In focus

Hugo Ribeiro

Hugo Ribeiro's website: hugoribeiro.pt

Questionnaire / Interview

How did music begin for you? Where do you identify your musical roots? Which paths led you to composition?

Music has been present in my life since very early. There are not any musicians in my family, yet we have always listened to music at home.
When I was about 5 years old, at the time of my first contact with the orchestral sound of works from the canonical repertoire, I decided that I wanted to be involved in that world.
As a child I used to have a very strong need to create. Amongst many examples, I can emphasise that when I learnt to write I made a collection of poems about animals. Later I published three magazines dedicated to the analysis and commentaries of video games I used to play at that time. I distributed these magazines to my friends at school…
After starting to study the piano at the D. Dinis Conservatoire of Music, the step towards composing was quite natural. The need to create my own music was supported by the progressive approximation, knowledge and comprehension of musical language. Therefore, in my case, composition was born from a great passion towards music in conjunction with the creative need, which has always been manifesting itself.

Which moments from your music education you find the most important?

Perhaps the beginning of my musical education had the greatest impact. At the D. Dinis Conservatoire of Music I had the opportunity of learning Composition Analysis and Techniques with the composer (and now also a friend) Carlos Marecos who I admire greatly and to whom I owe much. At the same time and at the same institution my piano professor Vera Belozorovitch played the role of “musical mother”. She took me everywhere, organised recitals; she took me to the best pianists in order to give me the opportunity to perform for them; she was a restless person. The fact that my mother made a great financial effort to buy me a piano when I started studying at the Conservatoire, was also determining for my education as a musician and a factor of great relevance.
Posteriorly, already at the Lisbon Superior School of Music, I had a close contact with the students of instrument, which gave me the possibility of creating and organising the series of concerts “Peças Frescas”, which continue until today, 11 years after the first concert. The “Peças Frescas” cycle and at the same time the Gulbenkian Workshops for Young Portuguese Composers (nowadays extinct), were essential “test tubes” for my development; I think the generation of composers before mine did not have this luck in what concerns the number of opportunities.
All the professors with whom I studied at the Lisbon Superior School of Music and at the Royal Academy of Music in London were also, each one in his own way, very important in my education. I cannot fail to mention Professor Christopher Bochmann who gave me a lot from his knowledge and who has remained present from my first steps up until my PhD, in which I emphasise some of his composition techniques, specifically the ones developed in my own music.
Ultimately, not considering the process of my education / formation complete (and it will never be), every rehearsal, lesson, conference, turns out to be remarkable.

Are there any extra-musical sources, which in a significant way influence your music?

Generally I am a person who absorbs a lot from what surrounds me, considering that all these absorbed factors are present in what I compose (in a more or less abstract way). Nevertheless music is music and I cannot imagine it being more than notes, dynamics, contours, rhythms, articulations, bars, clefs, etc., and the different combinations of all these elements, which one day someone decides to organise in his or her own way. Through its abstract nature music often leads us to associate it with images, places… and the same musical work is capable of inspiring differently a varied number of people.
For this reason I have some difficulty in assuming an obvious extra-musical influence, because, when I compose, I do not think of anything else besides music, even though the first idea could have arisen from another source.
I am an assumed fan of literature. I like poetry, words, languages, linguistics (phonetics, morphology, semantics). I enjoy the way in which words taken from their original contexts can have various meanings. I try to translate this idea into musical terms: what would be the impact of a musical gesture if taken away from its original formal context.
I give more and more importance to the works’ titles and to the tempo and expression indications which I write across the score (they are becoming increasingly numerous); I consider that these words contribute more to the understanding of the musical intention of the work than any kind of programme note I could write about it.
My affection for literature has already inspired two pieces for ensemble: "Carta a Kundera" (2007) and "Cartas a Mia" (2012), dedicated to two contemporary writers who I admire and whose complete work I have read.
In the case of the last work, the most recent one, I took some phrases form the books of Mia Couto, which inspire the character of the 5 different movements. For example, the first letter, Molto feroce. Stridente, is associated with the expression “…nem barulho nem era” (freely translated into English as "it was not even noise") extracted from the book “O último voo do Flamingo”, whereas the fourth letter Vuoto. Sotto voce, is associated to the phrase, “…o silêncio é música em estado de gravidez” ("silence is music in pregnancy state"), from the book “Jesusalém”. However, these two pieces have directly little to do with the texts of these two authors, they are not programmatic. They are letters: they turn out to reveal more about the sender than the addressee.

Could you describe the process subjacent to your musical practice?

My compositional process varies from one piece to another, according to what it requires and depending on my geographical position and the tools I have in hands. Writing music in Montreal is different from writing it in Odivelas, in London, or in Canterbury, naming some of the locations where I have already lived. The morning coffee tastes differently, the parks and the walks are different, the motivation to compose music is different.
Speaking in a more technical manner: every piece represents a distinct problem because I attempt to do something different in each one of them. My departure point is invariably the instrumentation and the combinations and possibilities of orchestration: the sound.
To a certain extent I have a quite an abstract way of absorbing internally the music I put on paper; I tend to think a lot before starting to write. The harmonic and melodic material (the notes) is found at the end, after having a total “aural visualisation” of the gesture that I want to develop.
I use the piano quite frequently in order to play what I can, and rely on my internal audition and imagination. I use score editing software only to prepare the final score after handwritten, very rarely to hear the musical result of what I wrote. In the case of many of my scores, the option of using graphical notation, in which the interpretation determines the final musical result of the work, already in itself precludes an efficient audition through the software.

