I began to
study classical guitar – the so-called classical guitar – when I was around 13
years old. Before this, at school, I had studied flute and things like that,
more for kids, but when I began to study guitar, before being able to play the
first piece I did a piece of my own which I thought was easier to play than the
one I had been given for me to learn and so you could say right away I was a
budding composer, but I never thought about this for a long time, you know? I
studied classical guitar, I played some songs but without taking what I was doing
very seriously. I studied classical guitar in a school in Lagos, with the
teacher Luís Robert, and I studied piano also. I began to really like music but
always from the perspective of an interpreter. I did composition but didn’t
think much about it. Later I went to the National Conservatory of Music, here
in Lisbon, and curiously this is where I first approached composition with my
teacher António Sousa Dias and then, in my second year, with Jorge Peixinho. I
was 2 years with Jorge Peixinho as my teacher, and curiously my liking for
composition disappeared.
My interest in
composing ceased and I dedicated myself very much to interpretation. I studied
piano seriously and so this was my ambition. And then, for a series of personal
reasons I did not finish the Conservatory and I stayed in Lagos and upon
stopping my studies in the Conservatory, I started to compose again. Always
more or less as fun without thinking very seriously about it. And I continued
to study classical guitar. I began to think seriously in composition only
perhaps when I was about 22, 23 years old. I began to find what I did when I
composed curious, I began to reflect on what I was doing and to get a little
excited with it and, little by little, I stopped studying guitar – which was the
instrument I used to play at the time – and to practically do only composition.
Then, when I realised this, that I was completely involved in composition, I
had my first course with my teacher Emmanuel Nunes in the Gulbenkian and there
you have it, from then on I began to take the idea really seriously. I
practically stopped playing because, somehow, I consider that studying
interpretation always had a castrating effect on my compositional streak.
When I play I
play my own things, if I start to spend a lot of time looking at other
composers I lose the desire to be me who is the one doing things. And so, in
terms of people, Emmanuel Nunes was very important here. Meanwhile I had
already done some courses with a teacher who is a guitarist and also a composer,
Leo Brouwer, and I had also taken pieces – always for guitar – to this course
and which the teacher Leo Brouwer had seen. And so it is a very progressive
passage from guitarist to composer. Finally on this stage of development, - and
taking into account the opening up of degrees in music in Portugal, in this
case, it was much more practical for me in Évora – I had two children – and I
had already started my degree in Aveiro but it was impracticable – so I decided
to do a degree in composition in Évora and I did my degree there with the
teacher Amílcar Vasques Dias. Basically that was my education. Later,
obviously, I did courses, composition workshops, but what really influenced me
– besides the workshops by Emmanuel Nunes, obviously – it seems was the whole
of this development.
I wrote pieces
for guitar - Forças de Bloqueio and Lego, for solo guitar, and these are the only two pieces.
It was a tremendous effort to compose them and I did the composition as I
considered it was necessary for me to produce these 2 pieces. Then the others,
it is a fact that they appeared because I was a guitarist, but it is one of
those coincidences, I mean, because I was a guitarist I knew many guitarists
and, obviously, I prefer to compose for people who will then play it, right?
I don’t get
very excited about composing on paper. I had people – and I still have people –
who ask me to write music for guitar. And I know many guitarists but I have
great difficulty in composing for guitar, I prefer to compose for groups with
guitar.
There is a
tendency to grab an instrument and try to compose on that instrument and I, for
various reasons, got used to composing without an instrument, I mean, at a desk
imagining everything, but without that thing of being… The piano yes, I think
the piano is very useful to better understand the harmonies I am doing, to see
how certain things come out but always as an abstract instrument, which is
basically to play what the other instruments will play.
The guitar is a
very specific instrument and, therefore, to compose at the piano for guitar is
complicated because you can screw up, you can write things which are
impracticable and therefore I tend to grab the guitar and see how it is
possible. And when I grab the guitar my fingers go to their usual places and it
begins to sound like something other than what I wanted to do.
