In focus

“I believe in imagination, which, on the one hand corrodes the processes forcibly from the arborescent development, and on the other, widens new expressive horizons.”[1] Composer, teacher, musicologist and critic, Virgílio Melo was born in 1961 in Lisbon. He initiated his musical studies at the Lisbon National Conservatory by taking up Violin and Composition classes, having been particularly influenced by Constança Capdeville and Macário Santiago Kastner. “Constança Capdeville was on of those phenomena of almost zen quality… I did not learn anything with her, but she knew how to open what was important in every person – not learning is in this case positive. (…). Then, there was one more important influence, Santiago Kastner, because on the contrary to what one could think, he was not exclusively concentrated on his domain of specialization (Iberian music). He was the first person, however much it could intimidate other professors, who explained to me accurately the rules of dodecaphony, for example.”[2] Virgílio Melo studied composition with Emmanuel Nunes in Paris and Cologne as Gulbenkian Foundation scholar. He obtained his Diploma in Composition, unanimously, at the Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris, the First Award in Aesthetics at the Conservatoire Supérieur de Musique in Paris and Second Award in Electronic Music at the Conservatoire Royal de Musique in Liège (Belgium). He also attended the Sound Technician Course at the Institut des Arts de Diffusion in Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium). According to the composer his musical education is marked by a somewhat eclectic course, in which 5 names played crucial roles: Macário Santiago Kastner, “a man with a certain humanistic and, at the same time, conservative dimension, (…), a sympathetic anarchist like Constança Capdeville, someone with the extreme intellectual discipline and sensitivity of Emmanuel Nunes”[3] , the composer Yoshihisa Taïra, who taught him to open his ears to oriental sonorities and finally Rémy Stricker, an excellent analyst and musicologist completely turned to psychoanalysis, who “taught him to pose the right questions and to be vigilant with respect to common places.”[4] As composer, Virgílio Melo had his works performed in Portugal, France, Germany, Belgium and Hungary. He participated in the Lisbon Contemporary Music Encounters (Encontros de Música Contemporânea de Lisboa), the Música em Novembro Festival, the Ars Musica Festival in Brussels, and the Música Viva Festival organized by the Miso Music Portugal in Lisbon. He received commissions, namely for various pedagogical works, from such institutions as Porto 2001, Aveiro University, Professional School of Music in Viana do Castelo, the Artave and the Atelier de Composição. He has had his scores edited and published by the Ediciones Cecilia Colien Honegger and the Núcleo de Jornalismo Académico (Porto). Presently, he is represented by the Atelier de Composição Editions, with various works in print. At the same time various pieces of his are available on CD recordings. “I am a composer with a slow rhythm, within the possible timetable and with a preference for night hours. I rarely use piano and more and more I serve myself with the possibilities of informatics, not only in developing the concepts, but also in the processing of musical text. Commissions are welcome to the extent that they make me accelerate my working rhythm.”[5] As musicologist, critic and analyst Virgílio Melo collaborated with diverse entities not only on specialist publications, but also on those of more general character – for the Público journal, the Colóquio/Artes and Arte Musical magazines, various concert programmes for the Gulbenkian Foundation and the São Carlos National Theatre, in the collection “Compositores Portugueses Contemporâneos” (“Portuguese Contemporary Composers”) published by the Atelier de Composição; [Cândido Lima (“Incidência e Coincidência dos Vários Opostos”) and João Pedro Oliveira (“A Abelha, a Escada e o Jardim”)] as well as in the publications of the Portuguese Music Research & Information Centre [a study on music by Álvaro Salazar (“Jogo e Sonho”)]. This side of his activity has received positive attention of the specialized critique, which stressed the “analytical refinement and (…) theoretical solidity and relevance”[6] , at the same time emphasizing that “… within national musicology, [Virgílio Melo] expresses oneself as one of the most refined interpreters of Portuguese contemporary music.”[7] According to the composer, critique plays both an informative and pedagogical role towards the audience. “The impossibility to subsist only on compositional labour makes one take up other «additional» jobs. In my case, and in spite of the inevitable conflict with the creative activity, I have the privilege to carry out two other occupations, which are dear to me: teaching and journalism. (…). Forcibly subjective, [the critique] on the one hand, should be substantiated, and on the other, include the context which surrounds the concert.”