Which techniques do you employ in the composition process? Are there any musical genres / styles for which you show preference?

Similarly to the previous answer, the techniques vary according to what is specifically intended: one piece can be more rhythmical than the other, or more dedicated to the exploration of timbre, or to the contrast between the parts… Only after knowing what I will do musically I look for a technique, which enables me the organisation of the material with which I want to work. For me, the technique always depends on a musical intention and not the other way round.
I give special importance to the use of intervals, restricting them to a limited number, which allows for a better sound characterisation of the harmonic and melodic material. Since my first works I have been fascinated with symmetrical chords. The disposition of equal intervals up and downwards, having as root the centre and not the bass note, allows me to achieve a harmonic balance, which is important for me.
For example the piece "Gestos III: (sem título)" (2008) for 4 trumpets in C and percussion begins with a succession of symmetrical chords constructed preferably with the intervals 6 and 7 (number of semitones). These chords are associated to a homogeneous orchestration, in which every trumpet contributes to the creation of a “new instrument”, using the harmon mute and the wa-wa effect. At the end of the same piece, the intervallic logic is maintained, but this time related to the melodic material and using intervals 1, 3 and 5, contrasting with the ones used in the first section.
There are other examples of principles of symmetry which I use recurrently, not necessarily related to the choice of the notes. In the piece "Mensagens Soltas" (2009) for flute, harp and string quartet the formal balance was the priority. The planning of the order of the events appeared naturally after having studied the instrumental possibilities of the ensemble. Despite being a work where the discourse is rather fragmented, all the sections depend on one another, either through the formal continuity, or through the relationship between durations.
As I focus primarily on the problems of orchestration I have a tendency to prefer composing for ensemble and for orchestra. The sound possibilities which a large group of instruments allows are an extraordinary motivation for my work.

Which of your works constitute turning points in your career as composer?

It seems to me that my career is still not sufficiently long to be able to consider the existence of significant turning points, but I take advantage of this question to describe a tendency which has been accompanying me since my first work in catalogue, Quarteto de Cordas (2001): reusing the same musical material in different pieces, with the intention of creating a continuous line between them. This tendency is obviously associated to the fascination with the psychological and formal consequences of taking away a musical object from its original context and using it in another, as it has already been explained above.
The cycle of pieces “Gestos” is the best example: its aim is exactly to serve as a study on determined musical intentions, which are developed in other contexts, in other pieces. The musical material used in "Gestos I" (2006) for solo piccolo and any four instruments (or four groups of any instruments) is reused in "Inventio" (2007; revised in 2009) for orchestra and "Fragmente-Spiel" (2008) for solo flute; and "Gestos II: conversas sobre um contorno" (2006) for B-flat clarinet, piano and percussion gave the basic musical material for "Quatro Personagens Saídas de um Conto" (2007) for B-flat clarinet, violin, violoncello and piano. Another important example is the pieces "Nocturne: rituel" (2010) and "Diurne: alter ego" (2010) both for 15 players, which represent one of the oldest dichotomies in human history: night and day, light and darkness. These two pieces “recycle” material from the opera "Os mortos viajam de metro" (2010) – “Nocturne” is more lyrical and expressive and “Diurne” more energetic, ferocious and rhythmical.
The idea to begin a new work where another one finishes is one of my most pronounced idiosyncrasies, and the pieces which eventually constitute the “turning points” to which this question refers, are the ones that end up generating new musical material, which will be reused.

What are the motives for your choice to live / develop your activity outside Portugal?

I have always liked to travel and to be in constant contact with other landscapes, other cultures and other people. The first time I left Portugal to go and study in London occurred when I was 22 years old and from that moment I got used to the benefits of living abroad: more opportunities, more activity, more possibilities to perfect other languages.

What are your present and future projects? Could you highlight one of your most recent works, present the context of its creation and also the particularities of the language and techniques used?

At this moment I am studying orchestral conducting in Montreal, which does not leave me much time for composing, but I am now dedicated to writing chamber music works due to the fact that the ones I have written in this genre belong to a more academic phase of my career and, consequently, I am beginning to distance myself from them.
Presently I am revising the piece "Danza" (2007) for violin and piano and writing a new one for the same set of instruments, both to be performed by the Doppio Ensemble.
There are other pieces I was asked to write which belong to my mid-term projects: for clarinet and piano, for solo piano and for solo accordion. I also have the desire to write a double concerto for flute, percussion and ensemble, but it is a project which could still take some time to be materialised. Finally, I would like to work on a piano concerto, including my piece "paisagem cor de ferrugem" (2007) as one of the movements.
From the more recent projects I would like to highlight "et sequentes" (2011) for solo harpsichord, "et alii" (2012) for B-flat clarinet and accordion and "et alibi" (2012) for quintet and electronics. The three pieces, in spite of the different contexts of their creation, share the same cycle, whose main intention is the exploration of timbre. In the case of "et sequentes" this exploration is made through the use of the different registers of the instrument, using a varied rhythmical vigour; in the case of "et alii" I attempted to insist on the homogeneity of the two instruments, creating a single instrument through the fusion of timbre between the clarinet and accordion. Finally in "et alibi", commissioned and premiered by the Sond’Ar-te Electric Ensemble in October 2012, and conducted by Guillaume Bourgogne, I had the intention of creating a discontinuous sound space, in which every instrument intervenes in a timid and fragmented (disconnected) way, the electronics finally assuming a conciliatory role and, at the end, quasi-humorous.
I consider that these three pieces have opened a very important door in my creation since I took the risk of exploring narratives that I had not tried out until then and which, certainly, will be present in the future.