I arrived at composition by chance, pushed somewhat by people whom I came across on the way. I began studying music at 13 years of age – not studying exactly, but learning a few things. At the time, my great dream was to be a biologist, which is an area that fascinates me still. Halfway through, my dream was stopped and I was persuaded to study accountancy. Accountancy, biology and music have nothing to do with each other, and as I detested accountancy I decided that I needed to have a life raft at my side, in order not to have to go back and do secondary school all over again. So I took music, which caused me some quite serious family problems. Some people became ill because I had decided to study music...
It was a complicated decision both in terms of family and for me, because it is not exactly easy to go against the whole family and everyone at home. At the age of 17 I decided to come to Lisbon, to the Gregorian Institute, and to begin to learn music. It was then that I came to know people such as Christopher Bochmann and Nuno Mendes, who taught me not only a taste for music as such – hear, played and studied – but for making music, in the sense of composing it. I began to adore composition when I studied analysis and compositional techniques. I really wanted to know not only how it was done in theory, but practically, and this is still true today. And then one day, long before finishing the course – it lasted eight years, and I had been there four – Professor Bochmann said to me: “Would you like to apply for the Escola Superior de Música? There’s a composition course, and you’re good at it...” I was finishing the 12th grade at the time, and thought “Well, why not?” I applied and was accepted. And so I left the Institute, and that course remained unfinished. Then I did the first two years, stopped for personal reasons and went back in 1998. When I returned, I began to study electroacoustics with António de Sousa Dias. I’d never touched a computer, and had absolutely no knowledge of this side of things, and I began to find it very interesting that one could work with other real sounds. Not only with symbols of the sounds or notes, but with the sounds themselves. From then on, my path veered quickly towards electroacoustic music, though I never stopped writing instrumental music. This can be clearly seen in the fact that I much enjoy writing mixed pieces, in which I bring instruments and electronics together in real time.
The composers who influenced me during the course of my life – some for more positive reasons than others – were above all composers such as Ligeti, whose music I like a lot, especially because of his ideas to do with electronic music – though he hasn’t done a great deal, but all the ideas of micropolyphony interest me greatly. I’m interested in people such as Grisey and Xenakis. I take an interest in serial techniques, in the wider sense – so, neither strict serialism nor dodecaphony nor total serialism interest me. I’m much more interested in what’s behind, the idea of combining various things, using various orders and methods – so, more the serial method than pure technique. Meanwhile, I went to Paris, in part because someone said to me “Send some things to Paris!” António de Sousa Dias bothered me so much about this that one day I stuck some things in a box and said, “Right, Paris, here I come!” A month later, I had the equivalency of the Maîtrise, or licentiate, and went to Paris! There I met many people who had a great influence on me and still do, such as Horacio Vaggione, François Bayle and Francis Bayer – who has now passed on, but whom I had the good fortune to have as a teacher in the last year in which he taught. Though he was not physically able then to do things as he would have wished, in analytical terms one learns a great deal from someone who has been with the composers, who was there at the time, more than somebody who has simply studied the pieces. My experience with Annette Van der Gorne, especially in terms of getting things out, was wonderful for me. But there were also others who were there, though mentioning them all would take forever.
