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Questionnaire/ Interview

Part 1 · Roots & Education

· How did music begin for you, and where do you identify your musical roots? ·

Fátima Fonte: For me, it all began with a small music school that opened in the village where I grew up (São Pedro de Rates). The teachers were very dedicated, and the school had a great and very relaxed atmosphere. The classes were in groups, and the teachers played beautiful music that moved me. I wanted to learn everything. The Christmas auditions were always a party, with Santa Claus delivering gifts in the end. It had nothing to do with the formality and seriousness associated with music conservatories. It was a very happy beginning of a relationship with music. But at that time, I just wanted to play (the organ, then the piano). The composition came later, after the age of 18, already at the Lisbon Music Conservatory.

· What paths led you to the composition? ·

FF: When studying at the Lisbon Conservatory, I used to get together with friends at the end of the day (and after the ‘official study’) to play music and improvise together. Some sounds sounded like an elephant, others like an ant, and apart from the impressions and sensations that the sounds provoked, there were no judgments or demands. At the same time, I had wonderful Analysis and Composition Techniques classes with Eurico Carrapatoso. Without this contact, I would have probably continued to improvise on the piano and would not pursue composition. I’m very grateful to Eurico for his classes, having a perfect balance between knowledge, humour, inspiration, and sympathy. At that time, the Conservatory was an incredible place to be. The current age limitations did not exist, and most of my classmates studied music simultaneously with other courses at their universities. There was a lot of diversity, inspiring teachers (I remember prof. Daniel Schvetz and his reinterpretations of classics, like “Mauta Flágica” [“Flagic Mute”]), and a very stimulating atmosphere. I was also studying graphic design at Belas-Artes (Fine Arts University), but I ended up dropping out to dedicate myself only to music.

Part 2 · Influences & Aesthetics

· Are there any extramusical sources that significantly influence your work? ·

FF: Yes, I commonly have a text attached to a piece, either explicitly or implicitly. The text can be sung, spoken, or bring an idea I work on without using words. This happened with a text by Patrícia Portela about insomnia (the short story “Sábado” [“Saturday”], in the book “Dias úteis” [“Working days”]), which inspired a piece on the same theme (“The Sleep Collector” [2022]). This piece has a performative dimension without words. Even so, Patrícia’s text helped me and the musicians to go beyond the more simplistic and immediate approach that the word ‘insomnia’ can suggest.

· In the context of western art music, do you feel close to any school or aesthetics from the past or present? ·

FF: I have always loved Debussy, and something of his language is probably present in my practice (the mixture of modes, the existence of movement, and dynamism beyond the alternation between tension and resolution of tonal music). There are also recent references whose influence is probably not so evident but which I appreciate very much. It’s the case of John Adams (“Short Ride in a Fast Machine” shows well the energy and pure vitality that his music can evoke), David Lang (mainly using silence, as in “Just”), Missy Mazzoli (“Vespers for a New Dark Age”) and Richard Ayres (“In the Alps”).

· In your music, are there any influences from non-Western cultures? ·

FF: Yes. I studied Hindustani (North Indian) music for half a year in Pune with a scholarship from Fundação Oriente. Although this influence is more audible in some pieces than in others, it is always present somehow. It manifests itself in the tendency for ornamentation, melodic development, and the use of modes. Recently, I have written three pieces based on the Basant raga scale. One of these pieces, entitled “Cartas Portuguesas” (“Portuguese Letters”) (2021), explores ornamentation and Hindustani sonority. I wrote the piece for the singer Filipa Portela. It includes a video by Adriana Romero, and the text is composed of fragments collected from Mariana Alcoforado’s homonymous work.

· What does ‘avant-garde’ mean to you, and what, in your opinion, can nowadays be considered ‘avant-garde’? ·

FF: Some time ago, I watched a lecture by Harry Lehmann (German music philosopher) on ‘relational music’, where he spoke about the changes in the classical music paradigms. According to this author, the new paradigm, established around 2008, is the ‘relational music’, that is, music including relations with extramusical materials, such as text, image, video, etc. While the previous paradigm focused on the search for the new on the discovery of new sounds and instrumental techniques, for Lehmann, this sound-material progress had its heyday in the 1970s, and it became exhausted at the final of the 20^th century. The technological revolution from the beginning of the 21^st century resolved this innovation crisis – thanks to computers, it has become much easier for composers to use all kinds of references external to music, creating new associations and layers of meanings. For Lehmann, presently, one can find the avant-garde precisely in this ‘relational music’, and it is here that he tries to find ‘the new’. I agree with him that the invention of new sounds doesn’t seem to be what avant-garde is about nowadays, and it seems that there is a renewed interest about connections with ideas and other arts.

