Education

My first great influence was António Pinho Vargas in 1985. He was my teacher at secondary school, for the optional subject of music. At the time, unlike many of my fellow students, I had already studied some theory and piano. Since he gave us a certain freedom to experiment and create, I tried composing some things that I took to the class. I remember that he related these little pieces (aesthetically) to things by Prokofiev, a composer of whom I was completely unaware at the time.

Then I began, officially this time, the composition course with Fernando Lapa in Oporto. There I discovered some things in common, a less avant-garde kind of writing, with some more detailed technical work harmonically speaking. At the same time, I met Jorge Peixinho at the Vila do Conde courses. Between these two people, António Pinho Vargas and Jorge Peixinho, I established the frame of reference for my development. Gradually, each one of them provided me with different contacts in a natural way.

I got to know Cândido Lima’s music through Jorge Peixinho (I often went to hear concerts that included Cândido’s music) and wanted to go to the Escola Superior de Música do Porto in order to study with him. Aesthetically, I didn’t have much in common with him, and in the end found much more connection with Jorge Peixinho, and creating a number of processes, establishing my technique after Emmanuel Nunes’s courses. And in around 1996, I began to use a more precise technique, very much linked to his. Aesthetically I didn’t follow this path, but I managed to find processes that led me to acquire harmonic logic that I hadn’t managed up to that point; I had worked a good deal with counterpoint, and so got very lost in melodic lines... in situations that had nothing to do with harmonic logic or with building up a chord, for example. Oddly, later I found in António Pinho Vargas a harmonic structure rather similar to that which I was searching for and found somewhere completely different.

Of course, there were other composers who influence me, perhaps through affinity, such as Luigi Nono, by means of Jorge Peixinho, Ligeti through António Pinho Vargas and the French spectralists, whom I came to know not so much through a particular composer as through buying a disc and simply listening to it. I adored the work of Tristan Murail and Grisey, whom I discovered later.

Influences and periods

I was always concerned with reading and getting to know what people were doing, because some of the technical points could have been of help to me, probably in situations completely different from those in which they were used by the composer. I remember using, for example, something from Grisey in structures utterly different from this in which he used them; nevertheless, the result or the end for which it served is exactly that process, whether or not the aesthetic is the same.

In the 1980s, especially at the end of the ‘80s, I was very conditioned by neoclassical writing; I think that the two pieces that are most characteristic of that time are the 3 Peças a Erik Satie and the Sonatina, both for piano. It was the first time I attained any formal balance, even though it was a classical formalism. Precisely in this sense, the use of neoclassicism gave me the basis; but in these two pieces, in addition to developing a more careful instrumental writing, in this case limited even to my technique at the time, I moved away somewhat from this idea. That is, I wasn’t writing them for me to play... I stopped thinking of myself as a performer and began to think only as a composer. One of these pieces is shorter than the other, recalling the characteristics of Satie’s works, based on some of the Gymnopedies, Océan, etc., the Sonatina, very close to Debussy and Ravel... at the beginning of the 20^th century.

Gradually I came to know another kind of writing, that of Ligeti, who influenced me at the beginning of the 1990s in works such as … Mutatis Mutandis... – which is in fact a slow change of octave, going from a note that moves an octave higher and an octave lower, and returns again. Formally it’s very simple, an arch form, little more than that... and absolutely symmetrical; in fact, the second half of the work is exactly the inverse of the first – the Sequências for flute and piano. In this phase, I began to write a lot for flute, because I knew a flautist – also still a student – who began to play with me, and with whom I had the opportunity to try out a number of things and see whether they worked or not. I also managed to write Objectos, the first version or which, for flute, is dedicated to Luís Meireles, and which he premièred at Serralves Foundation (Fundação Serralves), in a second version with ‘cello: that’s a much more experimental work, using a number of sound techniques. Basically, it was there that I began much of the sound research and interest in the element of the note and spectrality, a structure but of only one small element, and the whole piece is built from that element. In other words, it gives rise to everything. I think that since then I never quite let go of this kind of writing.

