Questionnaire/Interview
Part 1 - Roots & Education
How did music begin for you and where do you identify your musical roots? Which paths led you to composition?
Rui Dias: I studied at the Calouste Gulbenkian Music Conservatoire in Braga, until my 9th school year. As it was a music school with integrated teaching programme, since very early I have had lessons of music education and instrument (violin). Nevertheless, my interest to study music in a conscious way began in fact a little after getting out of the Conservatoire, during my 10th year. On this occasion I began to become aware of a great necessity to perform, but this time piano and not violin. What is more I have always manifested curiosity when it comes to new technologies, and particularly synthesizers.
By that time I had a colleague, Pedro Junqueira Maia, who studied jazz piano, and soon after I decided to join him. This passage through jazz lasted around four years, and right after that I returned to the Conservatoire in order to make the complementary course (8th grade) of classical piano. My relation with music was leaning, though, towards a more creative and complex approach, than the one that an instrument student normally develops. I started to have more and more awareness that the ability to compose had always been present, and composition came to be a logical continuation of my career.
Which moments from your music education do you find the most important?
RD: Two distinctive yet perfectly interlinked perspectives come to my mind when approaching this question. If on the one hand there are various moments that contributed to my education with respect to my formal or academic training, on the other there is a group of people and experiences, which probably were more important in the definition of my whole relation with music and the music scene. In all the musical contexts that I passed through, particularly when it comes to jazz, classical piano and composition, I was lucky to have teachers and friends who were dedicated and inspiring, and simultaneously represented a fairly informal approach. All of them contributed to the fact that my music education was determined and fluent, in spite of all the work that it implied.
Part 2 - Influences & Aesthetics
Which references do you assume in your compositional practice? Which works from the history of music and the present time have been the most important to you?
RD: There are various references from different music backgrounds, which had importance in different moments of my career. Within contemporary music, among the ones with which I quickly identified myself, there are for example, The Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky, Quartet for the End of Time by Olivier Messiaen, Metastaseis by Iannis Xenakis, Oh King from Luciano Berio’s Sinfonia, Lontano and Atmosphères by György Ligeti, Répons by Pierre Boulez, Les Espaces Acoustiques by Gérard Grisey, Fama by Beat Furrer, Watt and Celo by Pascal Dusapin, Lichtbogen and Près by Kaaija Saariaho.
The dichotomy occupation – vocation can define the artistic/professional approach of the composer. Where on the scale between the emotional (inspiration and vocation) and the pragmatic/rational (calculation and occupation) do you find your way of working and your stance as composer?
RD: I believe it was George Gershwin whom once a journalist asked, what came first, words or music, to which he answered, “the phone call…”
Composition is simultaneously conceptual and technical, as much as any other art form, I guess. It is important to have some time for reflection and deepening of the concepts that one wishes to develop. Yet it is equally important to be pragmatic and to keep resolving problems while moving forward, trying not to give a lot of importance to creative blocks, when everything ahead seems blurred. The capacity to manage the creative process is essentially a matter of professionalism, more than talent or inspiration, and it is developed with practice…
As it is probably the case of all composers in Portugal, I am also a teacher so I have limited time for composition and personal research. It is a condition difficult to manage, and obviously it influences the type of work that is possible to realize. One of the more negative aspects of this situation is certainly the loss of momentum from one project to another, what causes that for every new work it is necessary to restart, recalibrate and reencounter the necessary concentration.
Music due to its nature is essentially incapable of expressing anything, any emotion, mental attitude, psychological disposition or natural phenomenon. What music expresses is only an illusion, a metaphor and not reality. Do you agree or disagree with this declaration? In this context, how could you define your aesthetic stance?
RD: I don’t agree completely, but I don’t believe this affirmation to be useful or relevant if put isolated. It represents more the beginning of a question than its end.
By its nature music is a physical phenomenon, connected with sound, and this phenomenon alone is capable of causing sensations and affecting the listener in various ways. Music is a form of organizing sounds and silences in time and space, if seen from a purely physical perspective. However, the attribution of meaning to this combination of sounds can be pretty real. The very idea of illusion or metaphor unavoidably implies reference and memory, and therefore, the effect that music causes depends directly on the cultural context of who is listening. I don’t believe, nevertheless, that it would be essentially different from any other mean of communication or expression, if we take into account, for example that even a text can be observed as deprived of its semantic meaning, from a purely graphic and aesthetic perspective.
