specialized audiences.
The Arditti Quartet
Irvine Arditti (violin), Ashot Sarkissian (violin), Ralf Ehlers (viola), Lucas Fels (cello)
Notes
Premiered in 1922, this rarity of Portuguese silent cinema is presented with a new sound composition, commissioned by Batalha Centro de Cinema from composer Daniel Moreira and performed live by the string quartet The Arditti Quartet. Filmed in the turbulent waters where the Tejo and the Atlantic meet and directed by Maurice Mariaud, Os Faroleiros was lost for decades, having been found in the Palácio do Bolhão, in Porto, in 1993 — where the company of producer Raul de Caldevilla, pioneer of advertising films in Portugal, had its headquarters. A film that, due to its pioneering spirit and technical audacity, became a landmark of European silent cinema, at a time when the most challenging and ambitious films were the result of the efforts of multinational teams, who resorted to the most varied exercises of imagination to reproduce, on the screen, unknown realities.
Premiered in 1922, this rarity of Portuguese silent cinema is presented with a new sound composition, commissioned by Batalha Centro de Cinema from composer Daniel Moreira and performed live by the string quartet The Arditti Quartet. Filmed in the turbulent waters where the Tejo and the Atlantic meet and directed by Maurice Mariaud, Os Faroleiros was lost for decades, having been found in the Palácio do Bolhão, in Porto, in 1993 — where the company of producer Raul de Caldevilla, pioneer of advertising films in Portugal, had its headquarters. A film that, due to its pioneering spirit and technical audacity, became a landmark of European silent cinema, at a time when the most challenging and ambitious films were the result of the efforts of multinational teams, who resorted to the most varied exercises of imagination to reproduce, on the screen, unknown realities.
The Arditti Quartet
Irvine Arditti (violin), Ashot Sarkissian (violin), Ralf Ehlers (viola), Lucas Fels (cello)
Notes
The restoration of this rarity of Portuguese silent cinema is premiered, with a new sound composition commissioned from Daniel Moreira and performed live by the string quartet The Arditti Quartet, at the invitation of Batalha.
In this drama — an ambitious production from the 1920s restored within the framework of FILMar, a project operated by Cinemateca Portuguesa, a partner and promoter of this initiative, with the support of the EEAGrants 2020/2024 program — we follow a fatal love triangle.
Around Rosa (located in the lighthouse after her father's death at sea), the lighthouse keeper João Vidal, for whom she has feelings, and António Gaspar, another lighthouse keeper who is driven by jealousy, a lovely narrative drifts between affection and violence, always with the sea as an omnipresent element.
Filmed in the turbulent waters where the Tejo and the Atlantic meet and directed by Maurice Mariaud (who here also plays the role of João Vidal), Os Faroleiros (1922) was lost for decades, having been found in the Palácio do Bolhão, in Porto, in 1993 — where the company of producer Raul de Caldevilla, pioneer of advertising films in Portugal, had its headquarters.
The restoration of this rarity of Portuguese silent cinema is premiered, with a new sound composition commissioned from Daniel Moreira and performed live by the string quartet The Arditti Quartet, at the invitation of Batalha.
In this drama — an ambitious production from the 1920s restored within the framework of FILMar, a project operated by Cinemateca Portuguesa, a partner and promoter of this initiative, with the support of the EEAGrants 2020/2024 program — we follow a fatal love triangle.
Around Rosa (located in the lighthouse after her father's death at sea), the lighthouse keeper João Vidal, for whom she has feelings, and António Gaspar, another lighthouse keeper who is driven by jealousy, a lovely narrative drifts between affection and violence, always with the sea as an omnipresent element.
Filmed in the turbulent waters where the Tejo and the Atlantic meet and directed by Maurice Mariaud (who here also plays the role of João Vidal), Os Faroleiros (1922) was lost for decades, having been found in the Palácio do Bolhão, in Porto, in 1993 — where the company of producer Raul de Caldevilla, pioneer of advertising films in Portugal, had its headquarters.
Teresa Nunes · soprano; João Terleira · tenor; Coro do Conservatório de Música do Porto; Crispim Luz · clarinet; Brenda Vidal · piano; Fábio Palma · accordion; Miguel Amaral · Portuguese guitar; Óscar Rodrigues · electronics; Susana Lima · cello; Jan Wierzba · direction