Gradually I wrote other kinds of works, such as the Suite para Orquestra de Cordas, which is absolutely neoclassical, because it was written for an orchestra of students who were therefore unused, or unused to other kinds of writing. Later, the same orchestra commissioned Music for «Scarff Michael», and in that work I did use some instrumental techniques, and even tape, though nothing very sophisticated, but which served its purpose. Actually, they are somewhat parallel works, in that neither influenced my aesthetic development. They are interesting for their pedagogical quality, and for the need I had to create something else, and which sometimes does not even take much more time.

It’s also quite interesting that I wrote rather more in the early years. There were more works each year than subsequently. I’ve begun to take more time in writing each work; I spend more time searching. Perhaps I don’t spend so much actually writing because the technical part of it is relatively easy for me, but making it work afterwards is always more complicated because I need to hear what I’m doing, I need to now if it works or not. Also at this time, my harmonic concerns became apparent in Dona Nobis Pacem, which is, oddly enough, a piece that works much more through harmony than anything else. It’s probably one of the first of my pieces with a larger and more diversified instrumentation, not limited to string orchestra or chamber group. There are eleven instruments, winds, strings and percussion, for which until then I hadn’t had much opportunity to write for or hear.

And here we come to the electronic works, from which I had maintained a distance for some years. Though I studied electroacoustics in Oporto, of course, I hadn’t felt very attracted by it, probably because the available resources were not what I wanted or because they didn’t do what I wanted to hear. In 1998 I wrote Canções da Terra Distante, in memory of Jorge Peixinho, and it’s precisely the first piece in which I used electronics in a significant sense, because it runs throughout the piece. It’s quite a long piece (50 minutes), arranged spatially: the singer is in the middle of the audience, the instrumentalists around the audience, and they move around during one part of the work. This was an important piece because it involved this new process, using electronics, and because it was a big piece, but not written for very large resources. In fact, there are four brass, soprano and piano, not much more than that, and a narrator, who does not actually influence the musical discourse. I don’t mean that today I find it completely satisfactory, but that’s not so important. What is important is that it made me feel that I was able to come up with an amount of material. From there to some more recent works was a short step, one could say. Pour que une Fée s'Enchante is for me one of my most important works for the same reason: because it’s a work that lasts 23 minutes, and in which the electronics are essential throughout, as well as the piano, obviously.

Today, the last piece (perhaps it’s always like this) is always important, it has that thing of “ah, yes, this one, because...” and perhaps with the next one it loses all its importance, doesn’t it?

When I wrote Litania de Palavras Doces for violin and electronics, written and premièred this year, it was very important. Straight afterwards I wrote Self, for piano and electronics, and it seems that the other piece “disappeared”! “Disappeared” because I think Self is probably a new opening.

I think that some of the aesthetic questions that I was searching for were taken on board, and when I arrived at Transecto, a work for 15 instruments, this aesthetic was defined. Self opens a new perspective on this spectrality, while Litania de Palavras was still very much following Grisey’s logic, perhaps very close to his first spectral pieces (which strangely had little to do with his last works). Also for this reason, that work was almost an epilogue to the approach to spectralism. Self opens a new path, and I don’t yet know what it will be, because my output is large, I continue to add and take away. The composer is in the end the greatest filter of his own output, and sometimes in the worst way, because he takes out pieces that were perhaps relatively important to know about. But we always filter our own output.

These milestones along the way are very few – four or five out of 88 to date – and, perhaps, in two years’ time they won’t be the same ones. I think that Pour qu’une Fée s'Enchante will always be such a milestone because, in fact, professionally, it marked the fact that people had got to know my work, to know what I had to give, shall we say.

Use of fractals

Some years ago I discovered fractals, a little later than some others. But I was captivated by the ability to generate certain things in different proportions, and since 1999-2000, I have built almost everything on the basis of fractals. So the material does not proliferate in a traditional sense. I don’t experiment and create a number of “processes”. I create them all, and the entire basic process is made through fractals, creating series of augmentations and diminutions of aggregates of melodic lines and so forth. And then I use them, experiment with them, and hear what I want, since in reality, only one or two chords, aggregates or rhythms are used over the course of a number of pages. The path of everything that is created does not always come out, and so I think that, as long as the final result is exactly what I had imagined before creating the materials, or is at least as close as possible, I’m on the right path.