Are there any extra-musical sources, which influence your work significantly?
RD: In a more or less direct way, in various projects there has been a kind of influence of extra-musical circumstances, above all when there is a context that determines it. Working on an existing text, or composing for dance choreography, implies a direct relation between various elements. Likewise in free composition, I have frequently defined parameters from formal elements, that is, processes based on the application and exploration of a technique or concept.
In the context of western art music do you feel close to any school or aesthetics from the past or present?
RD: Mostly impressionism and spectral music have been possibly the currents with which I identified myself more immediately. Perhaps in these currents there is a greater proximity of music as exploration of the timbral and sound phenomenon per se. And this seems to me quite interesting.
Are there any influences of non-western cultures in your music?
RD: Although I have never studied formally any kind of non-western music (something what I would like to do one day), I have always felt a kind of affinity not only with the sonorities, but also the contemplative and spiritual attitude of traditional music from the Far East. In 2010 and 2012 I composed two pieces for the ExpressOriente Duo, with the guitarist Carlos Lima and flutist Gil Magalhães, whose projects are always somewhat related with the Middle or Far East. Yinnáy explores some aspects of textures and timbres based on the music for Japanese percussion instruments and the i-Ching trigrams in what concerns the formal aspects. The piece O homem do sam-un-ché is based on the homonymous story from the book A China fica ao lado by the writer from Braga, Maria Ondina, who spent a great part of her life in Macau. One of the qualities of the story that interested me was the eloquent and subtle character in the apparent simplicity of a discourse devoid of excesses, which seemed coherent to me with regard to the character and essence of local music, and which I tried to maintain in the whole piece.
What do you recognize as avant-garde? In your opinion what nowadays can be considered as avant-garde?
RD: In my opinion the avant-garde is and always was a synonym of research, curiosity, experimentation and originality. And, in spite of being associated to an idea of (collective) movement, it is above all constituted by quite singular names, which in some way created new paradigms and techniques. These became part of the assets of the compositional means for the next generations.
When it comes to the present time, I believe that it is never very easy to “see up close”, that is, identify and give the right importance to something very near. Nevertheless I believe that there has always been a certain tendency towards a clearer and less complicated musical discourse, distinct from the complexity and density of some of the main currents of the second half of the 20th century. Perhaps there is also a greater opening and diversity of influences and languages that seem to me less associated to geographically-localized currents and schools, and more to individual profiles of each composer, with diverse influences from any part of the world.
I think that this is a logical consequence, on the one hand, of the cyclical nature of society, which, just as it happened in various periods in the history of music, creates moments of cultural reorientation, and these in a certain way move in the opposite direction to the preceding ones. On the other hand there is a major diversity of formats, and a major “contamination” among them. Music for cinema, for example, seems to be gaining, in my opinion, a more interesting dimension and valorisation, and if traditionally it had a more functional and less artistic role, there are more and more examples where music has an almost concert character and a more active role in the creation of the identity of the film, that is, not only as the reinforcement of the sensations and emotions of the script (without, however, failing to perform this function).
Similarly, the music for non-linear contexts such as games and interactive systems has created new and interesting means for composition. Creating music for non-linear formats provides new conceptual and technical compositional challenges, which can be quite attractive. There are music currents, like the more experimental electronics and contemporary jazz, which deal with concepts very close or equal to the ones in electroacoustic composition. The new generations of composers are familiar with these means, and they influence and are influenced by them, what creates a convergence attenuating the barriers between the languages and music means.
Part 3 - Language & Compositional Practice
How can you characterize your music language when taking into account the techniques developed in composition in the 20th and 21st centuries? Do you have any music genre or style of preference?
RD: My predisposition is to think about sound in a plastic and organic manner, with textures composed of gestures and sound masses that move slowly, exploring the development of timbres in constant change, and the harmony being exposed and transformed gradually.
I was always captivated by the refinement of textures in Ligeti’s music, in such works as Atmosphères, Lontano or Melodien, or likewise the timbral richness in spectral works by Grisey or Murail. I can also find these features in various works by Cândido Lima, with whom I studied in Porto and I have always identified myself musically.