Composition of
musical processes: cycle of pieces MMC
These are some
pieces where I try to obtain a given sonority by means of a process. It is the
first time that I have composed with musical processes, and I became fascinated
with this. Since then I am still using musical processes today to compose,
processes of musical composition. Shall we say that the other composition I
used to do until MMC
was intuitive composition, where I would accumulate sounds according to whether
I thought they would fit or not. A kind of free composition, really in the true
sense of the word, free of processes that I may have invented. I had an idea
about this question of musical processes, Jorge Peixinho had already spoken to
me about this, but it was a somewhat negative idea, it was the idea that,
basically, musical processes served not to compose, or rather, what came out
was something which completely slipped through my fingers. And in MMC – a bit by chance, I was playing around a
bit on the computer and doing things and I wanted to get a certain type of
sound, which even today is still very characteristic of my music – very long
sounds, the use of very long sonic areas for a long time - and I wanted to get
this sound with a process, or rather, the process did not make the music for me
– I made the process to get the music I wanted. And as from there… So these
pieces are really landmarks in this sense.
It is an
operation on the material and, therefore, it has to do with arranging a way for
the sounds to come in and out. In fact I got around to choosing these sounds,
but at this stage the sounds were more or less chosen but I wanted to arrange a
way of making the sounds appear and disappear without me constantly deciding on
the best place for these sounds to be, because my idea was that today, when I
am composing, what may seem to me to be the best place to begin a note, may
tomorrow… I can look at the score and, I mean, yesterday it seemed good to me
here but if I put the note a little earlier, or a little after, it won’t make a
big difference! This has something to do with the type of music I am doing,
doesn’t it? Because if we are speaking of very long notes, which overlap each other
with various instruments, covering the breathing spaces of the others - when we
speak of this type of music the exact moment when a note enters becomes
relatively irrelevant, as opposed to very detailed music, where in fact when
you alter the place where the notes are, the outline of everything becomes
different. Here it was more or less irrelevant and, in view of this
irrelevance, I had to choose a mathematical or aleatory process or something,
which would allow me to put the notes in place without me constantly having to
say: “No, it’s better here, it goes there…” Reaching the conclusion that it in
fact makes no difference, it could be a little before, it could be a little
after, and the conception of the process rids me of this problem, so I perform
a process which obtains the result I want, in sonic terms, and does not mean I
am constantly faced with this option of having to choose the exact spot, when
there are many places it could go.
Steve Reich even uses the expression
process music, and considers processes the formulas of mathematical repetition which
he chooses and which, in fact, also slip through his fingers. He chooses a
process and the music ends when the process ends, and this type of attitude in
composition is similar to my own, it is. Then, in terms of sound, what people
normally associate with American minimalism - not this idea of process which,
perhaps, is what should be the essence – ends up by being that idea of a
certain consonance, a work based on consonance, due to the type of notes and
the type of musical material which is used. And here, you just have to not use
this and it is difficult to associate my music to American minimalism, but the
process which lies behind it, then in this case of MMC, it is extremely
similar. Curiously I later came to find out – because these MMC were done before the
first courses I had with Emmanuel Nunes – that the MMC (Common Minimum Multiple
process) has to do with the use of notes with different durations and therefore
which produce an out-of-phase effect amongst a polyphony. It could be various
parts which produce the out-of-phase effect and which sooner or later, as there
are Common Minimum Multiples, come back together again. Later I found out with
Emmanuel Nunes that this is the theory of the rhythmic pairs, which Emmanuel
Nunes applies and which gives a completely different sound, because he works
the process in a completely different way. I work this in really a very basic
way, I like people to notice this happening, while Emmanuel Nunes prefers
precisely to disguise what is happening and uses this as a process.
Lego is also a piece of music made by processes
and, returning to that question we spoke about in relation to my difficulty in
writing for guitar, this thing of using the process allowed me to write a piece
for guitar without playing the guitar, without playing an instrument. Based on
this, my manner of composing changed radically, it came to be the basis for a
research into the diverse ways of making processes fit in, and the songs practically
cease to be idiomatic, they do not need to be for a certain instrument.