Part 3 · Language & Music Practice

· Characterise your music language from the perspective of the techniques/ aesthetics developed in 20^th and 21^st-century music creation, on the one hand and the other, considering your own experience and your path from the beginning until now. ·

FF: The techniques vary from one piece to another. However, something that frequently appears is the limitation of the pitches (‘pitch material’) to a single scale or mode for the entire piece in the same transposition. Recently I have written three pieces using the same mode taken from the Basant raga, which I’ve mentioned before. The in-depth exploration of the same material and realising that it results in such different music gave me a lot of pleasure. However, one can understand that there’s something in common in the three pieces. Two of them have coniderable pattern repetition with slight variations, and in the third one, there’s a continuously developed melodic line creating a kind of endless arabesque.
I think this need to organise a piece around a reduced material is relatively recent and connected with the purpose of unifying the piece’s atmosphere. Of course, there’s always the dilemma between boredom (when using a reduced material) and the risk of confusion and dispersion (by changing the material a lot). Then (as in everything else), the ears need to decide. However, the composition process can be so intense that sometimes one loses the distance necessary to judge what has already lasted too much or, on the contrary, what hasn’t still lasted enough. At these times, I’m lucky enough to be able to borrow the ears of a friend or of my supervisor, which provide me with the necessary distance and help me to see what I’m doing with more objectivity.

· When it comes to your creative practice, do you develop your music from an embryo idea or after having elaborated a global form? In other words, do you work from the micro towards the macro form or vice versa? ·

FF: Generally, I begin with an embryo idea. My first Composition teacher (Dimitris Andrikopoulos) used to call it ‘seed’. Susanne Langer calls it ‘commanding form’. Some would call it an ‘idea’ because it belongs to the imagination. It’s a kind of intuition of the piece’s core, a matrix, which includes the general affective atmosphere. Sometimes it emerges from a text. Other times one does experiments with loose music materials, and there’s something that ‘startles’. Thenceforward, there’s an element organising the imagination and the choice of materials. Susanne Langer says that as soon as it’s formed, the ‘commanding form’ assumes an impersonal status – as if coming from outside – inspiring responsibility for its development and improvement. It seems to me that the difficulty in each piece is that for this ‘idea’ to emerge associated with a music material that realises it, even though it can be very short. When this happens, it’s like getting an anchor, and I become more confident with the process. Before it happens, it’s never easy to feel tranquillity.

· How do you define the relationship between reasoning and creative impulses or inspiration in your music practice? ·

FF: I think this relationship is very asymmetrical – I almost always compose by instinct. I wish I had something more objective and permanent I could hold on to, but most of the time, I don't.

· Does experimentalism play a significant role in your music? ·

FF: What usually moves me is not an experimental motivation, although I recognise that when a sound is very familiar, the attention turns off. Like the audience, I am also not excited to receive ‘more of the same’. However, I see the search for the new in a very comprehensive way, including new associations between sounds and ideas, sounds and images, or new organisation of already known sounds. The sensation of surprise can happen through subtle elements. I believe this is not ‘experimentalism’ since I associate the word with a more radical avant-garde, which questions the very concept of work and the manner of its creation. The extreme of this process would be conceptual music. I also think that experimentalism tends to be ‘non-aesthetic’ in the sense that it doesn’t pursue pleasure through sound. And it’s difficult for me to give up this part; as much as the notions of sonic beauty and pleasure are subjective and personal, they are very present in my relationship with music.

Part 4 · Speculation

· What could have been your alternative paths if you hadn't followed the composition/ music path? ·

FF: When I was younger, I thought about being an actress – I did a lot of amateur theatre – then graphic design came along. Literature and philosophy would also be options, and I’m really jealous (but in a good way) of dancers. The good thing about appreciating many things I don’t know how to do is that it makes me admire the people who do them even more. It probably also brought me closer to opera and ‘performative music’ since it allows me to collaborate with areas I admire. Surprisingly, this also happens in music: I took Singing lessons for a few years, but I was not good at it, so I gave up. There are some weird sounds I manage to do more or less well (like bird imitations), but ‘serious’ singing is not for me… However, it seems that the fact that I don’t sing encourages me even more to write for voice. Sometimes, knowing something is impossible or not accessible to us can be productive.

