Interview

Stages and turning points in your education

Music began really in a very epidermic way. Ever since I can remember, and also as my parents used to tell me, when I was two years old, music was the only thing that really made me stop. I have very distant memories of evenings my parents would spend with their friendsÉ whole evenings listening to musicÉ Which is something today that we no longer hardly believe could have happened!É Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn and so on really got me moving!  However, my parents only started my music studies when I was 8, although I had already been asking them for a long timeÉ At that time I began to study piano in the Amadores de Mœsica Academy. Right away I began to understand that there was something curious and strange about music education for me! I adored playing pieces of all kinds, but I was somewhat reluctant about the work aspect, dedication and technique.

Later on - I think it was when I got into the Conservatory - I began to enjoy something else which consisted in changing the pieces. Or rather, ÒgrabbingÓ the pieces and playing them so much, I ended up by modulating over them, modulating the rhythm, making variationsÉ etc. These were variations about which my teachers obviously knew nothing! I just played the pieces in class. But we can say that it was here that I began to understand that I was really interested in the material in terms of creation. From then on came that stage Ð which probably happened to us all, composers Ð which was beginning in fact to compose our first pieces. Without writing or anything, but having the pure and simple enjoyment of starting to create a piece. And little by little you begin to create a whole piece with a beginning, a middle and an end and you really begin to have a notion of what the piece is, still without writing anything.

Then I recall starting to record them Ð mainly because I saw that I frequently forgot the older pieces, I couldnÕt remember them Ð but without the slightest pretension of being a composer. In fact, even today I donÕt have that pretensionÉ of the place of  the ÒcomposerÓ in the sense of the character in itself. I donÕt take myself so seriously.

From then on and in terms of my musical education, I did the Conservatory. Elisa Lamas was my teacher, not only for musical education, but also later on she ended up by being my piano teacher. She used to get completely desolate with me because, once again, I still did not have the patience for my studies and only wanted to devour pieces. I had already devoured all of the pieces and still hadnÕt prepared anything to do in the 4th year of piano! It was a war!

After a while I realised that I was becoming interested and I discovered that in the Conservatory there was a thing called ÒGeneral Composition CourseÓ. I was 15 years old and I enrolled. At the time, the teacher of this course was Constana Capdeville. And it was at this time that I had a kind of set-back because I realised that it was basically the study of Harmony. On the one hand it was interesting, because everyone knows that it is important, above all harmony from the point of view of the tradition of Bach and so on. But what I wanted was in fact the aspect of the creative process, without knowing very well what this was. I was simply curious to do it.

Meanwhile, although my parents were quite cultured and interested people, they were still part of a generation which thought that to be a musician was not a life, or rather, that music is an interest and not a profession or an activity. And so it was at that time that I had to make a choice using a process of elimination, or ratherÉ ÒIf it canÕt be music, what can I do?ÉÓ and I came up with Architecture. Upon finishing my high school and my preliminary education, I enrolled on the only Architecture course that there was here in Lisbon, in the Lisbon Superior School of Fine Arts (I didnÕt get around to enrolling in Oporto as an alternative). I entered, I did the Architecture course and shall we say that it was more of a complicated process of inner struggle because meanwhile I was discovering many other things like a passion for Choral Music. Later on I discovered Choir Direction, another world which I still visit today. Ultimately, I was living several lives at the same time: I was doing my Architecture course at the same time as I was singing at night; and I sang in various choirs of which the Chamber Choir of the Conservatory was perhaps the most important.

ThenÉ Choir Direction was another world that I discovered through Francisco dÕOrey, in the first course of Choir Direction organised by ACAL Ð the Lisbon Association of Amateur Choirs. I had already done a musical coaching course there and had liked Francisco a lot and then I went with some friends who were colleagues on the course at the time, to attend a session on the Direction Course. I didnÕt even enroll because initially I thought that I wouldnÕt relate to it very much or that it was certainly not something for me, but I ended up to finding it immensely amusing, so much that Francisco invited me to try it. I went to try it out right there and then on that same day (and he thought I could continue and was fine) so I did the whole course. I was lucky and privileged that Francisco himself invited me to be his assistant as the assistant director of the Lisbon University Choir, which he directed at the time Ð and then in relation to choir direction I began right there to direct a number of choirs.