It’s precisely the elements that I create: which will be the zooms, which possibilities of augmentation, size of increase, is what I create. Normally this has to do with the distance I create... for example, between notes of an aggregate, the first aggregate increases according to the fractal I use; so the proportion of the increase is always the same. In reality this has to do with the concept of self-similarity; they are the same in terms of distance, but not absolutely identical because obviously their notes are aver further away. One loses this idea, and so then I use the idea of the dieresis – the aleatoric process – which is the space where each thing happens; thus, they do not necessarily have to correspond to that recursive and monotonous process that they create. If I gradually use the whole process exactly as it happens, it comes to a point at which it’s absolutely unbearable because it doesn’t go anywhere. And normally you understand that it’s not going anywhere. So I end up using this idea of the dieresis: “Right, this is the direction at the moment, but it could go somewhere else.” So I’m not at all bothered if I go back to the first fractal I used when I was already on the third. What’s important is the discourse, and that the dramaturgy of the piece continues to have its function and not become a recurrent process of self-feeding, as it were, because in the end it’s what happens in these cases. It doesn’t interest me much whether all the fractals are completely recognizable. What interests me is that some of the cells be recognized as augmented or diminished. For example... Emmanuel Nunes’s rhythmic pairs. When I spoke about having created an awareness of technique with Emmanuel Nunes, it has a lot to do with this because essentially, the paring process is exactly the same, and I can augment it and diminish it according to the value I give it. I have exactly the same element, even though it’s not audibly recognizable as such. So my fractal derives from Nunes’s rhythmic pairs, which I used in a number of works.

Aleatoric processes... I tried them out with Jorge Peixinho, and this also has something to do with the reason why I don’t want real time electronics. Because I prefer to control certain elements better. I find it strange to give an aleatoric process to someone and then tell him that he can’t do this or that. A perfect chord appears: “Hey, you can’t play a perfect chord!”. But if the process is genuinely aleatoric, it can perfectly well happen. So I’m not going to be the one to say “No, no…” And the performer can say “But in what you’ve got written here, I can’t work out if I can or I can’t.” I really find this difficult. And even aleatoricism as composition – as valid as it can be in some cases – doesn’t interest me much... I don’t like losing control over what’s happening. I already lose it afterwards, when the piece is in the hands of somebody else. So, until that point the piece is mine! And I like to know what it’s telling me, where it’s going and how I attained or didn’t attain my objectives.

Use and function of electronics

Electronics... first I work them out always during the course of the actual piece. I don’t write the piece and add the electronics afterwards, or the other way around! They’re two different paths: they’re not parallel, but absolutely connected to each other.

For me, electronics is, in the end, another instrument that allows me to do things that I can’t do with an acoustic instrument. It can also be an extension of an instrument, and in that case I often use different points or focuses of emission, precisely in order to create this: on the one hand, by an artificial extension of the actual instrument, and on the other hand, a counterpoint to the instrument, somebody with whom it enters into dialogue, in fact. I didn’t want to view this so much as two instruments in dialogue, because that’s not the idea, but it’s an accompaniment and an accentuation of some images. Perhaps, in order to arrive at certain climaxes I can reach them better by means of electronics than I could by using instruments only. In addition, electronics are useful to me as a connecting thread, since many of my works are very fragmented. In terms of writing, picking up situations again, small situations than come back, which are augmented, diminished and so on, electronics are useful to me as a connecting thread which brings everything together but is able to keep the same kind of systematic structure, using synthesis as part of the work’s harmony. It’s an absolute part of the work... it’s the same harmonic conception, is useful in some cases for some microtonal deviations, and also to enrich the sound spectrum, to exploit in greater depth the actual instrument, etc. So, as happens with most works, the way in which I use electronics is not always the same.

Coming back to electronics in real time, perhaps the same is happening to me as happened with electronics some years ago. I haven’t yet felt the need for it. The resources I see in real-time electronics don’t interest me, and so I prefer everything to be absolutely controlled... everything I want to come out. And not to expect so much that it will interact with the performer according to what he’s going to do, because perhaps I don’t want him to be in control of what’s going to happen. I don’t mean that I might not use this in the future, but it doesn’t interest me much at the moment.