These MMC, at the time, I composed them specifically
for certain instruments because for a fair part of them I had groups available
which could play them but the fact is that, if a quartet or a quintet of
another set of instruments asks me to write music for them, I can easily use
this same music for these other instruments provided they have identical
characteristics. For example the first MMC is for a trumpet quartet but can perfectly be played
by a quartet of cellos, they have to be instruments with identical sonorities.
One of the
things that I use most in this type of work, is to make two flutes make sounds
which one flautist alone cannot make, to make the same sound last a really long
time, while one breathes the other plays over, therefore, in what seems like it
is only one flute but with someone who is using circular breathing perfectly. I
do this with a fair quantity of instruments, the idea of having very long notes
with a kind of atmosphere, a mass of sound and not based on the phrasing or
articulation of small notes.
These MMC have some curious
characteristics. The first MMC even has a key signature, I don’t remember now
if it is E flat major or in A flat major - obviously I don’t use tonal
functions but it ends up sounding diatonic. The sonority of the pieces, and all
of the MMC are more or less diatonic, and all the work I did before the MMC
were modal, they were modal works, tonal – not in the sense of using the tonality
as a tonal function, but with the use of some harmonies which are
characteristic of tonal music. And the last MMC, which I gave the subtitle The
painful pathway – which in Portuguese is more or less A dolorosa via, or something like that
– I finally chose sonic material which when superimposed even produces
chromatic dissonances, and so that diatonic environment which other MMCs
produced disappears. And I am beginning to increasingly like coarse, chromatic
dissonance and as from the last MMC things change in this aspect. The idea of a
sonic mass, the idea of a sonic body, all of this still remains – I still work
like this today – but the harmony no longer has anything to do with being
diatonic.
Composition
of musical processes: XC cycle of pieces
The XC’s are also important pieces. Here I begin to
use aleatory processes which I am still using today. I really liked this aspect
of sounds being able to appear without being produced by a mathematical
process, but by chance, and above all it produced – when transposed to
instrumental interpretation – the idea of making the interpreter’s process
easier.
If I have this
sonic mass – where I have a flute which is supposed to come in two beats after
the clarinet and I therefore have the maestro conducting, and the flautist has
to be very attentive given that 2 beats following the clarinet he has to come
in - and all of this was decided by a musical process, a mathematical process,
and it is indicated that the flute should begin at that point but, as I have already
said before, the flute in fact can come in a little later or a little earlier
as this will not harm the sonic effect that I want. And so, instead of me
saying to the flautist to come in 2 beats after the clarinet, if I say to come
in more or less 2 beats after the clarinet, the flautist is not tense about the
interpretation and, quite the opposite, does not make a mistake. He or she can
begin a little before, a little after, or even make a mistake – he can also
make a mistake and could play badly because all music can be badly played – but
theoretically the player is relaxed because if he or she does not come in
exactly at that moment and comes in a little later it all goes well just the
same. And this, for me, is much more logical, with the music I write, than its
opposite. If the music I write is a constant sound with small alterations but
which somehow creates, or is supposed to create, a calming effect, it does not
seem coherent to me that the orchestra which is to play this, or the group
which is to play this, are all tense and nervous that they don’t miss their
entry on that note or the other note. And in fact the ideal for me is that the
instrumentalist knows that they should really play that note but the exact
place where they will come in does not matter too much. And so, after
discovering this with XC8, I began to try to writescores – because very often it is difficult to
conceive of a form of writing which is clear enough for the interpreter to
understand that this is what is wanted – which rid the musician of this tension
of coming in exactly at the same place. Therefore in these pieces there are
notations of the type: “Enter more or less 30 seconds after.” But it’s not like
clockwork, the interpreter is not looking at a chronometer and so it is
psychological time – he waits and comes in when he thinks the 30 seconds have
passed. And it works – for what I want – it works quite well. Therefore these
pieces, and above all XC9,
is also important because I began to find ways of writing with processes but –
aleatory processes.