But in fact composition was always something about which I had a gut feeling, it was very internal. Or rather, for a number of years, it was something that I used to do for myself and about which I had no pretensions whatsoever.

My relationship with what is still called pure music was going ahead again but very modestly. Specifically, a group was formed, Quadrivium, who were supposedly four composers. I was the black sheep of the family and only the other three were really studying composition; they were CŽsar Viana, Carlos Fernandes and Paulo Pontes.  So we formed this group, Quadrivium, with the aim of playing our own works; we also invited some friends, other musicians who wanted to work with us and we even presented certain works, and there obviously I had space to write some musical works. It was great to have done that.

Composer and Architect: the role of the Plastic Arts and the scenic space in the development of the creative process

It so happens that when I finished the Architecture course Ð and was perfectly aware that I didnÕt want to be an architect (although I was still going through the drama of not having a clear idea of what it was I wanted to do) Ð I was already professionally involved in choir direction. I was directing a series of choirs at the time and, from the point of view of composition, presenting works in public occurred a little by chance. A great friend of mine, Miguel Branco, who was also going to have his first exposition, asked me if I wanted to write something for the opening. At the time I was extremely fascinated with the bass clarinet Ð and I wrote a piece for solo bass clarinet. We could say that this can be considered my first piece as such.

The instrument for this piece already has a little of this language Ð as it was not only a piece for solo bass clarinet, but it had something to do with Miguel BrancoÕs painting and that of Ant—nio Marques (both were going to display their works); and it had a lot to do spatially with the venue of this exposition. The space for the presentation was a very long, but quite narrow hall with very particular acoustics. The piece was really written for those acoustics and for that space. Here I began to understand that this interested me a lot because I wasnÕt only writing for the instrument.  At the time I was very fascinated with the bass clarinet and with the sonority of the clarinet Ð but also with this relationship of space, the relationship of the interpreter with the public. Shall we say that the whole piece was written on this basis Ð with me listening to it being played in the hall and trying to understand what worked and what not, if the notes reverberated or not, and all of this ended up by being structural for this piece.

From then on I began to work in collaboration with the sculptor SŽrgio Taborda who invited me to write a first piece. Curiously at the time I didnÕt know very well what to call it in terms of genre and I ended up by calling it a musical installation. I had no idea that there were installations from the point of view of sound! In fact, I have the impression that in Portugal there still werenÕt many people working in this area. Basically, we understood that we empathised with each other very much because he also conceived his sculpture not only as the presentation of sculpted objects but rather of objects in relation with the space, creating pathways where people gradually discovered his sculpture. And this has a lot to do with me, with the relationship which I wanted people to have with my sonic universe.

So this first installation came about in 1992, in the M‹e dÕçgua (Lisbon Water Museum), a piece with six sonic slides; it was something very simple and very poor in the good sense of the word, with 6 recorders which I got sponsored through the company that loaned them; the six recorders were on top of the stone slabs above the water, in the M‹e dÕçgua, and were placed in a very particular manner, which obliged the visitor to come inside the space and walk around it, trying to relate with each of the objects in a different way.

And I think it was decisive in terms of understanding how I should conceive my installations from then on. I had to understand, before anything else, the acoustics of the place Ð in fact I took a series of cassettes of various things to understand the acoustics of the place a bit better, completely disastrous from the point of view of the sound with around eight seconds of reverberation, if I recall.

And it was also useful to understand which sounds really dispersed through the space; to understand the high frequencies, the low frequencies, to understand that the mid-range frequencies, on the contrary, did not dissipate and I had to get closer. At that time I even called it a collage because I sampled various things. It was an encounter of various sonic universes.

Meanwhile there were various collaborations as from 1992. The last we did was in 1997 and later we got together to do a piece in 2001. But here, in interior terms shall we say, it was my way of being able to marry the ÒarchitectÓ side of me which had re-emerged from the relationship with space, with my musician side; it was really the best way for me to be able to be an architect and in some way feel I was also a musician in terms of my creative activity.