[8] Virgílio Melo participates regularly in pre-concert talks, particularly in the north of Portugal. At the same time he has experience in musical direction of various groups, having had private lessons on orchestra conducting with Luca Pfaff and Jean-Claude Harteman. He has also given lectures in such institutions as the ESMAE (Polytechnic Institute in Porto), the Aveiro University, the EPMVC (Professional School of Music in Viana do Castelo) and the Regional Conservatory of Music in Vila Real. To celebrate Virgílio Melo’s 50th anniversary a monographic concert dedicated to the composer’s work and integrated in the 34th Concert Season of the Oficina Musical (Portuguese Contemporary Composers Cycle) founded in 1957 by Álvaro Salazar, took place on September 24th 2011 at the Vilarinha Theatre in Porto. “In the programme, works covering a 22-year period of his musical creation – in chronological order, “Nó” (1985; 13’) for solo bass flute; “A Tre” (1990; 3’) for three clarinets; “A Glimpse of the Holy Darkness” (1995; 22’) for flute, clarinet and cello; “Circuitus” (2000; 13’) for alto flute, bass flute and electronics in real time; and “Canso Entrebescata II” (2007; 17’) for solo violin. (...) The set of works in the programme – composed between 1985 and 2007, with around 5 years separating each piece – may be thought off as a representative selection of an artistic path, in which one can observe growth and stabilization in the exploration of compositional possibilities”[9] , wrote Ângelo Martingo in October 2011 for the New Music Review Lounge. The Music The music of Virgílio Melo, an artistic personality of recognizable singularity and coherence on the Portuguese music scene, can be characterized by a “polysemic discourse, which integrates counterpoint and harmonic dimensions in spite of being supported by conceptual universes distinct from the European tonal tradition. In conciliation of these approaches his more recent compositions reveal a clear inclination towards the «open work»”[10] , and a religious inspiration. Regarding the technical issues his music possesses three dimensions – modal, serial and spectral – approached in the possibly broadest sense, exploiting the crossing between them, for which electronic means and “open work” strategies are precious tools. In his music one can find “a tension between the literality of the text and the plurality of the sense, between the rigour of the writing and a kind of irreducible complexity, which it can transmit. In this context the outline is gained by the relevance and expressiveness of the electronics as well as instrumental conventional and extended techniques – fruit of an imagination, which voluntarily disciplines and restrains itself, essentially, to traditional instruments, yet not without exploiting them up to their limits.”[11] “Circuitus” for alto and bass flute and real-time electronics, premiered at the Música Viva Festival in 2000, is the composer’s first attempt to create an open work, at the same time making a connection to various other aspects – “the sacred and symbolic side as well as the use of real-time electronics.”[12] The piece possesses “a climax, in which the word, deprived of its significational values, emerges with a hallucinatory character in the heart of the music coming out of the instruments and the music, as if of an invisible hand, from the real-time electronics.”[13] Virgílio Melo intends to establish a modulation and transition scheme between various harmonic fields and tempers. “I have become more and more interested in composing for the so-called historical or exotic instruments because it is really in the environment of Western instruments where more resistance exists, for purely sociological and institutional reasons. And sometimes one achieves extraordinary things with a baroque flute or harpsichord – if one asked a violinist to perform quarter tones, he would protest; but if one tells a harpsichord player – «look, I will tune it in a different manner», he becomes interested and is even capable of proposing: «Oh, but there is also the Werckmeister!»” [14] “Epiclesis” (2003), a work for bass clarinet and electronics, premiered during the Música Viva Festival in 2003, on the one hand, has a spectral dimension together with the use of ring modulation, but on the other, constitutes an integration of various musical styles – Gregorian chant, “a kind of electronic tabla” and an “appeal to Muslim oration”[15] – reinforcing in this manner its programmatic side, which has to do with the evocation of the Holy Spirit. The possibilities of informatics opened enormous expressive possibilities to be discovered and explored and also to create “a mediation between disparate sound worlds.”[16] Virgílio Melo emphasizes that the organization of the electroacoustic discourse, fundamentally, is not different from instrumental composition. The composer gives preference to combining electronic means with live instrumental performance, choosing frequently to compose for wind instruments, among which the clarinet is one of his favourite. “I think that [winds] have a human and at the same time sincere sonority with magical power (…). I like everything, which has reeds (…) and there is a series of compositions for clarinet, [which] have to do with António Saiote, who formed a school of competent clarinettists. (…). And that is why I remained faithful to the clarinet, to the clarinet and flute, which are obviously agile and flexible instruments.”