The starting
point for these works – these last works – is the harmony, precisely that. I
began by first choosing a group of chords – let’s say – groups of notes, which
interested me for what I wanted to hear. And here we have a real choice, there
is still the so-called composer’s choice as he sits at the piano to see what
sounds best or what does not sound good: ”I don’t want this note in this
context, I want this one in this context…” and, for example, if I am working a
chord of 4 notes and I know that it will come in just before another chord of 4
notes which will enter just after, I try all the possibilities of 2 notes which
are left over from this chord, plus 2 notes which are left over from the other,
I see if I also like that, or if I am going to have to change the following
chord. So, it is in this aspect of the cadence of chords – with an aleatory
element, because the notes which go from one to the other can be left over or
not – and, shall we say, there are certain harmoniesthat
I don’t want but which come out and so I eliminate the possibilities of this
happening.
When I am doing
a work with just electronics, here I use micro-intervallic harmony without any
problems at all. When I work with instruments I prefer to use diverse
possibilities using noises from the instrument – the so-called instrument noise
– than to be using micro-intervallic harmony.
For example,
the breath from the flute, string friction without giving off sound, so the use
of noise interests me, as because this mass of sound can be made only with
noise, without a single identifiable frequency.
If I have a
pianist who asks me for a piece and I write the piece for piano, he will play
it wherever he wants. But if I write a piece for a piano and electronics,
generally, I will have to go with him because he will not be able to get people
to do the things and therefore the process becomes complicated. But I very much
like the idea of using electronics with instruments, not only the deformation
of sound with electronics – the use of the very sound that the instruments are
making, which is what I do in these pieces, - but also the use of pre-recorded
sounds, so sounds which do not generally belong to the environment of the
concert or the piece. I have also already used this in one piece or another –
put a tape – not using electronics for the treatment of sound which each
instrument would have to make but as if it were another instrument, another
sound being made. I like this, mostly from the perspective of them really being
2 instruments.
At the moment I
am doing a piece for piano and electronics in which my idea of electronics is
for the electronics to take what is being played by the piano and perform as if
it were a concert. From time to time the piano stops and the electronics
remains alone, not playing pre-recorded material, but rather working on the
sound that the pianist was making up to that moment. Which could be a long part
of the music. For example, the pianist plays for 5 minutes and then there is an
interlude with only electronics for another 5 minutes, which is what the
pianist played, but worked in a different way or even extended beyond the 5
minutes. I like this a lot.
Rejection of the musical narrative:
from everything to the particular
This perhaps
has to do with one thing which I reject in practically all of my pieces which
come after MMC which is
the idea of musical discourse, the idea that music is to take a direction,
which goes from here to there. A kind of musical narrative which I reject
completely and so in doing this, by rejecting the narrative, in fact it doesn’t
make sense to start at the beginning and finish at the end, because if there is
no narrative I have to see the whole and work on the whole always as seen from
above. I usually compare this with looking at a painting – making a parallel
with the plastic arts, – if I see the painting as a whole, or if I am looking
at the painting, I see the beginning of the painting and I will take it to the
end. If I take a partial view of the painting I will understand nothing. I have
to see the painting as a whole. And when I compose, I have to watch the time –
the painting in this case is time – as a whole and see what it is I am going to
include there. I always work from a global vision of the thing.
Aesthetics and “work” on sound:
composition by negation
There is an
aesthetic question which has concerned me and which follows my work a little,
which is the idea that I constantly doubt that what I am doing is music. In
fact I am beginning to ask serious questions about how you can associate what I
am doing, for example to the repertoire, to what people normally identify as
music. Shall we say in other words, what people who reject contemporary music
usually say: “Hey, this is not music!”. In relation to my music, I am beginning
to think that maybe they are right and that what I am doing would be in an
extremely wide sense of the word music or then maybe what I am doing is no
longer music even, because it doesn’t have a series of things which are common
throughout the history of music up to the present day. My liking for working
the sound is such that I end up in fact by disregarding the overwhelming
majority of things that people normally consider music, or which are part of
music. And so I don’t know if later on it may not make more sense to look for
another term.
These days
these questions about intervals don’t bother me so much, really. If I take some
care, for example, over the harmony as we said just before, not to have too
many harmonies, it ends up by being, precisely, to avoid there being those
harmonies where people say: “Ah! This is music!” And so, even this work is the
negation of music.