Entrevista a Maria de Lourdes Martins / Interview with Maria de Lourdes Martins
2004/Dec/21
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Importance
of your teachers, specifically Jorge Croner de Vasconcellos, in your education.
They were
important, not exactly in composition itself, but in opening it up. There was
one class by Croner de Vasconcellos which was over the top! He spoke of
completely different things, but he always came back to music. He is
tremendously cultured and, although quiet when in public, he spoke with his
students. I was a piano student and started composition to improve my culture,
and not to be a composer. What I used to do in music was to adapt verses or
words to the musical text. Once, Croner told me: “this is very good, but now
take a leap of 200 years!”. I only did things in a very scholarly way: fugues,
inventions, etc. I remember that I started piano to see what sounded better and
it was in this way that I started to be interested in composition, because
until then I wasn’t interested in composition in itself.
Style and
method of composition
My style of
composition derives from erudition, from wanting to know more. The initial idea
was not for me to compose, but I began to become interested and I forgot about
the piano. A career of composition interested me, in fact, much more.
When I
write, I write very quickly, as I already have everything in my head. It is not
the form which comes to me nor I who gets the form, it’s all together. Then, to
get it out, I just write, because it’s all there inside. For a long time this
was how I composed, but then I began to have a certain technique of my own.
Perhaps it
is in chamber music that I feel most at home, and not in music for orchestra –
I think that a conductor who is also a composer is much richer and wiser than
I, as I am not the leader of an orchestra – although I have attended rehearsals
in the National Radio Station, and this did me lots of good.... I like to write
and to have already thought out the work beforehand in my head.
About O
Encoberto and A Donzela Guerreira
I was given
the freedom to write for the formation I wanted. The Gulbenkian commissioned a
work from me and I wrote O Encoberto. Then I did
another opera, for children, although when it was done it was for children, and
that had not been my idea. It was to be heard and seen by children. It was done
in Minho University, as there were entities which were interested in it there.
Later the
opera was done in schools, and I went to see the reaction of the children,
without them knowing that I was there. I went to various places, as they put on
many concerts with children. It was not supposed to be with children, but for
children, although it worked with children, because they get very interested.
This was
discussed at the time, but I wanted to cause an impact. At the time I was
becoming somewhat “just so”, so this was a breath of fresh air for me. I don’t
know jazz, although I listen to it, but written jazz is based on improvisation.
I tried to do something where the person made it up at on the spot.
Even in
rehearsals, there were things that I wanted to change, to make them easier. In
fact, as a work, it is a bit tiresome, although I tried precisely not to be. I
don’t like to modify works after I’ve written them, but I have the impression
that if it were today, there would be parts of this work that I would modify. I
understood that sometimes what we think and what we later do are different.
There were parts which, in fact, should be cut out as they’re not doing
anything there, they just fill space. I myself feel this.
I lack
technique, I feel that I lack technique. When I went to Munich University and I
had classes with Genzmer and with Stockhausen, I saw that I had things that I
had written which I should have torn up or which I should leave as they are,
because they represent a period. A maestro has many more possibilities of being
a composer than a person who attends only one rehearsal or so.
Chamber
works
At this time
I tried to go to various rehearsals, because you learn a lot with the
repetitions. I also wrote for wind instruments, two quintets. Besides this, I
very much like chamber music. I like the forms, the fugue and the invention a
lot. The technique of the fugue is very different from the technique of the
sonata. I am not writing anything now, but I really like to hear fugue’s by
Bach and others. It is a musical form which fulfils me.
Carl Orff
When people
think that I am influenced by Orff, I don’t think I am at all. What I did was
Orff-Schulwerk, with the children, but it is very different from Orff as a
composer. He was a very open person, tremendously cultured, and knew that I had
nothing to do with Orff in my composition. But the idea he had for children was
to bring movement and music together. He was here in Portugal for two weeks and
told me: “I know that you don’t compose anything from my school.” But he didn’t
mind at all!
Orff
Method
I went to a
conference by Orff in Munich University. While giving it he moved around, he
walked, danced, he did everything. It wasn’t like those conferences we’re all
used to, it was rather a vivid form which he created for the others. This
conference was very interesting – I thought that it was going to be boring, and
in fact it was fantastic. At this time I was, however, working with
Stockhausen, who was completely different.
I had to do
reports for the Gulbenkian as I was in Germany with a grant, and I spoke of the
conference. Madalena Perdigão told me straight away that she wanted to try it
in Portugal. I then started to give classes to children who paid nothing and to
have this experience. Then I did a teachers’ course, as there were some people
who came along and asked me if would give courses for teachers.
I have three
books, divided by years and ages, with songs based on popular music, which is
what people know. It may even be bad music, but it is what was created by
people. This is very important, because it means something to the individual,
who is not just a passive receiver, he or she is also a creator.
