Interview

Influence of teachers like Artur Santos or Joly Braga Santos in your training as a composer

I should say that besides these music teachers, in my cultural education, shall we say, there were other teachers who were also important and I think that this is a detail that shouldn’t be forgotten.

Artur Santos was a charming man, a notable person and a man with whom I became very good friends all my life. Today he is unfortunately no longer with us as, in fact, none of these teachers are... Curiously, I didn’t get on very well with Artur Santos as a teacher. It was nothing personal, but we did not have a good relationship. Artur Santos’ pedagogy didn’t do it for me. I was a student of his for a short time and this goes to show how, effectively, people can get on well and be friends and indisputably mutually respect each other, even admitting the fact that they may not agree about certain things. I always quote a phrase by Voltaire (which he used to say to someone in the General States) and which would be good if it were learned here in Portugal: “I disapprove of what you say, I disapprove of everything that you do and think, but I am prepared to die for your right to think, say and do so”. This is something which is not respected in Portugal, because if one person doesn’t agree with another… that’s it! Now, with Artur Santos it was exactly the contrary. It wasn’t a matter of agreement – I was a young boy, he was a teacher – but rather a way of thinking, of feeling, of acting. Artur Santos was the opposite of what I am and I am the opposite of him. I stopped being his student but I remained a very good friend of him all my life. Now, Joly Braga Santos was very much more important as a teacher. He was a great orchestrator and, in fact, when I went to Vienna, I knew how to orchestrate!

In Vienna, specifically, I had Karl Schiske as a teacher and that influenced me for life! He was a brilliant student of Schoenberg’s and he impressed me a lot in aesthetic and technical terms. In fact, in everything! I was always very close to Karl Schiske, but in terms of orchestration, I knew what I was doing! I mean, you learn something new every day, right? But I already had the fundaments of being a good orchestrator! Even recently I did a symphony in the manner of when I was in my twenties, a thing for Benfica and I kind of went back to my childhood. I looked for themes I had never used, that I had composed when I was 18 or 20 years old, or which were even part of short pieces which would never have been performed at all and which I decided to put into a symphony. And I did this orchestration in a way that I knew how to do at that time, with Joly Braga Santos, and I can say that it is well orchestrated! Really… Joly essentially taught me orchestration very well and also the development of ideas… He was a character, a man who influenced me.

As for my piano teacher, Campos Coelho, he had a big influence on me as he was a great piano teacher. He was controversial in many things but I did not suffer the consequences…

There are another two teachers about whom I want to talk. You see, at the time, either you did your high school at home and the Conservatory in the Conservatory, or vice-versa and I was incredibly lucky that my parents decided that I would do my high school at home and the Conservatory in the Conservatory. I would go to classes in the Conservatory but with the high school I would do the work at home, which meant that I had top class teachers. They were people who would become stars in the future, but who at the time were even politically persecuted, many of them. António José Saraiva, Jorge Borges de Macedo, Jaime Leote in Mathematics, I mean... they were all stars, or rather, future stars.

And I think that a musician “is a bad musician, if he is only a musician”. The truth is that I insist in saying that I owe my education, I would almost say my humanistic education, to these teachers, who influenced me and frankly continue to influence my life, as a musician.

I consider my manner of composing to be permanently linked to a program. But it isn’t a program about telling stories about birds, or imitating the rain or anything like that! It is an ideological program, in all of my music! Whether you like it or not, I have an ideological program in all of my music. That’s how I am!

Diversity of Musical Languages in the 20th century

I think that the 20th century was the richest century of all in terms of music. It was a fantastic century in which you have the most varied of characters… But marked, many of them, by quality! In the 20th century you have Stravinsky, on the one hand, Bartok, on the other, Shostakovich and Prokofiev, who are increasingly “right up there”, the Vienna School with Schoenberg, Alban Berg, Webern. And, shall we say, some important consequences, specifically like Pierre Boulez. Then, you have the Polish School, of the Pendereckis, the Lutoslawskis, etc.

But in the 20th century you have also Richard Strauss, you have Jazz, which is very important, you have Bossa Nova, which is also very important, the harmonic cadences, and so on. And then there is quality! I mean no one can say that Rachmaninoff does not have absolute quality! I will not trade novelty for quality! I mean, there is one fellow who is new and another who is good... I opt for the good one, not for the new one! And people confuse this very often. Well…

And then, all those who are appearing now or who appeared just a short time ago, like Arvo Pärt, Gubaidulina or Schnittke… I only won’t mention young (or not so young) Portuguese musicians because it would not be fair and because I know that there are 4, 5, 6, 7 or 8 good ones, whom I have heard... Can you see the wealth there was in the 20th century?!

