Interview

Education

I was always interested in composition, though in a very intuitive fashion. I began to compose without knowing how to write music, in other words, without knowing musical notation, because my father played Portuguese guitar. He’s an amateur, but he studied music “seriously” for some years. And I wrote intuitively at the piano, I imitated – as is quite normal – the pieces that interested me, curiously modern pieces by Debussy, Bartók and so forth. During the time when I was learning piano, I imitated this kind of style, without knowing notation. In fact, one of the reasons that led me to give up the piano was the insistence of my teacher, who was of the old guard, on giving me only the classics, which didn’t interest me so much at the time because I prefered more modern music. Sometimes I would write pieces for instruments that could be in the F clef but were written in the G clef and vice-versa, because the imitation was more aural than of the score, because I really didn’t have much at home, except piano and guitar repertoire. For example if I wanted to write a string quartet (which I knew existed) I’d probably write for the ‘cello and viola in the G clef and then write something else. This was when I began to write things, so to speak. But it was always very intuitive, always by ear, and I would go to the piano, try something out and try to write it down. But I believe that this imperative to compose didn’t mean anything in terms of the future. I mean, there are people who do this and then stop composing, but in my case it was always there. Until 16 years of age, I hesitated between painting and music, something I don’t talk much about. I always liked painting very much, and at the time I even thought of going to the António Arroio School. But meanwhile, when I was 16 or 17, I met Fernando Lopes-Graça, at the Academia de Amadores de Música. I think it was then that I decided that I was more interested in music. And I mean music, not even composition, because within music, I was split between composition and classical guitar. This was because it was the instrument I studied in most detail, and piano, which interested me but which I enjoyed doing intuitively, well, I never thought of it in terms of a career. I also studied piano, but on the guitar I achieved some degree of virtuosity, one can say; as a pianist, I never became more than an amateur. And it was, in fact, after meeting Fernando Lopes-Graça and working with him at the Academy, that I really decided: “Right, I’m going to study composition and be a composer!” (Though they were only normal harmony and counterpoint classes.) But there was the problem that, at the time, the Escola Superior de Música of Lisbon did not exist. I did three months of Law School, until there was somewhere I could study composition, because there were some legal difficulties with the Conservatory... I had to have the piano diploma, and as I had done all that more or less instinctively without having all the grades... it was complicated.

So I studied law in order to satisfy my parents with something that offered a higher level of education, as it were. Meanwhile, the Escola Superior opened in January. I went there to register (on the last day) and was accepted, and began to study composition there. Of course, before then, I had done harmony with Lopes-Graça, which was what one did at the Academia de Amadores de Música. With him in particular, I began straight away to show my most instinctive pieces and to correct them. So, when I went to the School, I had, even so, a somewhat better education... not so intuitive. And, indeed, I’d already decided that what interested me was composition. Later, at the Escola Superior, I met Constança Capdeville, who was obviously somebody very important, Christopher Bochmann, Álvaro Salazar and other composers who were there (some are no longer there). From then on... my trajectory was “normal”: I finished the course and began to compose more professionally.

At the Academia de Amadores de Música (and before arriving at the Escola Superior), I studied the history of music; I didn’t even do acoustics, because it wasn’t required at the time at the Escola Superior; you did the entrance exam and I got in in the usual fashion. Composition was given more attention, and as I had composed intuitively for many years, it was here that I concentrated my attention. But in fact I never finished... I studied piano, guitar, but the only course I completed was harmony and counterpoint with Lopes-Graça. So academically, before the Escola Superior de Música, that’s all I’d done. In fact, I can say that I only did the complete course at the Escola Superior, so there’s a great element of the autodidact in my education.

