Entrevista a Vítor Rua / Interview with Vítor Rua
2003/Aug/25
|
|
The
Guitar, Music Schools and an Experiment
When I was
eight years old, I really wanted to play guitar. At that time, my parents gave
me an acoustic guitar – with six nylon strings. My elder brother used to listen
to good rock music: the Pink Floyd of the time, the Beatles, the Rolling
Stones, Bob Dylan and others. This was great for me, because basically this was
the sound I wanted to reproduce.
I’m absolutely sure that when they gave me the acoustic guitar, on the
very same day I must have said that this wasn’t the instrument I needed. So I
must have persisted with my parents, who saw a dedication in me, and I was
lucky that they gave me an electric guitar and, a year later, my first
synthesizer, which had to be sent from France.
I began to
work straightaway on what I wanted, on rock music – with the electric guitar.
This was very useful to me, not only during this first phase, but also
throughout the 1980s. I was able to spend hours and hours, days and days, in
the best studios in Portugal. It was fantastic for me, becoming familiar with
mixing desks, sound processors, amplification, the manipulation of tapes –
coming to know the room and the actual studio as a tool with which to work.
I’ve always had great curiosity and had the possibility, by means of this
experience with rock, to become easily and quickly involved with cables,
microphones, guitars, amplifiers and effect processors. This turned out to be
quite useful to me in my later work as a composer and improviser, using as I
did these processors and amplifiers.
In
parallel, I was having classical guitar classes. Until I met my teacher, José
Pina, from the Duarte Costa School, I tended to begin studying for a year, and
then give up. Sometimes I would go to only one class, and give up straight
away, even if I’d paid for the whole term – then I’d specialize in playing
snooker, because I had to use up the class time. I soon realized that, at the
time, the conservatories and musi schools were places where people who liked
music stopped liking it. This was what happened to me, I don’t know if it
happens to others. Fortunately things changed, and some amazing things
appeared, such as what they do at the University of Aveiro, in the Universidade
Nova or at the Escola Superior de Música in Lisbon.
I was once
invited to fo to the Escola Superior de Música – I’d never been inside the
building – because there was to be a concert with works by Virgílio Melo, Pinho
Vargas and one or mine, played by Manuel Jreónimo, in the Clarinet Department.
Actually, he liked the piece very much and even asked me to write a piece for
his quartet. The rehearsal was in the Salão Nobre. I remember that I stayed out
of the way, because they had invited me to be present as a composer. The
musicians who were going to play were not even pupils at the school, it was
already a professional group.
I remember
a funny situation. When they booked the rehearsal – for 5 o’clock, or something
– the people there checked and said “How can that be? There’s a lecture at 6
o’clock!” I didn’t know who said this, but afterwards I discovered that it was
the director of the school. I think she said something like “Go on then, but
don’t make any mess. Leave the chairs as you found them”. The following day,
when the concert began, somebody on the floor above was practising piano, which
made me think that the most important thing was not to make a mess in the room
and to leave the chairs in the right place. But there, in front of the pupils,
the performers and composers, we had to put up with that! They could at least
have invited the person who was practising to come to the concert! But this
journey through the teaching profession is not to be taken as a general
criticism, because there are marvellous teachers and places to learn music in
Portugal. That’s why, as I was saying, I think I was very lucky in being able
to choose at a particular time my own route.
Music
Teaching and its problems
I was very
lucky in finding a teacher at the Duarte Costa School who finally motivated people,
as was my case. José Pina motivated me to be there; he was the person with whom
I spent most time learning. The few years I spend with him were enjoyable. He
motivated me to listen to music, to look at scores, whereas normally I would go
to one class and give up immediately.
On the
other hand, teaching is orientated – or was for a long time – towards
performers, until the disciplines of composition and musicology came about, for
example, at the University of Évora of the University of Aveiro. Now one can go
somewhere and find a good teacher, as happens at the Escola Superior de Música,
at the Universidade Nova, or in Aveiro. I think it’s excellent that there are
classes or workshops, for example, with João Pedro Oliveira or with Isabel
Soveral. But in general, teaching
is designed to produce teachers – and it’s good being a teacher if you’re a
good one. I know that at the University of Aveiro, and at other schools, one
can study jazz, improvised music and electronic music – there are universities
with even now have electronic music studios. Until very recently this was not
the case.
Stockhausen
used to say something funny. He was against the conservatory system, which
almost always separated Stravinsky from everything that came afterwards. He was
asked what his idea would be then, and he said something like “during the first
years, one should listen to a lot of music, and then at a later stage analyse
it and comment on it. Later, the most important thing would be to dance, people
ought to dance. Even young people who dance at night discotheques should have
classes in dance from all over the world.” And he was asked again: “But what
about the history of music – notation?” and he said that for that there were
already many books and CDs, and anyone who wanted to could study this in the
last year. In any case, it’s rare that one can discuss new musical notations.