Synchronization Man/Machine

There are two pieces, Pour qu’une Fée s'Enchante and Ur, for flute and electronics, that use a chronometer. It’s absolutely essential. In neither Litania de Palavras Doces nor Self is there a chronometer, and so there’s greater freedom, not in the sense of performance, but in the place where things happen. So, in Self the electronics do not react according to the performer, but the performer reacts to the electronics: basically, there’s a second score, which tells him what the electronics are doing and he has to react according to that.

Then there’s a fixed time where there are regular situations, as it were, between the two parts, piano and electronics, which is always 60, according to that key rhythm. If there’s a genuine interaction or reaction – fictitious in fact, because it gives the idea that there’s an echo of a note played on the piano – it has to be at that moment, of course; and so there is this marking of time of the second, but no stop, while in Litania de Palavras Doces somebody must set the electronics in motion, because it stops and starts.

This means that it’s not constant. This was already the case in … para uma voz sem acompanhamento: somebody has to start the electronics, in order to stop them and start them again. In Litania de Palavras Doces the same thing happens, but not in Self. The tape begins (in fact it begins and ends the piece) and the piano follows these processes... it already knows that there are certain points at which it has to begin at the same time and mark the time of the second score, and so in principle they do not get out of phase.

Relation between music and text

Text obliges me to re-think a work – not so much technically, being slightly tied to the creation of images, sometimes sufficiently abstract for me to lose myself in them. The text very much serves as a catalyst, and so it’s that which I need to work on. It’s very curious, for example, that I almost never have melismata in my vocal output; it’s almost all syllabic, because the text is really the catalyst for everything... they’re sound images for that text, possibly accompanied by the text itself. In fact, it works a bit like the electronics in other cases, it’s the thing that sticks everything together. It doesn’t even have much to do with vocal techniques – which I rarely use – or with working with the flute (since I work with the flute as being an instrument of great technical and sonic capacities, I don’t worry so much about the voice). It’s just one voice that must sing the text, with care and in tune, of course, but in this respect, the text is more important than the voice. (Rather than spoken, because with that one loses control of the drama of the piece, but rather as something that interacts and is a part of the work). It’s actually sung, it’s inside, and also gives the time of the action itself, musically.

Usually music illustrates what the text says. So there’s a semantic work on the text, the concern with “colouring” it or providing images. For me, the form of the text is not always essential to create the final form of the piece. For various reasons, I may interest myself in some elements of the text itself that I wish to extend musically, and so it loses, or there’s no sense in using the form of the text, also because I don’t always use complete texts but fragments. In Dona nobis pacem, there are three poems by Jorge de Sena, only one of which is complete; the others are merely fragments. And in tão sonoro o mar, I use ten poems taken from a book. They do not create a form, but throughout the piece there are images dealing with the text, with what it says; basically, it’s creating a sound illustration

Current concerns

A while ago we were speaking of drama and dramaturgy... Lately I have written quite often for theatre, as well as opera (though it’s a children’s opera, in which the concern is not with the text as a basic part but with how it can be completely illustrated). Everything’s there: theatrical text or libretto... And in fact I have some ideas about reworking the idea of the opera, but using everything I tried out. The business of spatialization, electronics and non-electronics, and the atmosphere in which things happen dramatically. Because until now, usually it’s always been on the stage... Sometimes other instruments may surround the audience, as happened in Canções da Terra Distante, or else it’s the electronics themselves that create the element of distribution, as is the case with Ur. I wanted to create something in which all the elements are around the audience; in other words, the audience is part of the action and everything that happens. I’ve just finished a piece for a group that works with puppets, and I have an idea that it would be very much based on that, in that the whole scenic element would take place in the middle of the audience. I’d be present at a play or an opera not on stage, but to one side of it. Not so much like Stockhausen’s operas, in which there are elements that take place next to us but the action is still elsewhere. No, the action would be exactly where the audience is, which would allow me to create the image of the largest and smallest elements, all with the same function, because this means that everything that happens in that space must be understandable in the entire space. But if I use a smaller element than a given cell – and then extend it – while I’m sitting and listening to the piece, I can understand all this logically. If my attention is distracted by what’s happening at my side, my understanding is naturally different, and means rethinking systematically what was written, because, perhaps, things cease to be important precisely because of this, because they gradually attain other objectives. Or I also create other objectives as a way of stimulating creation.