The Escola Superior was rather important, because there I came across the second half of the 20^th century. Through Costança Capdeville, through Christopher Bochmann and through Álvaro Salazar, I got to know music that shocked me, because I listened to Prokofiev and Bartók... shortly afterwards I moved on to Stockhausen... And moving from music that still had tonal influences, or post-Beethovenian influences, as with Bartók, to aleatoric music, was a great surprise. The Escola Superior led me to widen my horizons to the present, though at the time Penderecki wasn’t so up-to-date, but obviously for me he was extremely modern, as though it had been done ay that moment. I can say that it was at the Escola Superior that my horizons really widened, to include what was being done, and I also began to gather information by modern means such as the Internet, compact discs, etc. And the market had anyway expanded in the meantime. It was very difficult to find contemporary music on sale in Lisbon – discs and scores – and the market suddenly opened up. Today it’s easy to order anything through the Internet, and when I travel, I’m constantly buying things and so I keep up to date. Of course this influences my music. At the Escola Superior, I was able to make a number of experiments, from aleatoric music, to Xenakis, or minimalism. I tried to widen my horizons to everything that interested me, independently of its aesthetic orientation. I also worked with Constança Capdeville, who was a person extremely open to all kinds of aesthetic, and I didn’t want to know whether it was more or less accepted, or it was more or less official, if it was more or less interesting. I mean, I wrote pieces imitative of Xenakis or Peter Maxwell Davies (you also learn by imitating) as well as writing more minimal, or Ligetian things and so on. I tried out everything I could in those three years (at the time they were only three years) and it was after leaving that I can say that my music began to reflect a little what was going on at the time and not the neoclassical, post-Bartók music that I was doing before, of course. When I left I was 21 or 22 years old, and somewhat mature, though I was a very young composer. Thereafter it was that path of experimentation and trying to arrive at something that I can claim is my music

Meeting with Fernando Lopes-Graça

My points of reference came precisely from the first half of the 20^th century... Bartók, Prokofiev, Stravinsky, the early Schoenberg Lopes-Graça. Indeed, one of the things that most interested me when I met him was the fact of him already being a point of reference. My interest in Portuguese music in general was already quite old; I remember spending my entire pocket money once on a disc of pieces by Luís de Freitas Branco because I was interested in knowing what other people in Portugal were doing (quite apart from any nationalism). They were those first recordings on PortugalSom, and I must have been about 14 or 15 years old. Lopes-Graça was already one of the most important names from the first half of the 20^th century in Portugal, and though he was already quite elderly, continued to teach at the Academy; so it was important to learn that I could still benefit from his teaching. In fact, I went to him exactly in the year he retired, so he concentrated everything in two years instead of three. In the very first class, I asked to go to his house, see his scores and talk to him; Lopes-Graça was somewhat “old-fashioned” – he never charged me a penny for any lesson, and I spent entire afternoons there, looking at pieces and listening to things, many of his own things too, because I asked. So a relationship was established that I can consider to be that or master and disciple in a sense; there was also a natural friendship and learning as there was, I don’t know, in the 16^th or 17^th century, when there was really a personal relationship during a number of years... as there still is today with Emmanuel Nunes, with Stockhausen and with other composers. With Lopes-Graça and me I think it was a bit like that; there was no lesson plan or anything... I went there basically to show him what interested me, hear what he said... sometimes we just ate... for example, he’d cook a meal and we’d talk about music in general, listen to some recordings... But it was really very important because he was such a strong personality that it was impossible not to be influenced at the age of 16 or 17.

Tradition and “accessibility” of musical language

I’ve always been interested in connecting with tradition. But when I say “connecting with tradition”, it doesn’t mean anything like neoclassicism or repetition of tradition, though I occasionally write more traditional music.