Now, at the same time I think that it was a century which had a highly repressive period. I mean, each group – some more than others, it is a fact – acted as if they were the music police. “We know what’s what!”, “It’s like this!”... And this is a kind of Gestapo! The Gestapo of atonality, for example, because they used to forbid the others from doing what they wanted... I think that this is silly! A century that gave us so many possibilities, which opened up a panoply of options to us, why is it that I should only go for one of them?!!... Why should I go on a diet if I am not diabetic? I think that I can go straight ahead – that is my position. One may say “but isn’t that confusing?”. One thing is to confuse the issue, but it is something else to make a synthesis. A synthesis is anything but a confusion. But my objective is, obviously, not to confuse and use everything!

Charles Ives is, without a shadow of a doubt, one of the composers with whom I most relate. Curiously, sometimes people ask me “are you influenced by Charles Ives?” and I say yes, but it is a lie, because I didn’t know Charles Ives when I was younger and I had already composed many of the pieces which have to do with him, specifically the Vilar de Mouros Symphony, the Sinfonia Concertante, for example. And at that time I didn’t even know that Charles Ives existed! I also didn’t know the writer John Irving and I discovered him in my books Coca-Cola Killer and Tubarão 2000… I didn’t know his writing, but he influenced me and I identify myself with him!

Then, I also think that… and this was Borges de Macedo, my history teacher, who explained this to me… We have to distinguish between the historian and the researcher. The historian is Oliveira Martins. Jorge Borges de Macedo thought that Oliveira Martins, who was a genial historian, sometimes made mistakes about some more concrete information. Borges de Macedo would have liked to have been the researcher.

I think that one should never belittle any aesthetic research work in music. It is one thing if people like it or not, to attribute more or less worth to things. There is that stock phrase: “Things are worth what they are worth”, and sometimes they are worth what they aren’t, and who knows what they’re worth in reality... But our obligation is to be sincere and say “this interests me or this does not interest me”. But never belittle it… because in any type of music you may get – and do get – fundamental discoveries! Of course new techniques are extremely important, but that is not to say that the discovery of a technique, in itself, resolves everything. This technique has to be applied in the service of a given thing.

For me, for example, what was fundamental with the Vienna School was not creating atonality, because, as Schoenberg said, “there is a lot to be composed in C Major”. What was altered were the functions, it doesn’t matter if it is tonal or not tonal. C Major becomes totally different if, even using the very notes of C Major, the 5^th ceases to have the function of a dominant, the 4^th stops being the sub-dominant... If the functions cease, and this even sounds like a political issue, if you take away the functions, society is changed. But it isn’t necessary to even be so drastic…

And there was in fact a time when everything had to always be atonal. For me, it didn’t bother me or doesn’t bother me if there is a chord of “C,E,G”, provided that the G is not the dominant and the C not the tonic! In fact, with Messiaen, another great name in the music of the 20th century, you very often find perfect chords. And yet you cannot say that they are tonalities or cessions to tonality, given that the functions have disappeared – this is due to the Vienna School.

In Portugal, Jorge Peixinho is a man who began in the direction of Jorge Croner de Vasconcellos and of Armando José Fernandes. Then he totally went off that, he received other types of influences and orientations and different aesthetic options.

We are now in the 21st century, it’s true, but I don’t want to miss out the young composers who, after all, five years ago were already composers. And there is a number of new composers – I insist, I don’t want to say names because I would miss out one or two and because perhaps, as I am meeting new ones every day, I am always being pleasantly surprised. I think that Portugal is much better “supplied” with musicians, not only in terms of interpreters but also creators, than we think or about which we have a chaotic image. The country is not chaotic, it is rather yellowish or greyish, it’s a bit strange… And you may think that there are not many good people here, but there are.

And, in reality, just as the 20th century provided this panoply of options, there were also important figures here in Portugal. Basically, you could find a good Portuguese representative in each School. For example, for a Bartok, we have a Lopes-Graça; for Joly, you have for example a Vaughan Williams… I mean, you can’t really compare them because, if your model was perhaps Vaughan Williams, then the apprentice became better than the wizard… I have some works by Joly and I know them well and he is certainly a better composer!

And then you have the post Vienna School trends. You have Peixinho and other composers… And there are new trends which are appearing. Or rather, Portugal in the 20th century was on the same level as what was happening in various other Schools. If you had Piazzola in Argentina, we had Carlos Paredes here, and so on...