[17] Throughout his artistic activity Virgílio Melo has composed various pedagogical pieces, the performance of which is aimed at students and young musicians. His only work for orchestra, “Embalos” (1997), commissioned by the Escola Oficial de Santo Tirso (Santo Tirso Official School) and premiered by an orchestra composed of pupils of two professional music schools (Santo Tirso and Viana do Castelo), like “Perdendosi” and “Gesang” (both from 1996) was composed precisely with this educational objective. All these works are relatively easy technically “and the challenge is to create something interesting musically, above all without abdicating from one’s aesthetics and personality”[18]. “Embalos” is based on popular Portuguese melodies, lullabies, which are being developed “in the logic of processus, continuous and with a certain well rounded environment, without sharp angles, together with a certain éclatement, or dispersion of discourse.”[19] Virgílio Melo emphasises the spontaneity, energy, engagement and honesty of young musicians, who rise to a high quality level the work’s performance. “It is a pleasure to work with them. They even make us believe in music and the sacred side – because this is also connected to the sacred side, of respect. Music is to be respected. One may not like something and even never to perform or listen to it again, all right, but the first attitude should be of respect.”[20] Music Critique Music lives from superimpositions and confrontations, which create a dynamics, making that the history of art is not only “a mere thematic and chronological arrangement, as in those manuals, which seem to ignore that Palestrina and Monteverdi are contemporaries.”[21] “I have a somewhat apocalyptic side, in the sense that I believe that all this will make a huge turn, but we will suffer from catastrophes first – in music I think that we are in a quite problematic period… I know that history does not repeat itself, but this is somewhat similar to the period around Bach’s death and the Galant style, a kind of ancestor to «easy listening»...”[22] Virgílio Melo stresses the importance of quality of the auditory experience – on the contrary to the general opinion, an “intelligent” audition is, in fact, one of the most participative and interactive acts. “I have nothing against tapping your foot, or moving your backside, or anything else, but the idea that listening is passive makes me furious.”[23] Although Virgílo Melo is not a supporter of Luigi Nono’s political views, he is sensible to his concept of audition as a revolutionary act – the Italian composer stresses the necessity to focus the attention on the extremes of perception forcing people to participate actively in the auditory process. The “divorce” between contemporary music creation and the audiences is “a complex question, which can not be explained with simple answers. The concept of public, even when considering that a plurality of publics exists, is «slippery» because collective.“[24] The public, despite being an acoustically absorbent material, does not really exist – there are audiences with individuals, who can be “touched” by music or not. The situation of a certain exclusivity or invisibility of contemporary music, not only in Portugal but also at the international level, results from the polarization of the music environment: “Deep down inside each one of us has a tendency to remain on his side. It is all the more regrettable since we could gain with the exchange of our experience.”[25] 1 - Interview to Virgílio Melo in: Sérgio Azevedo, Sérgio Azevedo, "A Invenção dos Sons. Uma Panorâmica da Composição em Portugal Hoje", Editorial Caminho, Lisbon 1998, p. 354; English translation: Jakub Szczypa 2 - Interview to Virgílio Melo conducted by Miguel Azguime; www.mic.pt, 2005; English translation: Jakub Szczypa 3 - ibidem 4 - Interview to Virgílio Melo in: Sérgio Azevedo, op. cit., p. 353 5 - ibidem, p. 357-58 6 - Público, “Mil Folhas” (cultural supplement), December 7th 2002 7 - Público, “Mil Folhas” (cultural supplement), May 22nd 2004 8 - Interview to Virgílio Melo in: Sérgio Azevedo, op. cit., p. 357 9 - Ângelo Martingo, “To Make Audible the Thinkable”, New Music Review Lounge (http://www.mic.pt/critica/eng/20111008_virgilio_melo.html), October 8th 2011 10 - Rosário Santana, “Melo, Virgílio”; in: Enciclopédia da Música em Portugal no Século XX, direcção Salwa Castelo-Branco, Lisbon 2010, p. 764-65; English translation: Jakub Szczypa 11 - Ângelo Martingo, op. cit. 12 - Interview to Virgílio Melo conducted by Miguel Azguime; www.mic.pt, 2005 13 - Ângelo Martingo, op. cit. 14 - Interview to Virgílio Melo conducted by Miguel Azguime; www.mic.pt, 2005 15 - ibidem 16 - Interview to Virgílio Melo in: Sérgio Azevedo, op. cit., p. 358 17 - Interview to Virgílio Melo conducted by Miguel Azguime; www.mic.pt, 2005 18 - ibidem 19 - ibidem 20 - ibidem 21 - Interview to Virgílio Melo in: Sérgio Azevedo, op. cit., p. 354 22 - Interview to Virgílio Melo conducted by Miguel Azguime; www.mic.pt, 2005 23 - ibidem 24 - Interview to Virgílio Melo in: Sérgio Azevedo, op. cit., p. 356 25 - ibidem, p. 357