The performers who come out of these schools, from the Conservatory, are not
normally prepared for even the slightest sign of methods and new techniques for
their instrument. Very often, composers have to discover this from foreign
books, or by experimenting with other musicians. But this business of teaching
would be something else...
Distancing
from Rock
I wanted
an electric guitar, to work with processors and so on. If at that time there
had been what’s happening now in schools, with electronics, computers, perhaps
I’d have been differently motivated. By this I mean that, initially, there was
contact with rock, at the same time as various stops and starts in my classical
guitar classes. Then there was a rock group that I had, better known, and with
which I was able to record. This was GNR (Grupo Novo Rock), which I founded
with Alexandre Soares and Tóli César Machado. I worked in this group between
1980 and 1983. In 1982 I met Jorge Lima Barreto, with whom I formed, in the
same year, Telectu. And what happened?
Jorge Lima
Barreto led me to a world of music which had been for me limited to rock and
little else. Suddenly, I began to hear ethnic music, jazz, electronic music,
concrete music, acousmatic music. In ten minutes I could be with the Eskimos
and then straight afterwards with North-American jazz. When this happened, it
was very important to me. It opened doors for me, onto a completely new world,
and I saw straight away that it was this that interested me.
The
beginning of Telectu and first experiments in composition
With
Telectu, in the first phase – between 1985 and 1985 – we approached, in a
sense, repetitive minimal music. Minimal in that it used at times simple
instruments, phrases or modules. And repetitive, because repetition was used in
these same compositions, which were written in unconventional score formats –
on pictographic things, or even as text. Very often, as they used effects
processors, they also had photographs of the instruments and indications,
graphic or symbolic, of the sounds we used for each instrument, but afterwards,
in a phase lasting from 1985 to 1987, we dedicated ourselves almost completely
to improvisation, total improvisation, musicians we’d invite, or who invited us
to play with them. That was important, not only for the work as an improviser,
either my own or with Telectu, but also later on for my compositional work,
because many of the musicians and improvisers with whom I was playing and
coming to know in Telectu were at the same time improvisers and performers of
contemporary music. For example, the trombonist Giancarlo Schiaffini played two
or three concerts with us before asking me to write a piece for him, which was A Sindrome de
Babel, in 2001, for solo trombone. But before, I had the
opportunity to know him and play with him as a musician – of hearing his sound,
his techniques and the method he used as an improviser. After getting to know
his sound world, it became easier to write. Or rather, it wasn’t so much
writing for trombone, but writing for Giancarlo Schiaffini, and this is very
important in almost the pieces I’ve written until now. In another situation,
with the pianist John Tilbury, I remember sending him three or four pieces for
piano. When I sent them, I did so wondering if he would be available to play
them. I sent him the score, and he not only immediately agreed to record and
perform the works, but I ended up writing a work specifically for him, and I
became a friend and collaborator of his. Daniel Kientzy, the French
saxophonist, was, of everyone, the person with whom we have moost concerts of
improvised music, and was also, not by chance, the person who commissioned most
works from me. In November a disc of his will come out containing only my
pieces for saxophone, at the same time as the Paris Festival of Contemporary
Music. On one of the days a piece of mine for two contrabass saxophones will be
performed by Kientzy, Recette Pour Faire une Souris, and then
one for double bass and contrabass saxophone, Bar Mitzvah à Trois,
in which the bassist also uses his voice
Improviser/Composer
Duality
In some
sense, I feel that there exists a connection, quite a big one, or at least an
interaction between the two things, a kind of ping-pong between improvisation
and composition. I think improvisation is useful to me in composition. Most of
my compositions for piano or double bass have their origin in improvisations,
even on the actual instrument – and so I’ve even got a ‘cello, a viola, a
violin, a flute, a clarinet, a saxophone, a piano, etc. I don’t play these
instruments, but I like to have them, whenever possible, nearby...
For
example, I can only play in the loser octave of the flute, but I take care to
buy books, in addition to orchestration manuals, that discuss advanced
techniques or different methods, for the flute and also for other instruments.
Sometimes I can make use of these techniques, as I did, for example, with the
multiphonic whistle, with multiple sounds, or the jet whistle, that glissando
whistle sound.
Can
sound effects be starting points for composition?