Relationship between diverse musical genres and what influence they had on the development of your work

The expression “light music”, for me, is very correct. In fact, I think that in most of the world people say “music” and “light music” except in Portugal, where you say “music” and “classical music” – I don’t know if you have ever noticed this? And that is where the mistake lies… This “hair’s breadth” is what has distanced Portugal from the rest of the world, because there is “music” and there is “light music” and not “music” and “classical music”! Here, the kids in school – and these children’s parents also learned the same – do not know that there is an Art which comes from Greece, since times immemorial, a great Art, a higher Art, together with painting, with sculpture, with architecture, with poetry, and that is a thing called music. And this art is an art to listen to. People think that music is something to dance or to be sung. And we teach them this by always associating music with a vocalist, a singer. Someone has to be singing and has to be tapping their foot and has to be clapping their hands… All of this silliness is what has made people unaware that this art, Music, is to be heard and not necessarily to be sung. In fact, in most cases, those who decide if it is danceable are the choreographers!

As I was saying, light music is, in my opinion, the right name because it signifies a piece in which the ideas are presented in their pure form, without being developed. It is as simple as this: there is an “a”, there is a “b”, you have an “a”, you have a “b” and that’s it. From the moment you begin to develop the ideas, it stops being light music and this makes no qualitative sense. The development could even be a terrible bore and the ideas could be awful! But Gershwin, Cole Porter and all of those composers on Broadway and who made great “Cinema Music” like Henry Mancini or Erroll Garner managed to find extraordinary compromises in this sense, which does not mean that their music is light or not…

For example, in the 4th Sonata, I begin with a piece which could be played in a bar, in fact, that is the idea, the idea which comes before has a lot to do with that. Ideologically it is a John Doe who is fighting to be something and never achieves anything. Then there is always a phrase which ends each section and which says “para-para-rara...” or kind of “look, it’s hopeless, we’re always going nowhere”. This phrase and the beginning of the presentation of the character makes it clear that it is bar music, or whatever you want! That was what I wanted! I put in the music what I wanted! It came naturally according to the ideas that I had and so it doesn’t bother me to put this or that if I think that this is what I need.

And don’t forget that in Vienna, in the sixties, people said that Mahler was light music! Here no one spoke badly as no one even knew he existed! That happened in Vienna, in the Vienna Music Academy! Some teachers said that! Because he has those marches, those allusions to the music of the Schrammel brothers, those Wiener Lied which he used, besides the Ländler, and other things which even Bruckner used.

Styles of Composition, Languages, Experiences and Projects

In fact, there are various styles of composition in me. Basically, I like to feel that I am a professional. Or rather, I get up, begin at nine and work until two, then have lunch or eat something and then I work from three till seven. I don’t believe in inspiration, inspiration is something for amateurs. Amateurs need to go to the countryside to see the birds, and things like that... Imagine if Mozart had to go and be inspired, he would open a travel agency! He would have had no chance!

What I have is essentially an idea which is not musical. I have a basic idea, be it ideological or philosophical, about what I will do and then, during the work, the “graft”, it comes out in response to this idea. Therefore, it’s not so much “I have a theme, or I have a chord sequence, or a series or whatever, that I think is very nice” No, I first think and then the things come out, music is put to work for the ideas I have. This happens always. Of course there are very small pieces, but they also always have an idea behind them.

If I could choose – I don’t know if what I am saying is totally true, not that I wish to lie, but I don’t know if what I am saying is correct – but, if I could choose, I would spend my life writing for orchestra. What I like is to write for orchestra and I like the grand orchestra! So I am a fisherman without a boat, without a sea, without water! And the limit, a few excerpts of my opera which was performed in the São Carlos… That doesn’t even have a name! An opera which has 600 pages and only 200 were performed! And I give you my word of honour that I don’t believe that more than 2% of what I wrote was played! I didn’t even want to go to the first night but then they convinced me that Álvaro Malta and Elsa Saque were making an effort. And it’s this kind of thing that only harms Portuguese music! And not only mine, I have also heard terrible interpretations of Lopes-Graça’s work, which have nothing to do with what the composer wrote!

I was never the head of an orchestra, I am rather a composer who directs. It is something completely different. You should not confuse what it is to be the head of an orchestra with what any musician has the obligation to know and what it is to conduct. I will never be the head of an orchestra! Of course it is one thing to be competent in something and, between me and someone who comes along and says that he is a conductor but in the end knows much less than I do – in this case, I will do it. And really I have also directed more than I thought, perhaps some 80 times… I have already directed all the Portuguese orchestras, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, the Linz Symphony Orchestra, the Prague Symphony Orchestra, the Sofia Symphony Orchestra… Well! If there is no one else then I’ll do it, but it’s easy to find people conducting better than I do!