The experience of Choir Direction: influence on technical and artistic options and approximation to Musical Theatre

My experience in choir direction led me to compose for vocal music and I even wrote some things for choir. But letÕs say that I became more at ease with the writing of Cantata sobre o Vulc‹o in 1995 when I was invited to take part in a symposium of multimedia arts in the Azores. And while I was there, I always worked steeped in the spirit of trying to learn the most about the space where we were, in fact like everyone in the symposium. From the inner point of view, the experience of the trip to Capelinhos and the walks I took there, for example were a very powerful revelation and I realised that I would have to write a piece for that place. So, I did an electronic piece based on some domestic electronic arsenal that I had taken with me. During the day I would walk around the island Òlike crazyÓ and at night I would work in my room with this material. Concretely, I took the opportunity to record many things and to manipulate these recordings, adding other things, etc.

Meanwhile I also made a proposition to the local Conservatory for me to work with whoever they wantedÉ I was a little bold in presenting myself, saying:, ÒI am doing this work, if anyone wants to collaborate with me in any way and participate IÕd be all too pleasedÓ.  At the time I was also very involved in terms of research, from the vocal point of view, of other sonorities and other techniques (I was working quite a lot in this area by myself) and I very much wanted to try this with other people. I had already formed a group with Paulo Brand‹o, in which we were doing this type of research, not only of pieces from the 20th century, which is something that few people were doing, but in terms of language research and in terms of vocal technique.

By chance, I was lucky that the people who wanted to work with me were essentially singers Ð besides the singers there was only one flautist who was a flute teacher who was there. Every day I dedicated an hour and a half to two hours working with them Ð they had never worked with these new languages before.

It so happened that one of the people who was there working temporarily with us was Lu’sa Costa Gomes. At the time she asked if she could come and see what I was doing with these singers and one day she appeared with a text and told me ÒDo what you want with this text, I wrote it based on what I thought you were doingÓ. In fact I was very close to the dates for presenting this work which had to be done at the end of the symposium but I spoke with Lu’sa, who I didnÕt know very well and made a proposal: ÒLook, I really like the text a lot, but, if I understand correctly, what I am doing in terms of vocal work is the deconstruction of the text. So, what I am going to do is to take your text and assassinate it. May I?Ó She agreed, that I could do what I wanted Ð and basically thatÕs what we did Ð we took the text and set about dismantling it, sonorising the text in a non-narrative way.

Meanwhile, one of the people from the symposium had filmed this work Ð and it came about as simply as that Ð Lu’sa Costa Gomes saw it and said: ÒGood, and how about now doing something that was narrative, where the text had another type of language?Ó At that time I also dared to say: ÒOk, then this time I also propose making something in which voices have a predominant role, where all of the electronics disappears and where we really have the live instruments in a very material way.Ó This may also appear a little romanticised for some people, but in fact this physical side, the aspect of having the musicians there, of creating a very close relationship with the public was one thing that I was very interested in.

And in fact that was how Cantata was bornÉ it came from my appropriating a text which actually had various versions. In fact, she presented me with two or three models of completely different texts until I seized on that text. So this was the first time that I attempted to hook all of this together: the vocal research that I was doing until then, the choral work, you may say, and the ease I was feeling with vocal writing or reading or interpretation. And, in turn, I had the challenge of taking the instrumentation and working on it with the same type of approach and freedom with which I worked with electronics, but knowing that I was writing for musicians. Perhaps also as the text itself is a tragedy (if thatÕs what you can call it) which for me ended up by acting as a tragic comedy, in this process there was an interpretation and a desire to work on this genre, to play a little with what a Cantata is; Lu’sa Costa Gomes really wanted to do a Cantata and I ended up by taking the model of the Baroque Cantata, which is recitative from the formal point of view, which I related to a lot as an interpreter and basically I tried to see what was possible in terms of our present day creative freedom.

