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Questionnaire/ Interveiw

· When did you understand you would dedicate your creative and artistic activity to composition? ·

Paulo Ferreira-Lopes: The decision to dedicate myself full-time and professionally to music has never happened. I was born into a straightforward family without great financial possibilities. Despite a happy and well-structured childhood, and with access to a great diversity of cultural and, particularly, musical activities, my sister and I started working to minimise the difficulties we lived in that time. This familiar and social context would have never created any ambition towards a profession as a musician or artist. The discussions about my professional future always focused on the near future, where my destiny – right after primary school – would be a professional school to learn a profession. The April 25 revolution very rapidly contributed to a substantial improvement in my family’s financial situation, among other things. It also allowed for an opening towards a more active social and solid cultural life. At that time, as I described in the previous interview, music entered my universe and my life in different manners, but always without my own consciousness of what music would be and if there was good or bad music. There was music, in general, and this phenomenon embraced me as a wave which took me without my own will. At the end of college, in parallel to the Music course at the Music Amateurs Academy in Lisbon and then at the National Conservatory in Lisbon, I initiated the Architecture course at the ESBAP. It probably was the first attempt not to decide what I wanted to do most. During the Architecture course (already in an advanced period), I decided to apply for the Composition course at the ESML (Lisbon School of Music). When entering the Composition course, I felt that perhaps, in this context, I could commit more to music and composition, but even so, I never gained the courage to break with the past and with what my family aspired for my future – the possibility to have a more secure profession from a financial point of view. At that moment, although I dedicated myself a lot and had an enormous passion for studying composition at the ESML, I continued to deny the possibility of becoming a professional musician. The study time in Lisbon was blazing, but due to the rejection (musical, intellectual and personal) of many of the people who accompanied me at the ESML, again, already at the course’s final, I postponed this decision. In 1993, when finalising the Composition course, the hostile environment in Lisbon, particularly at the ESML, made me leave Portugal without consciously deciding if I would or would not be a composer. Embittered with everything surrounding me, I could only hear a constant echo of José Régio’s poem: ‘I don’t know where I’m going, but I know that I’m not going that way’ ¹. This impulse somehow took me to other places and people who slowly and gradually guided me towards the direction I followed and where I presently navigate, obviously with great happiness and hope.

· Do you follow your path according to a plan? For example, do you know that within ‘x’ years, you will realise the ‘y’ aims? Or do you think the reality is too chaotic to create such determinations? ·

PFL: I see my path as a course of a river, furrowing valleys, and plains without a preview of what is behind the next curve. Like a river, this path is sometimes animated by an enormous activity and movement, just as the waters, often running brutally or stagnating, waiting for the next rainy season to fill again with life and movement, the process of creation and the realisation of projects. At the same time, and sometimes, I need to create a certain inertia out of the need to break the brutal movement that composition implies in most of my projects. Reality isn’t in any way chaotic, and I’m also not an implacable strategist following a rigorous plan because life represents a unique moment where the effort doesn’t need to be, nor it is, planning a career or glorifying my own work. What motivates me most in music and its creation is to give life to objects and the constant bloom and sharing of ideas and works with others. The grace or strength that animates me centres more on interacting with those close to me than with an imaginary world of unknown people and places. Music creation exists in my life as a form of intensifying this force coming from somewhere and meant to compose music to share with others. I could never use it as a leverage or force to make a career.

· What are your present artistic and creative concerns? ·

PFL: If we take art as a form of knowledge, the core of my artistic thought focuses on ethics as a dominant theme concerning the relations between people in the collective and social context. A work of art isn’t a mere representation or demonstration of a given culture. Art doesn’t demonstrate anything. Art, like science, guides behaviours and always stands well beyond the contemporary perception of elementary realities precisely to inspire and influence behaviours, choices, processes, structures, etc. Nevertheless, my artistic concerns or the concerns with the ethical questions that art triggers, don’t always coincide with the creative concerns because, in my case, the creative ones mostly centre on the object, on the way to conceive it and especially, on the artisanship involving the complexity of the work’s realisation: from the tools and their adaptation to the ‘foundry’ of the music elements to the perception processes, which after the work’s construction will trigger the public.
Although my artistic thought contains a personal reflection on the musical work’s meaning or impact, I tendentiously spend much more time and dedicate myself more intensely to the questions of creativity, not so much to originality, but to the relation between often disruptive and distant materials, to structures and forms of manipulating and generating materials, to the intrinsic perception but also the invisible one that working with the sound enables and implies.