Instrumental Music/ Electroacoustic Music – two worlds in permanent contact
It’s rather complicated for me to explain things, though I have explained them recently to some people who have expressed interest in my bizarre way of thinking. In a way, instrumental music and electroacoustic music, or electronics in real time – the sound and the note, as a written symbol – are beginning to dissolve into each other, for me. In other words, when I write a note – a note, a sonic representation of an instrument – I imagine the sound that I want this instrument to produce, rather than the relationship between a C and a G. And so, a note is, in fact, a representation of an instrumental sound, and not so much a representation of its relationship, harmonic, melodic and rhythmic, to the other notes around it. In the first place, for me, is the sound. But this relationship that I use between the written notes for an instrument – or a relationship of the same kind – I also use between the sounds composed for electronic music. That is, I compose almost in the same way, relativizing, obviously, the materials, and I use the same kind of thinking for instruments as I do for electronic music. I think it was really this that I learned from Ligeti, the way of adapting the techniques of instrumental music to electronics, and electronic techniques to instrumental music. One can say that the subjects are different, because, on the one hand, we have instruments for which we write symbols, and on the other we have pure sound material, if we wish to call it thus, but the working method is very similar. I transfer, quite easily, things from one side to the other, and increasingly require of instruments less conventional “sounds”. Clearly, we are not now living at the time when people tried to make instruments of the maddest things possible and were then only useful for a concert, so I’m not interested in the “destruction” of the instrument as a producer of sound – instead, I work to discover which new and useful sounds I can take from the instruments. At the same time, I try not to make concrete sounds in electronic music, but I try to humanize electronic sounds and try to give them a more human, more physical and less abstract relationship. On the other hand, as far as electronic music is concerned, I think of the sounds as objects, not as sound objects like Schaeffer, but as a physical object, as a kind of mass which I can almost see and feel in space. This gives it, in a way, a similarity to a real instrument. There’s a kind of game between one thing and the other, and that’s why I never have a problem in being on one side or the other or even mixing it all up.
Things follow paths and I thing that at the moment I’m beginning to find mine. It’s obvious that I hope to develop further. The first piece I did was for ‘cello and tape – and I composed the whole tape, because I’d not even begun to work with music in real time, though even at the beginning I’d gone to the ‘cello for sound material. So the composition of the tape itself originated with the instrument, in my very first piece. But the relationship between a tape and an instrument, or between a computer and an instrument, or between anything that works more or less in real time and one or more instruments – for me, it’s as though there were more instruments, so I have one, two, three instruments and the computer, which is one more. And I treat them in the same way. May the players forgive me, but the computer is as important as they are. I make an effort not to give it more, because I believe that there should be a balance between all things. But the computer is certainly going to be as important as an instrumental player. Therefore, I look for a balanced relationship. Then, as far as composing itself is concerned, it’s the same thing. If I have two instruments and electronics – as in the piece for percussion, clarinet and electronics in real time, in which I had two instruments on stage and the computer – the three parts are written with the same weight. That is, there’s not only the concern with having the computer which searches out the sounds of the instruments and will transform them in real time as an echo chamber or whatever, but there is composition behind it. All the transformations and modulations that were produced in real time took into consideration, for example, the notes that were being played, and the rhythms, and the timbre of the instrument that was playing. In other words, everything was composed almost as an orchestration, so that everything worked together in the most balanced way possible. Right now, I feel the need to mix both sides of the thing, the pre-composed part and the part in real time, to find a balance – which for me is necessary. When one works totally in real time – as I have done in some pieces – one inevitably has the relation electronic sound/electronic response, and in a way, the opposite is lacking, the electronic sound/instrumental response. This is impossible in real time. So the ideal now in the next mixed pieces I’ll be doing is to join the two things, to have pre-recorded materials and to use them as a question, if you like, in relation to the instrument. As having both kinds of relationships is not possible if one works one hundred percent in real time, and also not possible if one works one hundred percent in delayed time – as is obvious – the idea is to join the two things in a balanced fashion.
I have a certain need to use real time, which is something that some people are gradually leaving behind more and more. Though the software for work in real time is increasingly perfect, and computers are ever more powerful, what comes out is a more efficient performance. Indeed, what happens is that I continue to need to feel that the sound atmosphere around the performer or performers reacts. In order to make it react effectively for me, I need real time. It’s necessary to have speakers that do not simply reproduce the instruments on the stage – this is somewhat against nature, I feel. If you have a performer on the stage and the sound of the performer who’s on the stage coming out behind us, for us, as human beings, it’s a little strange. For me it is more natural, if I want the sound atmosphere to react, to have sounds that may even be derived from the sound of the performer, but which are sounds that are transformed, that have their own life and do not depend totally on the performer – though perhaps in practice they do so depend, because one is working in real time and one needs the sound of the performer; if there is no sound from the performer, there is no reaction from the hall. So there is in the end a real and total dependence on the performer, but it is a technical dependence, not an aesthetic dependence.
The fact of needing to have other sound images – beyond that of the performer – is somewhat like what Bayle says, Indeed presences in the hall, another kind of presence, in addition to the performer. I really need that! I really miss hearing other things travelling around out there.
