Document title A memória, manual de instruções
Date of Composition · 2021
1. Joint Optimum
2. Physical Modeling
3. Cânone I
4. Narciso e a decadência da beleza
5. Improvisação sobre o n° 4
6. Amplificando o Humano
7. Pecking Chickens
8. Improvisação sobre electricidade e ruído
9. Cânone II
10. Improvisação sobre o n° 9
11. Vermalung VI - Western Music
12. Improvisação sobre n° 11
Date 2022/May/01
Performer(s)
Philharmonie Köln
Ensemble Musikfabrik
ruído vermelho
Thomas Hummel (sound director),
Yorgos Zarvas (conductor)
Organization/Event Acht Brücken
Town Köln
Country Portugal
The title of the work establishes a link with the 1978 novel by French writer George Perec, who in his book *La vie mode d'emploi* (*Life's instruction manual*) constructs a novel in which the different stories relate to each other like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
*Das Gedächtnis Gebrauchsanweisung* follows the formal idea of Perec's novel. It consists of 12 short sections, each of which contains a musical discourse that is closed in on itself and at the same time open to a possible continuation. What unites all the sections, however disparate one may seem from the other, contrasting or even contradictory in style, are the different degrees of closeness or distance to an auditory experience, to an existing musical work.
In *Das Gedächtnis Gebrauchsanweisung* there are various ways of creating relationships between the different sections. One of the ways often used is through the use of audio recordings (*sample*) and their instrumental imitation: the *sample* recreates an auditory experience which is in turn reinterpreted through acoustic instruments. Or the opposite, the *sample* imitates what the instruments have reproduced. By the nature of the process itself, and due to the use of different means, all imitation is, in this case, a transformation. It is a transformation that emphasises the impossibility of imitation. And for this reason, imitation and transformation are two essential elements in the creation of form and in the relationship strategies between the different sections.
Improvisation, which appeals in a very particular way to memory, is perhaps the most human and personal form of transformation that can exist. Basically, any attempt to reproduce a reality through memory is simultaneously an ultra-personal form of transformation, because it involves not only the immanent transformation of the entire attempt at imitation, but also the state of mind, emotions or feelings.
*Das Gedächtnis Gebrauchsanweisung* is an appeal to the use of memory as a means of grasping the whole.
Since this work was entirely created during the pandemic, it could not fail to be a work that embodies the anguish, hesitation and hope that accompanied us all. Perhaps because of this, it is one of the most personal works I have done to date.
Luís Antunes Pena