· To what extent has the circulation between the acoustic and electroacoustic universes enriched the music creation in the last decades? Is there any influence of these two practices in your music? ·

PFL: The first part of the question is very complex, and I cannot effectively reduce the fundamental question to a symbiotic relationship: acoustic, electroacoustic and the enrichment of musical creativity. The relationship between these two technological paradigms – the mechanic and the electric one – is as distant as it is close. I think that the initial reflection begins with the question of sound perception and with the futuristic ‘schism’ concerning the redefinition of sound aesthetics and the definition of acoustic perception. This question is extensive. Even though I mainly teach design applied to sound and composition, due to the subject’s complexity, about eight years ago, I decided to introduce in the curriculum of one of the master’s where I teach the treatment and discussion on some aspects of this question. Here, I found support, especially in psychoacoustics, futuristic aesthetics, and concrete and electronic music. Together with the students, I have tried to uncover some myths or false questions traditionally raised by historical musicology.
Regarding this relationship between my way of thinking and the music I make, it is practically inseparable, both in the digital tools as objects of sound reflection and conceptualisation – especially using geometrical and mathematical paradigms – and in the musical realisation and performance, where I abundantly use interactive digital instruments and audio signal treatment systems. Having said this, I think that my position regarding the subject and its extensive complexity seems clear.

· How could you describe the timbre of your music? Can you find your youth music interests in it? ·

PFL: It is challenging to explain my music’s timbre as a make or symbol because the sound approach of my projects is incredibly diverse insofar as I use very heterogeneous materials and forms of generating them. However, at the same time and undoubtedly, the timbre is the strongest make in my music or at least the gravitational axis around which all the other elements and parameters revolve. In general, the deepened reflection and the theme that interests me most in the realisation of the music materials I use in my music after exploring them and based on the rhetoric or discourse I want to create in the temporal development of the works relates to the issue of harmony. The certainty of harmony in music construction is paradigmatic and simultaneously indispensable. Generally, in music based on traditional or acoustic instruments, even in solo-instrument music or monody, the compound or spectral aggregate of all the acoustic components of the sound generated by these instruments always carries, even if almost indelible or invisible, a harmonic content, which in turn firstly characterises the acoustic material. The indispensable relation and interaction between each component of the acoustic spectrum generate irreversibly a dynamic between an architectonic space and the mechanics of the sound, which, in a more or less evident way, allows for the reinforcing and filtering of the repercussions that a given spectrum reproduces within a given space. For more than 1000 years, we listened to and created music always founded on a familiar premise and an incredibly complex acoustic model, which in turn resonated in the construction technique of the instruments and the composition technique – especially in harmony – and indirectly in the conception of the concert and music audition space.
Even with Schönberg, the introduction of non-functional harmony (atonality) and the rejection of hierarchy of the different diatonic-scale or harmonic degrees, the harmonic nature of the traditional instruments’ spectral characteristics continues to be dominant, being in all equal to the 19th-century music timbral characteristics, and partially the ones from the end of the 18th century. Only through the massive introduction of percussion instruments, whose spectral nature is utterly different from the spectral model of the strings and winds, has it been possible to conquer timbral universes which hadn’t existed in Western music before. Starting with this premise, and only relatively late, I began to take an interest in the possibility of creating sound universes based on traditional instruments and being somehow innovative concerning the timbre. Between the constatation and the dissatisfaction with the limitations that the use of conventional instruments imposed on the music I was writing and finding the path allowing me to broaden the sound universe and the timbral combinations of the traditional instruments which I wanted to imprint into my music, the process lasted many years leading me towards extensive and profound reflections. The quintet I wrote in 2011, “A menina dos fósforos” has already revealed some solutions resulting from the various years of research around the attempts to create inharmonicity in the relation between the instruments, or at least to make a rupture from a spectral perspective between each sound or sonic instance of the instrumental set. In the work “Purity 1” (2014), I definitively deepened this system to create a harmonic or continuous spectral disruption within the interaction of the instrumental set and the electronics. In short, the musical interests I had in my youth were different from my present interests – on the one hand, because the vision I had of the world and life was substantially different and much more naïve, and, on the other, my musical and artistic culture was significantly reduced and essentially focused on the social context of my town and the circle of my friends and acquaintances. Likewise, the spirit and the motivations that pushed me and got me closer to music differed from my present motivations. The post-April 25 world, when I started learning my first instrument and having almost daily contact with music, was a world with hope and openness to begin all over again. Social life and the contextualisation of art at that time were also, in my opinion, incredibly innocent and devoid of complex relations. The realisation of the work of art – and I refer to my first compositions – emerged from a need to express myself more immediately and less timelessly. In my youth, the work and the life of the populations were quite hard, and there was less time for affinity and reflection. Thus, the music I could make was much more naïve and had a much more functional character than the music I make today.