Interchanges and Interactions – Micro-Elements and Macro-Elements
Lately I’ve been reading books by Brian Greene – an American physicist who explains string theory, the “M” theory and all those astronomical theories – and the whole relationship he describes of microscopic space with macroscopic space, astronomical space, is hugely fascinating to me. Why is this? Because I seek, even in the thesis I am preparing now – and one can say that it’s one of my warhorses in the thesis – to make a coherent connection between micro-space and macro-space. What is a micro-space for me, or a microscopic space? It’s that whole space which we compose, to the millisecond, to the sample, to the waveform. So this, for me, is a valid space and that’s my subject and the reason for the thesis. I want to make a coherent connection with this space, so microscopic, to understand what are the influences when you modify a sample or a wave, and how this is reflected in the sound and in the work. Or the other way round: when one thinks of a work – and I normally begin with the form, the complete work, the idea, until I arrive at the level of the microscopic – I think of how I will transform that complete image of the work. Little by little, I reduce this image until deciding what the waveform is that I want to begin with, or the amplitude or the micro-sound with which I will begin that much larger thing that is the work. Thus, there is a connection – certainly metaphorical – between all this, between string theory or “M” theory and all those theories that try to make a coherent connection between all the calculations and relationships of micro-space and the music of the stars, cosmic music, of the planets.
It’s another ebb-and-flow. Then we come back to the question of the interaction, or inter-influence or inter-something, in which, indeed, the micro and the macro are always present. However much I may conceive of an ideal form at the beginning, or of an image of what I want and which goes in the most coherent way possible to the micro level, when I arrive there obviously things arise which influence the macro and the real image of the piece. Therefore, the piece at the end will certainly be very different from what I had conceptualized, even if traces, gestures or lines that were foreseen remain. There is always an inter-influence between the micro, or mezzo, and the macro, things are permanently being influenced – it’s as though in a painting one added a little more yellow pigment! So, obviously, however little it was, it would be more illuminated. There’s always an interaction.
The spatial relationship of the work in all senses – form, depth, planes, the interaction with the sound space, the relation between the micro and the macro, the fact that I feel that I have the space of a hall and how I am going to compose for that hall – in other words, the relationship between sounds and space: these are all things that I try to understand when I compose.
Uma das peças que me interessa referir é a peça Viagens na Minha Terra (Homenagem a Garrett), que é se calhar aquela em que eu me empenhei mais, embora não tenha sido estreada – neste país, é muito difícil conseguir rapidamente um ensemble que faça a nossa música instrumental com mais que quatro ou cinco músicos. E como eu tenho 32 e mais um actor, a coisa complica-se! No entanto, essa é uma peça de referência para mim, a nível de percurso composicional. Passei muitos meses a trabalhar nela – tem um guião e portanto há uma parte cénica que a mim me interessou trabalhar na altura – apesar de ter sido a peça com a qual eu terminei a licenciatura, portanto é uma peça de escola. Ou seja, não posso dizer que é uma grande peça! A nível de composição, se eu a fizesse agora mudaria imensas coisas, metade das coisas que estão lá seriam modificadas, porque tecnicamente é uma peça muito pura. Ou seja, olha-se para a peça e ao fim de cinco minutos percebe-se a técnica que lá está, e neste momento não é isso que me interessa, interessa-me muito mais a parte estética. No entanto, esta peça é importante porquê? Porque eu desenvolvi uma série de técnicas de trabalho melódico, de trabalho de texturas sonoras, de trabalho rítmico, nessa peça, que ainda hoje uso – embora tenham evoluído, obviamente – e também porque valorizei a ideia cénica da peça. Ou seja, eu cada vez mais imagino as coisas quase como se fossem um teatro, quase como se houvesse uma cena ali a funcionar, mesmo se se tratar de um único instrumento. Procuro sempre aquela dimensão humana, quer na música para instrumento solo quer na música electrónica. Acho que foi essa obra que efectivamente me fez começar a ver as coisas desta maneira. Depois, há as peças que fiz em Paris, que foram marcantes porque tive a oportunidade de trabalhar com bons músicos.