In my concert music, my most important work, that makes me say “That’s my music!” If I could choose just four or five scores, those that would interest me most are the ones with some connection to tonality... they were very important, especially in the tonal period. To try to find some sense of continuity, some way of the harmony and the chord structure having an auditory logic in relation to each other. But, for example, I listen to music that I’d never write! I like Xenakis very much, for example, and right now, I’d never write anything like that! What I like to do, and what interests me is to provide goalposts for the listener. And these aspects of continuity, of line, of work on harmony, or marking points – be they intervals, a particular kind of chord, particular kinds of gesture repeated in a certain way – that mean that the listener can follow a logical discourse. And then I take a lot from tonality, which was a very important period, in which these kinds of ideas of discourse, or tension, of relaxation, of continuity, were perhaps more relevant and significant, and it is perhaps because of this that it’s the most popular period of music history. I’m not saying it was the best – it’s not a question of being better – but it’s perhaps a period that achieved a certain balance between intellectualism, preparation of a composition beforehand and a result that’s easily recognizable by many people. This phenomenon also doesn’t happen with modal music of the preceding period, or with mediaeval music and sometimes it doesn’t happen with the music of the second half of the 20^th century or even with some from the first half, which makes it neither more nor less worthwhile, it’s just a question of it being interesting. There are fellow-composers who have absolutely no interest in this connection with the past, and there are others who are perhaps too interested; I try to find, if possible, a certain balance between a language that I can say is of today, and I believe hasn’t been done, or may have been done forty or fifty years ago. In other words, I think there are limits to the understanding of the musical phenomenon. I mean, I don’t believe that the brain or the ear are unlimited, or that the human being – at least in the space of 100, 200 or 300 years – can evolve to the point that, without significant musical education or training, can understand, hear and like certain things. I mean, I very much like certain composers, but I was educated musically. But the majority of people has not been, and so I try to find a language that can reach more people.

So I try to find a mid-point between that I’m interested in doing and try to reach people. Because I don’t write music for myself, I mean, I write music to communicate with others, and this communication has to have two sides, it must be interesting to me too. In more technical terms, this is demonstrated in certain melodic gestures, certain rhythms, which do not work only on paper – or I try to make it so that they don’t only work on paper, but audibly.

Compositional methods

One can say that I never make compositional plans that I don’t try out in some way, whether on the computer, or on the piano, or internally, and what interests me is really the result that you hear, independently of how I get there. Which doesn’t mean that I don’t do some pre-planning. Especially in terms of pivot notes because, for example (in speaking of tonality), there are certain notes that function as tonics. For example, a piece that was performed recently, Sequenza Ultima, has a main note that I think is a B flat (it was written in 2001), a low note in the cor anglais, which is the soloist... All the material comes from the soloists’ line, so it’s easy, for anyone who is listening, to understand that what’s going on in the orchestra or the ensemble reflects what’s happening in the melodic line. I work very much like this: usually there’s a line or a soloist that stands out and that will make, I hope, whomever listens understand that in this line are the main listening points: the repeated notes, or pivots, the notes that have a certain register and that I consider as working outside that registers something like dominants or subdominants. One can say that when I come back to the first register – as though to a refrain – people may perhaps not exactly think “Ah, this is the tonic!”, but if they are used to listening to tonal music, probably they will have a feeling close to that of tonality without actually being tonality. Or even if it has nothing to do with tonal music –in a certain sense – in the deepest sense, there is a feeling of tension and relaxation, as I get nearer to or further away from this central register that’s in the soloist’s line, and I think whoever hears it will perhaps understand that what’s going on in the orchestra is a reflection of this line, and is therefore an ornament or an accessory and a colour. But there’s something that guides that line – that Ariadne’s thread, if you like, which is also almost the name of a recent piece – and which I find very interesting... to give to the audience an Ariadne’s thread so that they can find their way out of the labyrinth.