· In the MIC.PT interview from September 2014, responding to the question, ‘How do you characterise your music language?’, you said: ‘I don’t have a musical language of my own. I still haven’t reached sufficient maturity, which would allow me to feel that I have a language. On the other hand, I also don’t feel the need to define or find my language.’² How do you answer this question presently, after almost ten years? ·

PFL: Ten years have passed, and I continue without forecasting the need to lean over the definition of a personal language. Above all, I conduct my creative activity through a path constructed by encounters and disagreements where the performers have had an enormous weight on developing my musical ‘maturity’. This path and the work with other musicians also allowed me to be open to exploring small niches, which a priori would be difficult to explore if I focused only and mainly on the consolidation of a language and a perspective to define the musical coherence of my work. My creation moves around the possibilities of exploration and development of the sonic or musical elements that some musicians are predisposed to work with me and vice-versa within an attempt to extend the possibilities and the horizon that the starting point of a project or a new piece indicates to me. Here, I follow a little Francis Dhomont’s thoughts. In the search for a determined reality or sound context, I often end up slipping towards other results or contexts that I haven’t even imagined at the beginning of the process (Columbus syndrome). Naturally, the process of composition and reflection on my music involves stylistic and technical aspects, which I define with a deep consciousness, with lines orientating the music I want to realise and the sonic universe I imagine and which I systematically try to invent. However, these elements don’t conduct or aspire to define a language. My way of deepening my musical knowledge is usually accompanied not only by experimentation – with sonic and musical materials, performers and personal techniques that each musician develops – but also by the use, readings, and visits to the works of diverse composers (Beethoven, Brahms, Berlioz, Bach, Berio, etc.), where I verify that they systematically change or even reject the language from one phase to another, and the sonic and acoustic dimension defines the musical thought of the work or the set of works from different production phases. An example I give myself, not so much as an analysis of a language but rather as a technical approach, is Beethoven, where the language (or at least the musical rhetoric) is sometimes subject to rupture in the different phases of music production. Who could imagine that the musical rhetoric of the Sonatas op. 7 and op. 53 could radically contrast with the Sonatas op. 101 or op. 111? Or still the musical rhetoric of “A-Ronne” with “Cries of London” (Berio)?

· How are invention and research inseparable elements of music creation and of art in general? ·

PFL: Artistic creation is an activity surrounded by technique, experimentation, technique development, and technology (mechanical, electric, digital, etc.). The audience, in general, or even the critics infinitely discuss the artist’s inspiration and the transcendence of the singular idea and the idea’s genesis, forgetting or ignoring that a construction – no matter if sonic, visual, geometrical, or mechanical – results from the combination of sometimes disconnected knowledge, and, above all, from an exemplary technique controlling all the construction details.
It’s evident that some humans inexplicably run faster than others or hear more minutely than others. I describe it as a happy meeting between wanting and being able to do. When the capacity of being able to do something (playing an instrument) meets the exact object, allowing for expression and development of this capacity to do (the correct instrument), the moment that follows is to deepen meticulously, almost up to the infinite, the way how instrumental technique is done (in the case of instrumentalists). This process of deepening musical competencies and the evolution of instrumental technique, micromechanics, and auditive capacity has little to do with inspiration or merely with ability. It is a process requiring many hours, weeks, months and years of intensive work, planning, self-criticism, and vision regarding the results we want to achieve. Similarly to instrumental technique, the composition requires many years of practice and development of different techniques, auditive training, development of analytic capacity, and uncompromising self-criticism. The whole evolution process of a musician is based on the possibilities that technology offers and on the interest in contributing to the development of technologies through the scrupulous observation of the apparatus and the technique surrounding the musical instruments, acoustics, architecture, etc. In general, creation isn’t limited to conceptualising or idealising paradigms. It has a direct connection with the tools and the technologies we use to materialise concepts. It’s evident that the simultaneous reflection on the borders limiting a given technique or technology helps, on the one hand, to understand the bounds of the acoustic reality and, on the other, to find the gaps, allowing the creation of new paradigms or broadening the apparent limits of the technique. From a phenomenological perspective, the role of technology isn’t only to support but also to inspire. Here, I find a space to discover new horizons and let myself be surprised by the realities and paradigms I couldn’t have imagined without technology.