When the Orff
method is well taught, I think that it is still a fantastic method, because it
can be adapted to everybody. He said that people who live by the sea see things
differently from those who live inland, and this is where the question of
tradition comes in. Sometimes I hear people say they teach the Orff method and
what I see is something completely anti-Orff. I gave courses in various places,
in Torres Vedras I gave seven courses, and the great advantage is really that
each student is able to follow what he or she feels.
It is a
lively method, where you can start from the same place and each person can
follow a different path, but always with the children feeling that they are not
being commanded. We have to give them the freedom to seek, even if afterwards
it is wrong, and then support them instead of telling them what is wrong. It
has happened with me that I later find people who have been my students and who
tell me that they thought that things done in this way were much more
interesting, and this enriches us enormously.
Experience
as a teacher
I am not at
all stable, and people said that the longest I stayed in a place was two or
three years. I was in Coimbra for two years, and then I left – things didn’t
get worse, I just felt that I was no longer doing anything there, and I went to
Setúbal. But there was always something, like the holding of some encounters,
for example. Setúbal and Coimbra were, in fact, the places I stayed longest
outside of Lisbon.
Nowadays
there is much more freedom, which ends up by helping the student to follow his
or her own personal path. The teacher should be increasingly less a teacher and
increasingly more of a friend and colleague, allowing the student to experience
things for him or herself. I think this is what is happening today.
Education
as a doorway to training new composers
This is a
very critical point. Just a short time ago I heard that my program, conceived
seven years ago and which was not really up-to-date at the time, is still in
use. But I, as a teacher, tried to provide points of focus for people to then
depart from, not to take the program to the letter. They wanted to do it
exactly as it was written, when it operated as an impulse. I would have liked
it if they had even done everything different... My idea was that. The students
have to create from that point on, with the teacher’s support. Maybe it was me
who was wrong, I hadn’t explained myself well enough: they were points of
departure and not points of arrival.
Importance
of contemporary musical languages for personal writing
I tried to
keep up, in part, but I was making an effort. With dodecaphonics, I got halfway
through a work and got irritated, because I was being subjugated by, shall we
say, by an erudite source of composition. I was different. For example, as a
teacher of Orff-Schulwerk I can do things the other way round compared to how I
would do them as a composer. But, in fact, my experience as a composer never
held up against the twelve note series.
I had some
very good teachers in Munich – Harald Genzmer, who was from Hindemith’s school,
for example. I tried to follow these trends, but I also didn’t insist. It may
seem like personal pride, but it isn’t. I tried to look for a language which I
considered my own, which does not mean to say that there may not be hundreds of
other people writing in the same style. But that was mine, different – I
already have it inside of me when I write things down on paper. Everything is
already thought out, although it may change a little at times, and I end up
following a different path from that which I had initially thought of. The
language itself makes me change, it becomes stronger than the rest.
However, I
never spent much time with the same language. Just the other day I heard a
radio program which spoke of concrete music... I tried to do things with
concrete music, integrating objects, and it was a good experience.
After
concrete music, lots of things came up which I put to one side. I was a student
of Stockhausen, and he once went to get something from my room and saw things
by Orff all over the place, because I was translating Orff at the same time.
But he was very open!
Experience
in Darmstadt
This is
where I saw another world, fantastic things. Everyone wanted to learn and some
did. Actually, I don’t know what influence Darmstadt has, because I have grown
a bit distant. But at that time it was important. I saw good composers, and
others who perhaps were not so good, but it was creativity that mattered. I
remember one work which consisted of standing on a stool and then there was a
lamp with a stick which gave off a sound around the lamp – and this was the
work! Or rather, people began to compose from zero. Actually, I think people
are doing this again, although with a new vision.
Composer
as a reflection of the society he or she is in
I can write
in one style and another composer who I like very much can write in a
completely different style. I think currently there is greater freedom, but it
is hard to say properly what is modern. Stockhausen’s last works are older than
others he wrote much earlier, for example. Now, what God will come here and
tell us what is good and what isn’t? Actually, perhaps he uses a language which
is grasped by a larger group of people. There was a time when he was aggressive.
I don’t know what path he will take in the future, although he has many
influences in the world of electronics. You need to know the source to write in
this way, and therefore I could never do that. It’s not that I’m not
interested, but I know that I just wouldn’t be able to.
Jorge
Peixinho and electro-acoustic languages in Portugal
In Portugal,
Jorge Peixinho was much more advanced than I in these languages.
But we
always got on very well. We went on a trip together to Italy, because we had a grant
and there were things I didn’t understand and he would explain them to me in
just a few words. He was fantastic! He was a wise man, he knew how things
worked.
New
generation of Portuguese composers
Now, I don’t
see any name especially that I can say is a great composer. I may like a
composer very much in some works, but every person has different works and I am
not obliged to like all of the composer’s works. However, I feel people are
searching. I think we are living in a period of transition, with good and bad
works – and not with good and bad composers.
Decision
to stop composing
I no longer
write anything. I don’t find it worth while filling up a cupboard with works
which are then left there, it is better to put these works to work.
I would like
to have some works performed and for someone to publish the scores. But all of
this is a lot of work, and you need an editor.