It’s also necessary to realize that after tonality, which was perhaps the last universal or common language, now each composer has his own language. I also try to put myself in the position of somebody who doesn’t know music – because I’d also like somebody who didn’t know music perhaps to enjoy a piece of mine – without descending to populisms, shall we say, post-tonal or whatever. Every time a contemporary piece is heard, the voice of a specific composer is heard. In principle, though there are schools, trends, movements, I think that between myself, Miguel Azguime, Eurico Carrapatoso, Alexandre Delgado and other composers more or less close to me, we’re not all that different, but even so we are even further than Bartók was from Stravinsky, or Stravinsky from Falla, and much further, certainly, that Mozart and Haydn. Which means that the differences are greater and greater. And of course a specialist can hear whether it’s Mozart, or Haydn, but for the majority of people that listen, it’s neither, it’s classical music and possibly from the classical period. As well as having our own languages... We ourselves as composers also have to adapt to this world, and at the end of ten or fifteen minutes understand the world of a composer through his new piece. For us it’s sometimes difficult, and even for critics, musicologists and specialists; for a less informed public it’s probably almost impossible. It would all sound a bit the same. And I try to avoid this by means of these processes of connecting to the past, without falling into a neoclassicism – of neo-something else – which I also do, but in a different way.

I usually start with a line, from which the harmony is built up. Chords, by means of resonances, by means of commentaries on what the soloist is doing, through the creation of small counterpoints; I start from this line and then normally write a bass, another connection with tonality, there being momentarily two lines, one of them being “a melody”.

One could speak of a cantus firmus. I’d even refer perhaps to an incomplete Bach chorale, a Bach-like chorale for four voices, in which first the line to be harmonized is defined – and the bass line is written first – and then the inner voices are added: it’s something like that. Usually my music is for two voices; in a sense, that soloist’s line (when there is no soloist there is usually an instrument that stands out a little more). This happened, even though at times one is not aware of it in the catalogue, because the instruments are mixed, but normally there is an instrument such as the horn, for example, the most powerful instrument in a group of five or six woodwinds, or a trumpet or some other instrument. For example, in a wind quintet which is in the catalogue, Aspetto, the horn – though it’s not a soloist – is the instrument that has the main line; in other words, it was the first part to be created. So, even when there’s no soloist but a homogeneous or more traditional group, there’s normally an instrument that stands out in the texture. And it’s on that basis that I build the rest. This has been standard from about 1996, with the Clarinet Quintet.

Composition in the service of pedagogy: Works for children

If you ask me “Which are your most important pieces? Which pieces would you take to a desert island? Or what would you show to somebody?” It’s likely that I wouldn’t show the Concerto for Trumpet or the Cinco Melodias Populares or Cinco Peças Rústicas because I don’t consider that they are my language, shall we say. Because classical tonal language is exhausted. Which doesn’t mean that I don’t get a certain enjoyment out of writing a piece in C major. As Schoenberg said, there are still many good pieces to be written in C major. What I mean is that I don’t place the same value on them. I’m fond of them. But... when I write a piece in which I want to express myself, in which I explore certain things with a certain depth and relevance – there are pieces such as Sequenza Ultima, Aspetto, or Atlas Journey – which is what may be – or tries to be – my music. and if everything was burned, I’d like at least those pieces not to be destroyed, that they should remain. And there’s an element, or a certain social interest which was also something passed on by Lopes-Graça. Lopes-Graça did this a lot, without any connection to politics or anything else: a certain concern with serving the community. And the big question that we have here is: what does one do for a child or 3 or 4 years old, or 6 years, or 10 years, in musical terms? In a country where there’s a tremendous time lag in musical education. Though it is said that this is a country of musicians, it isn’t! At most it’s a country of cheap pop music, sometimes! Now... there is a great lack in serious musicians. The question is: is a piece in the style of Bartók or Stravinsky outdated or not, for a child? Will doing a neoclassical piece prevent him from listening to Stockhausen later on? Or, on the other hand, will it make him develop in relation to Mozart? This is a question about which I’ve spoken before, particularly with Pedro Rocha, who is also very much interested in teaching. What I’ve noted – because I have had a lot of experience with people who don’t know music, but who like to go to concerts and hear different things, and even with children – is that even a piece – very often by Bartók – for many uninformed audiences in Portugal, sounds like contemporary music. And I’ve even been accused – this is like something out of Kafka – when, two years ago I wrote a clearly Stravinskian piece, for the inaugural concerts of the Algarve Orchestra, there was a review in a regional newspaper, written, it seems, by a gentlemen who can’t really know music from the second half of the 20^th century, because he said that it was such a modern and contemporary piece that it must be electroacoustic! There couldn’t even have been a classical orchestra there! Now, we’re talking about an obviously neoclassical piece, something that could have been written in 1930, I have no problem saying that, but for this gentleman and much of the audience it was an extremely contemporary piece, because they can’t have heard until then anything later than Rossini! Or Donizetti! Perhaps some Debussy! So what we, at times, think is antiquated – and it is, I mean, historically, Stravinsky is no longer, as much as I like Stravinsky and he is still a point of reference, he died some years ago and his music belongs to the first half of the century, and it’s an aesthetic from that time – even for people who study music, this can be extremely contemporary and modern! And so, the question is: if I write a piece for children, for piano, in a more or less dissonant style from the first half of the 20^th century, is it a retrograde process for the child? Or an advance? I think that in Portugal, where there is still a great lack of information, this is a halfway point in order to reach contemporary music, and not the other way round.