I also get on well with the musicians, and do you know why? Because the musicians understand straight away and I show them that I am one of them, that I am a musician too and that I am not there to show off as a Maestro, and also because I only want to see if I can help them to understand what’s written down. So, a good understanding is created and, sometimes, even surprisingly, good results appear!

In terms of landmarks in my career… For me, there is a language which is particularly dear, which I like. It is the language I used in recorded works, a little in the string quartet, a little in Un Rêve d’un Rêve, in symphonic works, in Pornofonia, for example, which is a piece that I like a lot, where I feel very much at home… The Symphony also – not this one but another one, because before I had a Symphony no. 1 but now I am not going to call a symphony where I went back twenty years in my life my Symphony no. 2... So no. 1 became the no. 2 and this became the no. 1. The no. 2 was never played here, only in Beijing, by the Beijing orchestra.

I particularly like one piece I did for the Opus Ensemble, which is De Profundis, which will be played by a dectet on the 1^st of August and which has nothing to do, for example, with Três Andamentos à Procura de um Quarteto… These are all in a language very much like the Sonata de Viola, which has a completely delirious third movement in it and suddenly there is a slow foxtrot – but there is a reason for the slow foxtrot, and these group together. The opera, quite clearly, is one of the things which is hard for me to “swallow”. The Vilar de Mouros Symphony, the Symphonies – except the Benfica one, which is different – and other works like that, are along the lines of what I consider my best. Also some of Camões’ sonnets for Lied, two songs by André Heller, which are for two pianos and which was never played – at least I have never heard them – but I am quite confident about that. There are various pieces like that. In spite of everything, I realised, upon opening the collection of some of mine Chamber music which is here in three CDs, that people – and this is the editor speaking – did not want that, or rather, were not expecting that… But this is my music, I’m sorry!

The Fifth Sonata is in another style, it is a little more in a Fellini vein, shall we say... For the second, for example, I have a fantastic letter from Shostakovich. These are works which I can say I relate to more. The others, they are all my “children”, even if it is only a fado for Carlos do Carmo! But the truth is that they are more pieces of circumstance, that I do for this circumstance, for this or for that person, for a film... I very much enjoy doing it and I do it with the same dedication. But it is not exactly where I most see myself or where I consider myself more realised. I have done thirty or more works which are fundamental and there are another thirty plus which I still need to do!

Works appear… The Dectet is a commission for good musicians. The pieces for violin and piano are also commissions from musicians. And always when I can do something which is only for musicians, I open that drawer which is the one with which I most relate. I can also make a piece which has other circumstantial objectives… Benfica’s festivities, music for a film, or something else. And I do not belittle the music I write for Cinema at all, or for Theatre and which I end up by “hiding” or putting into a Suite, for example. I have various of what I call Theatrical Suites, music I did for the Vienna City Theatre, the Vienna Burgtheater, for example. I have done pieces of Feydeau, Simone de Beauvoir, Tchekov and others. I have done a lot of music for theatre and I still do – just a few days ago I did another – but it is music which has little to do with the play and it is not that slot where I consider it “within my own music”.

I also like the Memórias do meu Sótão. In the middle there is a Can-can! I wrote something thinking about my loft and about the grammophone up there and which belonged to my grandmother. Then, that is what came out. Normally that is how I do it: I have the idea and then I find a name for it.

José Saramago told me he makes up a title and then he writes a novel about the title. Jorge Amado, for example, once told me that he created characters. The characters existed and he then had to invent a story for them; it wasn’t the characters who were made for the story, but rather a story made to fit the characters.

I also like to improvise a lot, but I do not overrate it. I think that there is always something which is not true about it if it isn’t written down. Perhaps it’s because I am a lawyer’s son, I think that the written paper is more important than what is improvised. But, for example, one thing I do in the interior of Portugal and which I am very sorry that the public in Lisbon has never heard, are shows where I improvise, because I improvise well, but... only sometimes!

I would like, for example, to do a show like this: “now I will return to the piano, but to do a concert improvising, only, with nothing else”. Outside of Lisbon I do that often! But there they don’t know it is improvised, they listen and that’s that…

Now, I am doing something new with Ricardo Rocha. I am writing pieces for Portuguese guitar and piano. I think that we are doing an excellent job, with Ingeborg Baldaszti and Ricardo Rocha! I began by doing something musically simple, there we have it, for A Ferreirinha, by Moita Flores, but I have already written a Sonata for Portuguese guitar and piano, and it sounds quite good.