· Choose and highlight three works from your catalogue and justify your choice. ·

PFL: “Die Sieben Worte Jesu Christi am Kreuz”(2020)
This sacred music piece made me reflect on the relation between the narrative of the word and the opposite effect (inexistence of narrative) in the instrumental framework.

“A Menina dos Fósforos” (2011)
It is the first work from the period/ cycle in which I am currently working. The preparation and realisation of this piece correspond to a BIGINT period of reflection and redefinition of my music.

“Sotto Voce” (2002)
This piece allowed me to take a big leap in the relationship between live electronics and traditional instruments.

· What are you working on now, and what are your artistic projects for 2024, 2025, 2026, and so forth? ·

PFL: Presently, I’m working on a sacred music piece – an oratorio – with texts by a Portuguese contemporary poet and writer. In 2025, I have two projects: one for solo instrument and ensemble (resulting from a residency at the ZKM in 2017) and the second, in the definition phase, for dance and generative image and music.

· In terms of aesthetics and technique, the history of Western art music is full of births, ruptures, deaths, rebirths, continuations, discontinuations, other ruptures, and so on… Making a ‘futurology’ exercise, could you project the future of Western art music? ·

PFL: Paraphrasing André Malraux, but with a particular personal interpretation, I think that as BIGINT as there’s past, in the sense of memory, there will always be a place to inspire a future. However, how the future expands depends on the conditions the creators find for this evolution and their personal growth as a fundamental part of the creation process and thought development.
By nature, creators are solid and persistent beings. Hence, they construct thought and undertake magnificent works of art of unimaginable complexity. However, this entrepreneurship exhausts itself in their works because it is precisely in the works and thought that the creators can invest their strength and time.
The creation, particularly the one within performative arts, depends on many factors. The essence of musical art resides particularly in creating works for performers and audiences. The finished work’s destiny is to be performed, thus allowing the public to enjoy it with the composer’s creativity. Each work composers write is a step forward in their learning and the path to find their ruptures or continuities and improve their musical techniques and thoughts. This process allows the composers to touch their future and, almost, as if in a mirror, to simultaneously see themselves in the past (in the finished or executed work) and in the new work born from learning about the musical reality of the finished work. The composers can’t take on the chain since the work’s birth until its public performance, if possible, by different performers and listened to by diverse audiences, because the work’s production and realisation process – recording studio, music lab, concert – is costly and has an institutional nature. It is precisely in the different phases of this chain that sometimes the institutions, within an act I would designate as a suicide of its mission, compromise the future of the art by giving privilege to programming and production without taking risks. Consequently, the future of art music doesn’t depend only on the creators’ singular vision. The future depends on the compromise the institutions find between their systematically ignored mission of creating artistic heritage and knowledge and eliminating clientele established indiscriminately by the taste of the one who programmes and manages the artistic production processes. The situation is so out of control that it seems to me that there’s no even minimal possibility of saving the little remaining from the institutions mandated for the mission that they have forgotten due to the infinite direction and lifetime directors’ mandates. The life and death of contemporary music and musical creation is thus not in the hands of the ones creating music who have courageously decided to professionally embrace the art, the knowledge, and the creation. The life and death, as well as the future of music, are in the hands of the institutions, ignoring their mission.

Paulo Ferreira-Lopes, April, 2024
© MIC.PT

FOOTNOTES

¹ Fragment from “Cântico Negro” (1926) by José Régio. Translation to English by Jakub Szczypa.
² Interview with Paulo Ferreira-Lopes conducted by the MIC.PT in September 2014 and available at: LINK.

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