Sometimes
they are actually the basis, they are the material of the work itself. Before
beginning a piece, I used to be very meticulous; I thought about the
instruments and the techniques I’d use, the
series, the notes, the scales, the chords, I thought about everything. Now
almost everything comes from my contact with the instrument, or from
improvisations. I may take a day, two days, or even a fortnight, and then
suddenly there appears sound material, effects, which I afterwards develop.
Rationality
in Composition
In
composition, one has always to know when the work is finished, or when one can
still correct something, even when composing in real time. We could say that in
improvisation, I consider that the best thing that comes from composition is
the rationality of a person improvising as much as possible in real time as
though he were composing. On the other hand, in composition, all these
intuitive, spontaneous liberties, and things that arise from contact with the
instruments, were very useful to me in my work as a composer. When I pick up an
instrument, I do so always as a childe who does not know how to play. This can
be useful for me, because I discover important material.
The
fascination of staves
When I
travel, I like to buy manuscript paper. In every country to which I travel, I
try to discover which is the best place to buy it, and I always bring back a
great deal of it. I have a friend who binds everything sumptuously for me. I
like to be careful about this, because I write with a pencil, when I use an
eraser it doesn’t erase, and so I try to use the best paper. When I choose it,
sometimes I am already thinking which instruments it will suit best –
orchestra, string quartet, trio, or solo. Sometimes it’s the actual manuscript
paper that gives me the instrumentation I’ll use.
Evolution
of Compositional Methods
As I began
to write for people I knew, as was the case with John Tilbury, Daniel Kientzy,
Peter Bowman and Kathryn Bennets, I began by writing solos. I wrote two or
three pieces for orchestra, but it was because I had to write them. I wanted to
see what would happen when I wrote for orchestra.
Thus I
began to write, for example, a piece for piano, then another for solo clarinet,
and another for solo flute. At that time I thought that I could already write
for a trio of piano, clarinet and flute. Then I could write a string quartet,
and another piece for flute. And then I felt confident enough to write for
flute and string quartet. I made conquests in this way... First the solos, then
the duets, the trios, the quartets. Until, at last, I had the opportunity and
the honour to write for OrchestrUtopica. It was great, because I could finally
put into practice a theory that, up to that point, had not yet been developed,
which was to imagine a situation. So this work was important because it was the
concretization of something I’d been trying to achieve musically for ten years.
I thought I could use a sound, or a group of sounds, modules of sounds, or
sound events of instruments, musical or otherwise, for themselves, whether are
beautiful, lovely, pleasant – for example, a harp arpeggio, the scraping of a
metal object such as a gong, or else a flätterzunge,
a fluttertongue.
Now let’s
imagine that I wanted to composed something and decided to begin it with a
stroke on a metal gong. Its reverberation would give rise to a low note in the
flute and there would finally be a harp arpeggio. I imagined these three
situations – the separate sounds, if they are beautiful, may be the beginning
of a composition that might interest me. But if instead of the gong stroke I
begin with the harp arpeggio, and then do a flätterzunge
on the flute and afterwards the gong stroke, in principle I can begin another
composition. And then I can also think in terms of the vertical and the
horizontal – perhaps if we hear three sounds simultaneously one may obtain
interesting results. For that reason, I began to work basically with a
computer, because I could do these mixtures by track, and experiment. As a
rule, I though that thinks worked well when there was a greater degree of
abstraction. I don’t usually work with scales, or specific modes – I deal with
low, medium and high notes, but without worrying much about it. Sometimes
people ask me “Which scale did you use?” – and I have no idea whether I used or
didn’t use a scale, because I used low notes or high notes as I found them
necessary, which doesn’t mean that it must always be like that. But, in this
piece, I could finally bring this idea to fruition. It’s not a collage – I
didn’t take a flute solo, a clarinet solo, a trombone solo, a piano solo and
put them all side by side. No, it was rather more than that. It was having this
experience of being able to write solos for flute, trombone, trumpet and
clarinet and suddenly making them abstract. Really, it was like writing a piece
for orchestra – in this case for piano and orchestra – in which the piano was
the piece’s backbone, sometimes there are coincidences, and some parts end up
being more vertical, and more important. But, what happens more often are
simply horizontal lines of independent things, which I join together in one,
though with a slight difference – and it’s for that reason that I say that it’s
not really collage, because that would be precisely taking hold of these pieces
and putting them together. It wasn’t the case here, because even if I’d wanted
to that, it would have been extremely difficult. I can write for various
instruments at different speeds, I can write notes, scales, modes or whatever,
different when I write for other instruments, in which I can use other methods
and techniques. I usually alter the speed or the tempo from bar to bar, but the
piano is the instrument that has standardized, so to speak, all the other
instruments that appear.