And I myself am an example of this, because when I arrived at the Escola Superior, I knew music up to Bartók, Stravinsky and Prokofiev, but I at least knew them (and from the previous generation some Webern, some Schoenberg, some Berg). But for me there was no hiatus between, say, Rossini and Stockhausen! Because if there had been a hiatus, at the Escola Superior I would probably have reacted against contemporary music, because you can’t – I think – like a composer and not know what happened 100 years later and suddenly think that it’s even music! Well, as this didn’t happen with me, the connection between the past and the present was made in a more natural way; I mean, going from Stravinsky and Varèse to Penderecki and Stockhausen was for me quite natural. For an audience that stops at tonality – Tchaikovsky, for example – to jump to the second half of the 20^th century id very difficult. So that’s the way that I see my music for children and young people. Sometimes I do slightly more contemporary things, but, let’s say, simplified. But I write a lot of music which is, shall we say, neoclassical in character, or Stravinskian or Bartokian, because, very often, I come to the conclusion that my own music students don’t know this music, and have no access to it. It’s already been the case that, in the second year of the Escola Superior, in an analysis class for instrumentalists, I’ve played The Rite of Spring and half the class hasn’t ever heard it! They’ve heard a lot about it. And they’re even shocked... some say “What’s this?! This is noise, not music!” I’ve had reactions of this kind. It may seem just to be a joke, but we’re talking about a tertiary level music school, and pupils in the second year! I’m not talking about composers, but performers, but in any case, those performers will play our music later on! So, if the performer, at least, doesn’t have this phase of the first half of the 20^th century and doesn’t know it or love it, how is he then going to be able to play my music, more of our time and without any immediate compromise with the past? How will Sequenza Ultima be performed by a musician who doesn’t play anything later than Debussy? For me, this is the context. Of course, this is arguable, and there are completely opposite opinions.

Works: Monumentum, Quinteto de Clarinete (Clarinet Quintet) and Monodrama

As for pieces that have been important to me, pieces that I wrote and marked some evolution in my musical thought – apart from those which I mentioned as being apprentice pieces – I think that the first one that’s up-to-date and therefore contemporary – using the term “contemporary” in the sense that the piece doesn’t sound as thought it comes from the first half of the 20^th century, neoclassical – was a piece for four clarinets, called Monumentum pró Góra Kalwaria. It was the first piece – it’s still in my catalogue – in which I can say that I explored some techniques and some things that still interest me today, notably that question of finding a logic between harmonic formations. However, this piece, as it was still from a time of experimentation, is, curiously, very fragmentary. So it’s a music in mosaic in which the music stops, starts, stops, starts... However, I think that it has some characteristics, perhaps poetic rather than strictly technical, which have continued to interest me until now. Because I think that my music – whether it’s tonal, or more important music – is always, in a way, dramatic, there’s always a certain dramatic feeling. What does this mean? That there’s always a certain conflict and never, you can say, atmospheric or sensual in the way that Debussy can be, in Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, for example, or static, like that of Ligeti. It’s music that, from the start, aims at being quite dynamic, and it’s from here that there springs this feeling of aiming at continuity and movement. And this piece, though fragmentary, has this characteristic, which I think is a personal characteristic. In this sense, I feel closer to Schoenberg, for example, than to Debussy – though I like them both; on account of this element, perhaps tortured and argumentative, in Schoenberg’s music. Ad this piece was important because I used contemporary techniques, aleatoric techniques and others that are still important today (though not now as an exercise).