Suddenly, I saw that I had come up against another problem: ÒOk, but when then is this exactly to have live musicians and specifically singers? What is this physical relationship with the spectator, with the public and, of course, also between them? This is where I began to become very interested in the Theatre. I mean, I began to do some music work for theatre and a new and major interest was born Ð to understand how a theatre play is put on and all the aspect of stage production; or how does an actor put on and build a character. Basically, I began to relate it with my world and with music. This being the case, it was no coincidence that from then on it began to be more or less decisive for me to always have a relationship with musical theatre, which implied resolving something which was one of my problems: in fact, I always fled from singing and piano recitals and poetry reading sessions because I didnÕt have the patience (even though I am a great lover of poetry). In order for you to understand the work which perhaps has been the most significant, in 1999 I ended up by doing Elegant’ssimo, which is assumedly a recital of musical theatre. Elegant’ssimo sprang exactly from this starting point: ÒHow is it possible for me to begin to like it?Ó Another problem is linked to the fact of my wanting to understand how an actor gets to a certain place and how does a musician get there and to understand, finally, that they are almost truly antagonistic world, and to discover how I could possibly bring them together.

Once again, I did it in a way which is beginning to be quite recurrent in me and which is to introduce some humour in this process. So, I have quite often put actors in a very musical role, in a completely musical approach and, at the same time, giving singers a theatrical approach, which is normally a problem. Or rather, the singers are technicians from a vocal point of view and have a poor relationship with the stage, with ÒliveÓ experience, and they need the security they get from the interpretation of what is written and which tends to be repeated and the same as the previous show. The actors, on the contrary, want the feeling of insecurity, they want precisely for everything to happen in the moment. And basically, I have also never completely abandoned improvisation. For me, improvisation was always a driving force for starting to write. What I tried to do then was to make this dialogue possible, taking surrealist poets and satirical poets who, in terms of inspiration, have helped me a lot to put this all into order.

Voice as an element in the definition of Languages and the relationship with Electronics

I assume tonality and harmony perfectly and it is obvious that there is this relationship between my options and my work with the voice; in some way as choir director, this is a world which fascinates me, I assume this option which I know is connected with a certain tradition and not to the vanguard without any problem whatsoever. What is in fact true is that research into the voice and what is possible in vocal terms has always fascinated me. There is a whole world of sonorities to be discovered and it is in our hands (or of the singer, in this case) to discover everything that can be done in terms of the voice. The timbre, the physicsÉ And although I donÕt see myself as a singer, I see myself as a researcher of all of these resources.

I try to blend things in some way, but this also doesnÕt cause me any confusion at all, whether it be a certain vocal experimentalism or something more or less apart from tonality. And this is present in certain pieces. Maybe much more in structural terms than in sonic terms. It is probable that this may not be noticed but these new sonic worlds have given me ideas and freedom to write the piece, and even from the point of view of the structure of the piece, it means that there is no harmonic need to sustain the piece or to structure it. And I accept the fact that I am self-taught, a person who has tried to learn something by himself. Obviously, with all of the failings and all of the problems that this brings, but also at the same time it brings a certain naivety Ð throwing myself into things somewhat without being too scared about what this may represent in terms of the historical-musical past or something of the kind.

In relation to the use of electronics, for me, this is really a space of almost plastic freedomÉ it is something very sensorial also, if you like, and, in principle, I will never go for formal options. It is really very much based on sound, from my relationship with sound, exactly as a painter probably would do with a pose or with colour. It is therefore a very abstract thing. It is in fact something highly like a dialogue. And if I think it is very good when I am writing a work, feeling perfectly that the work is looking after me and that, after all, I am no longer very sure if it is me who is writing or if it is the work which is ÒwritingÓ me and that there is this Òtaking careÓ of each other (which fortunately has happened to me a number of times). With electronics this is perfectly evident because it is a relationship in which you have an immediate feedback. And above all, in my case, and because I never set myself really major formal issues -  and still donÕt - electronics is the part where I have fun, on the one hand, or where I get absorbed on the other. It is really something absorbing and I enjoy it in a really plastic way.