A peça Réfléxions, para clarinete, percussão e electrónica em tempo real – embora a estreia não tenha sido maravilhosa, porque tínhamos uma igreja com uma reverberação brutal e nada do que eu tinha na peça tinha reverberação, portanto aquilo “enrolou” imenso – marcou-me pela qualidade dos músicos e por ter podido trabalhar directamente com eles. Eu perguntava, nomeadamente ao clarinetista, que foi o Iván Solano, “Olha, este multifónico, faz-se? Não se faz? É possível? Como é que resulta? Faz lá. Quero ouvir!” E isso dá-nos uma dimensão que em Portugal é muito raro conseguirmos. Portanto, essa peça, a nível de conhecimento aprofundado de instrumentos, foi muito importante para mim. A partir daí, as peças electrónicas que fiz foram peças onde fui estudando especificamente alguns aspectos. A peça que fiz para o Festival Música Viva de 2003, de quatro canais, é uma peça na qual eu quis estudar a síntese granular, que não tinha estudado ainda.
A peça que levei em 2004 ao Festival é uma peça que só tem montagem, não tem transformação nenhuma. Eu sei
One of the pieces I’d like to discuss is Viagens na Minha Terra (Homenagem a Garrett), which is perhaps the one in which I put most of myself, though it has not yet been premièred – in this country, it is very difficult to find quickly an ensemble that will perform one’s music with more than four or five musicians. And as this piece has thirty-two, and an actor, it’s complicated! However, this is a very important piece for me, in terms of my compositional trajectory. I worked on it for many months – it has a script and so there is a scenic part that I was interested in working with at the time – even though it was the piece I finished my course with, so it’s a school piece. So I can’t say that it’s a great piece! In compositional terms, if I did it now I’d change many things, half the things that are there would be changed, because technically it’s a very pure piece. One can look at it and in five seconds see that the technique is, and now this doesn’t interest me; I’m much more interested in the aesthetic aspect. So why is this piece important? Because I developed a set of techniques for working with melody, with sound textures, rhythmic work, in this piece, which I still use today – though they have evolved, of course – and also because I brought out the scenic aspect of the piece. In other words, more and more I imagine things almost as though they were theatre, almost as though there were a stage there, even if it’s a question of just one instrument. I always loon for that human dimension, whether in music for solo instrument or electronic music. I think that it was this work that made me see things in this way. Then there are the pieces I did in Paris, which were significant because I had the opportunity to work with good musicians.
Réfléxions, for clarinet, percussion and real time electronics – though the première was not wonderful, because it was in a church with a huge echo, and nothing in the piece had reverberation, so it messed it up rather – marked me because of the quality of the musicians and the fact that I was able to work directly with them. I’d ask the clarinettist, Ivan Solano, “Is this multiphonic doable? Not doable? Is it possible? How does it sound? Go on, play it for me to hear!” And this provides a dimension almost impossible in Portugal. And so, this piece, in terms of depth of knowledge of the instruments, was very important for me. From then on, the electronic pieces I did were pieces in which I specifically studied particular aspects. The piece I did for Música Viva in 2003, for four channels, was a piece in which I wanted to study granular synthesis, which I had not yet gone into.
The piece I did for the 2004 Festival is a piece already set up, there’s no transformation at all. I know that it sounds as though it does, but there isn’t. I had collected, in the previous year, a series of sounds, which I recorded in various situations and which I put together, quite simply. So the result of the piece is in fact a montage – reasonably skilful and carefully done – in which I thought: “I want to get to know montage, micro-montage, in detail.” Right now, I’m interested in bringing together all these studies I did during the course of the last few years, both in electronics and instrumental music, as well as some purely synthetic techniques, and I think that as softwares improve, my knowledge will increase and the practical aspect will develop; this will be more and more present. There will be more and more ideas and techniques present – in a more perfect way, I hope – in my works. This in spite of them being pieces of which I later say “yes, they were written for this concert, or for x or y.” But they were study pieces, in fact, with very specific objectives, in which I wished to study “this” or “that”, or something else, and which I hope, in the future, will appear in my works. One could say that, little by little, I’m gathering cards together to play in other situations.