However, I think the most important piece I’ve done, and which has to do with what I’m doing today, is that one from 1996, the Clarinet Quintet. It was a commission from the Centro Cultural de Belém. And there it is! It’s precisely a piece that has a soloist and a string quartet that – O won’t say accompanies, because it’s a term that means almost nothing nowadays – comments, extends, makes the soloist’s line resonate. Beforehand I had written a piece almost as an exercise, Monodrama, also for solo clarinet, and 25 clarinets. In this work you already see the construction of a melodic line – which is something that always interested me – but it’s only in 1996 that I can say that I perhaps found a language that belonged more to me. Nevertheless, it’s a language clearly influenced by some composers such as Magnus Lindberg, for example, or Peter Maxwell Davis, who are also composers who have interests similar to mine, or I have interests similar to theirs. In particular that feeling of continuity, a certain connection – why not talk about it – even to tonality. The music of Magnus Lindberg is not free from influences such as that of Sibelius, for example, and neither is Peter Maxwell Davis, with all his intellectualism and cerebralism. However, he’s writing symphonies, and the fact of writing symphonies implies something, some connection to the past and some connection to phenomena such as having tonics and dominants, in other words, having some tonal conflict even if the music is not exactly tonal. And in this quintet I began to make this connection between the past and the present, though the quintet really takes off from the clarinet line; there’s not yet two-voiced construction, it’s still single-voiced construction.

Works: Atlas Journey and a topological idea of music

The following piece, from 1998, is important to me, and the work in which, shall we say, I crystallize certain discoveries that I had made in the quintet: Atlas Journey, for 15 musicians. This was also a commission, important because it was an international group that played it and recorded it very well on CD – and also because I rehearsed with the group for month. And so, I was able to experiment and see what would happen, and in a certain sense it is a synthetic piece. It’s a synthetic piece because it has, shall we say, everything that has interested me during the course of the years, not only that which I’ve already mentioned – in this case there’s no soloist, but within those 15 minutes the horn is the instrument that directs the rest – but there are other things that also interest me, such as quotations, for example – which is something that recurs in my music – which, in many cases, are not apparent, or they’re really little personal homages that can’t be heard by the audience in general. So it’s not collage music, in which it is clearly meant that the audience recognize “Ah, that’s Mozart”, there, suddenly, you hear a bit of Stravinsky, and it can even be parodic (or not), it’s not in that sense. In general they are musical fragments which are incorporated in my own musical interests, either because there’s an interval in common – perhaps an augmented fourth, which is an interval I use a lot - and, for example, because there’s a fragment of Stravinsky that has an augmented fourth and I can quote it; sometimes it’s just a bar or two, so it’s almost not a quotation, for me it’s more noticeable than for the audience. But they’re things that interest me and run through my music more or less from the beginning – though initially it was more parodic, now it’s more hidden – but that function in some way as a homage and connection, one can say, with the people from the past who interest me. Even people from the present, such as Magnus Lindberg or Peter Maxwell Davis. Both are quoted in Atlas Journey, though I defy anyone to discover where they are! They’re very personal quotations. Another thing that interested me as well in this piece, Atlas Journey, apart from this dramatic quality, is that there’s no story, exactly, but I imagined it as though it were a tale taken from classical Greek mythology, told aloud with a puppet theatre. So this irregular aspect within the continuity, this almost Petrushkan element that we find in Stravinsky, was important to me. One could say that in this piece I crystallize all the influences and all the composers – or almost all the composers – that interested me, especially at a certain point in my life. The circus-like aspect in Stravinsky was a great influence. Even today it’s a great influence. Not so much the kind of music as the kind of attitude and continuity, the grotesque element that you find in the first ballets such as the Rite or Petrushka, the tonal continuity, the construction of the most important melodic line which is in the horn, the element of connection with the past which, as well as the total tonality, is found in the structuring of the chords (many of them being spectral chords) – I didn’t want to say spectral, because normally spectral chords have a particular construction, more strictly organized, but they’re chords which start from a tonal base with a “dirtier” top note, which gives a spectral effect without being spectral music – and also the whole-tone scale, intervals of a major third and augmented fourth, which are those that relate to my melodic writing.