· Part 5 · Portuguese music ·

· According to your experience, what are the differences between the Portuguese music scene and the one in other parts of the world? ·

FF: My experience in other parts of the world is limited, as, apart from Portugal, I have only lived in Amsterdam and London. I think the most obvious difference is the scale – in these two cities, there’s a lot more happening, which translates into a greater variety. The diversity of circuits – the official, through established institutions, and the independent ones (plus the whole spectrum between them), is what seems to me the most promising for new music. One of the events that fascinated me the most was “The Night of the Unexpected” in Amsterdam, where, on the same night, I listened to a Gamelan from Java, a Dutch spoken-word-and-percussion group, Tom Johnson’s “Narayana’s Cows” by the Klang Ensemble with a narrator, plus electronic dance music, and even more contemporary music. Nothing had been announced. Transitions between performances were fast, and the atmosphere was absolutely vibrant. Such an evening could not have happened in a conventional concert hall; it happened at the Paradiso, a space best known for its connection with the hippie, punk, and rock counterculture.
In London, there is a café called Cafe OTO that is relatively small and whose programme offers lots of improvised music, electronica, and premieres of contemporary pieces (some of them with a visual or performative component). I would love to see more spaces with diverse music and a relaxed environment in Portugal. It would also help musicians and composers who do not find a place in the ‘large halls’, to have their space for experimentation and communication with the public.
Regarding professional careers, in Portugal, the biggest problem is the lack of opportunities (I do not mean competitions because then one needs to have the piece already done, and, likely, it will never come out of the drawer). Of course, building a career is difficult everywhere. Still, I have the impression that work opportunities in Portugal only come by invitation, which implies that the composer must be known or recommended. In my career, there has been a significant moment resulting from an open application – the Young-Composer Residence at the São Carlos National Theatre, with Sara Ross and Sofia Sousa Rocha and under the guidance of Luís Tinoco. At the time, just having this available application already seemed like a miracle. In Portugal, opportunities such as this one should be much more common, as they are in other countries.

· In one of the 2020 interviews, the Austrian composer Georg Friedrich Haas said that ‘the creators of the new art act as yeast in society’ ¹. What, in your opinion, is the role that art music plays in society, and how can it increase the importance and impact of this role? ·

FF: It’s worth mentioning the full quote: ‘I think people who are focused on creating new emotions and art are like yeast in society.’ Interestingly, Georg Friedrich Haas associates the creation of new art music with the creation of new emotions. During my PhD, I rediscovered the theory of affects – not the doctrine of the affections from the Baroque era, but the contributions to the so-called ‘Affective Turn’ that has been asserting itself since the beginning of the 21^st century. I think essential aspects of our experience would go unnoticed if they weren’t articulated or expressed through art. One of them involves the way of feeling, the infinite variations of sensations, feelings, and movements that constitute our inner life. Everyday language is too general to describe these particularities. But through music (and other forms of art), we are guided towards the specific affective world imagined by the musicians/ composer. This way, we can expand our affective vocabulary and create states and emotions we have never felt before. What seems important to me is that through listening, we enter the other’s world, which has a logic, rhythm, flow, and feeling of its own.
I believe it is possible to expand the impact of art music function by joining performance and composition, encouraging the creative side in music teaching and practice. I think a person used to trying out sounds and their combinations will be more curious to listen to new music. There’s no reason for this territory of experimentation to belong only to composers. The great virtue of art music is diversity – it isn’t necessary to correspond to a model in terms of duration, instrumentation, materials, form, or aesthetics…
The more people take an active role in creating music, the more diversity we will have, and that’s really good.

Part 6 · Present & Future

· What are your current and future projects? ·

FF: Until the end of August, I’m doing a PhD in London (at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama) on ‘visible music’ – a dialogue between the sound and the visual. In this context, I’ve been realising different experiences, which include combinations between music and video, music and light, and experimental music theatre. Currently, I am working on a piece for the singer Camila Mandillo and musicians from the Sond’Ar-te Electric Ensemble. The intention is to potentiate the performative aspect of music, to consider the whole concert, not only the sound dimension. As John Cage said about this kind of practice: ‘something that engages both the eye and the ear’. Although the visual part can bring an overload of information that distracts the ear, visual information always exists at any concert or even when we listen to music at home (unless we close our eyes). Some time ago, I read an interview with composer Hans Peter Kuhn where he says that he tries to establish a visual statement, something people can rest their eyes on to be visually busy, something that calms them down, giving them time to listen. I was fascinated by the idea that a careful visual dimension can even create space for listening. After finishing my PhD, I plan to write my second opera with Patrícia Portela – the first one, “Concílio Celeste”, was premiered at FIO (Informal Opera Festival) in 2021.

Fátima Fonte, February 2023
© MIC.PT

FOOTNOTES

¹ Interview with Georg Friedrich Haas conducted by Filip Lech in June 2020 and available at the Culture.pl portal: LINK.

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