You can say that in the melodic line there is no perfect firth, only in the harmony, and in the melody there are particular kinds of interval, particularly those of the whole-tone scale, and the semitone that serves as an interval of transposition. In general terms they are the materials that I still use today, whole-tone scales, chords derived from a certain kind of spectral thinking. These two types of harmony have things in common, notably the augmented fourth, which is a higher harmonic and that can connect with the whole-tone scale. Then there’s the element of construction of those melodic lines – in the long term – and, in the case of Atlas Journey I’d go even further... in a way it’s a modified sonata form. It has a recapitulation and everything! Moreover, when this piece was played – and some colleagues of mine heard it and even liked it; I remember a conversation with Pedro Rocha, who asked me “I liked your piece very much, but why the recapitulation?” So, what bothered him was this element of recapitulation, and of there being something that in principle shouldn’t have existed in 1998, something that sounded like a recapitulation. Well, I have no problems in admitting that there’s a certain neoclassical element, if you like. A modified sonata form with a recapitulation – even though abbreviated – is something that could appear demodé, but I nevertheless believe that things may be listened to with other ears if the context is different. And there’s something you see in the 1970s, for example in Peter Maxwell Davies’s First Symphony – which also influenced me – and it’s precisely the condensed and abbreviated recapitulation, that we hear precisely as a recapitulation. There’s a chord which is the same at the beginning and the end, and this doesn’t bother me, because I think it’s a little bonbon you give to the audience, a little point of orientation. There era many things in Atlas Journey that the audience will certainly not understand on a first hearing, but I give them some points of reference. One of them is precisely the fact of there being things that are repeated. And why not repeat at the end, though in a modified form – I never do anything literal, it would be going too far back into the past, I think – something that you can hear. Apart from the sonata form, I also compare this recapitulation to something which interests me greatly, Escher’s drawings.

Something else that interests me is a topological idea of music. I mean, I like to think of the musical phenomenon, very often, in an almost visual way. You pick up an object, a pen, for example, never mind the distance, the position or the lighting – at least up to a point – and you recognize it. Our vision adapts itself to different positions, light and so on, because we recognize in the object the same topology, the same thing that allows me to say, though there are thousands of kinds of cars, or chairs or sofas, “This is a sofa, this is a chair, that’s a pen.” In music it is possible to circulate a musical object and look at it from different perspectives, and in this sense this recapitulation that has similarities with sonata form – I mentioned sonata form and have no problem in saying so – also has to do with looking at an object in different ways, because I never repeat anything identically. There are small, subtle differences. Sometimes so subtle that musicians sometimes ask me: “Is this a mistake? Or not? Because before there was the same thing but here two of the notes are different.” But sometimes they are two important notes because they’re in a particular register, or have particular dynamics. But for a performer – very often performers are used to playing more traditional repertoire – something that is repeated with subtle differences may seem as though it is a mistake. And I often try to explain to the performers: “No, no! It’s not a mistake, there’s really a different note”, or “It’s only gone up an octave, but it’s right!” Of course, sometimes it is a mistake... But in many cases my music works in this way. The object is being seen from a position slightly nearer or slightly further away. Of course, the analogy between visual and auditory is always somewhat false. You can’t make an analogy between different arts and different meanings, I think. At least, not a complete analogy. So there are things that can be used, and very often these phenomena of repetition may sound like recapitulations and so on – and they do, as well, I don’t deny it – arise from this kind of situation... Looking at an object that is circulating. And in fact there’s something of this in Atlas Journey, objects constantly circulating, always with subtle differences that may in the end keep going until a point at which they are no longer recognizable. If I wanted to define the form of this piece, it would be a series of arches what fit into each other, in which some appear and others disappear, some become larger and some smaller. It’s something I use now, and so If I were to choose a piece that was among the most important that I’ve done, then Atlas Journey would be the one

A large output

At all events, the question of how many pieces one writes, or the question of catalogues is always interesting, because we know perfectly well that there have been composers such as Falla, Webern or Alban Berg who really write very little, and it’s all of the highest quality, because, obviously, when you write little, you probably don’t want to leave anything that’s of lesser quality. Of course, when we come to Shostakovich, Prokofiev, even Stravinsky, Lopes-Graça, myself – making no comparisons – it’s obvious that there are pieces that are more interesting than others, not everything is of the same quality, if one is expecting any quality from my music... Now, I think that this is a question of temperament. There are people who refine pieces for years – Alban Berg, Falla. Falla was even worse than Berg, he was a highly polished composer, and took forever...

There’s something else as well: many of my pieces are short, and while Berg apparently wrote little, if you take everything he wrote there are some five hours or more of music. in my catalogue, many pieces are no more than six or ten minutes. I was never a composer of large-scale forms, though my music in recent years has increased in size, perhaps precisely because of this phenomenon, which I mentioned, of my language – if I in fact have a language – having crystallized and formalized in a way that allows me to work with larger forms, but until then – let’s say some three or four years ago – to write a piece of twenty or so minutes was for me a huge feat! The piece I mentioned, Monumentum, is six minutes long, Monodrama about ten, eleven, and many of my works are not large; I haven’t written any operas, I don’t have any large-scale pieces. The Concerto for Two Pianos – in terms of contemporary, rather than tonal music – is the largest I’ve done so far, and it’s 25 minutes, so it’s still less than Petrushka or the Rite. Let’s say that I am a composer more of concision, rather than large-scale forms – for the moment.

Something that interests me, in this phenomenon of circularity or of topology, is that there’s no doubt that there are materials that circulate from work to work; apart from Atlas Journey, about which I’ve already spoken, in which there is material circulating from the Concerto for Two Pianos, in a different way, I can make mention of Aspetto for wind quintet, for example, which supplies most of the material for Ariane – which is a recent piece, also for wind quintet, with piano. Whoever hears them both is not going to say “It’s the same music!” – I believe – because it really isn’t. It is reworked. Let’s imagine it as though it were in the past... there were themes, or a concern with a tonal trajectory or something else, as in the case of Beethoven.

I don’t plan cycles beforehand, but I know that, at a distance, if you take my pieces from the last four or five years, I can group them into particular concerns within recurring concerns. Amongst those there are concerns which are reflected in the music that circulates, in particular concerns which have to do with close instrumentations... Aspetto, for wind quintet, and Ariane, for wind quintet and piano, for example. And even the Concerto for Two Pianos, which, although it apparently doesn’t have anything to do with Atlas Journey, in terms of orchestration has things in common, because it’s an amplification in orchestral terms of what is in Atlas Journey, with the inclusion of two pianos. But there’s a certain choice of orchestra which has to do, for example, with the importance of the horn. So there are concerns of an instrumental kind which also connect these pieces, and thus also the fact of there being, perhaps, many pieces. But in any case, if you count the pieces I have, those that I consider most important, with my own personal language, there are not that many. The greater part of my catalogue is made up really of occasional pieces, written for kids, tonal pieces, arrangements, harmonizations. If you divide the catalogue up more precisely – in fact, I have done this – you see that the pieces I can say are “Sérgio Azevedo” in a few years will be perhaps 15, and are not as large as all that. So, in a way, I don’t write that much! Perhaps I do write a lot of less important, or occasional pieces.