When it comes to harmony, I usually tend to a modal approach. I explore combinations of intervals and groups within a determined harmonic field, in order to create a coherent sonority serving as a base while the other melodic and rhythmical elements are being developed. In this context I like to think of gravitational poles, which serve as points of support for the melodic and rhythmical discourse, thus creating gestures that gravitate around these poles. I came across some references of this modal way of thinking in the music of Messiaen and the impressionists, particularly in Ravel, and also, when I was studying jazz, in the music of John Coltrane and Miles Davis.
Could you describe the process behind your compositional practice? Do you compose from an embryo-idea or after having elaborated the global form?
RD: Usually there are some sound ideas that give impulse to the whole process, followed by a formal plan of the structure, as well as the elements and processes creating the composition. These ideas are normally gestures and textures, which I believe may work particularly well in the context for which the work is destined, and for the instruments that are to be used.
I try to give every piece its own sound identity, aesthetically coherent, independently of the style or language where it can be fitted. I don’t want various music influences, from diverse contexts, to be mingled in a way to create aesthetic contradictions inside the same piece.
In the context of your compositional practice could you define the connection (or opposition) between the calculation/reasoning/scientific processes (for example related to acoustic phenomena) and the side more focused on the emotion (the so-called “creative impulses”)?
RD: This is a question, with which I struggle quite frequently, both as composer and as teacher. The relation between my rational and intuitive side has never been peaceful, and it is habitually the main source of friction in the composition of a new work. For me it is obvious that the ideal situation for a well-constructed work can be assured in the good balance between these two aspects. However, this balance doesn’t imply necessarily an equitable distribution among them. I don’t even consider that an analysis of this proportion can contribute very significantly to the evaluation of the quality of a work.
What is your relation with the new technologies (for example with computer means) and how do they influence your way of composing and your music language?
RD: I have always been a great enthusiast of technology, above all of computers. That is why a considerable part of my artistic and professional career is unavoidably connected with electroacoustic music and musical programming. I had the opportunity to attend various editions of the Música Viva Festival, and thus to have close contact with the remarkable list of composers who lectured at those events. Since the first edition where I was present in 2001, the level of organization, professionalism and international profile that I found at this festival, was absolutely contagious and contributed significantly to my relationship with the new music environment. When it comes to electroacoustic music at the composition course in Porto, apart from the more “traditional” approach, the lessons with Carlos Guedes gave me an insightful contact with music software and with creation manners allied to multimedia and interactive means. They fascinated me completely and made me look at technology as a mean for extraordinary music exploration.
Nevertheless, in spite of the interest in technology per se, what has always captivated me truly is the enormous quantity of possibilities that technology lets explore. From computer-assisted composition to interactive digital systems, the computer allows to explore extensively various aspects that interest me profoundly in music, such as the creation of the sound and timbral universe on its own, unique for every piece, or the development of algorithmic processes within composition and performance.
It is though not very easy to describe this relation with technology in terms of influence on my music language. If on the one hand, there are music means and processes that I find interesting to explore, and which are only possible to carry out with the use of technology, on the other I don’t know if I am able to say that they define my music language. The interest to discover new sonorities and textures has always made me like works exploring less conventional combinations and instrumental techniques, even though written for traditional instruments, as is the case of such composers as, for example Varèse, Xenakis, Ligeti or Lachenmann. Technology is in great part only a sophisticated tool to potentiate a sonorous and compositional predisposition of the composer, which in a certain way already exists beforehand. One creates then a kind of reaction between the composer and the technology, helping to define and structure the compositional language and techniques. Yet, at the outset, there is always an initial tendency.
What is the importance of spatial and timbral aspects in your music?
RD: The exploration of timbre has always been one of the elements that interested me in composition. It is one of my main points of concern in electroacoustic music, together with the search for different mixed and instrumental combinations.
When it comes to the investigation of space, I have an increasing interest to explore it compositionally, still my experience with spatializaton has been, above all, through performance, in real time spatialization of acousmatic pieces for multi-channel systems.
Recently, in the framework of the CARA Ano Zero project by the Matosinhos Jazz Orchestra, I have composed an acousmatic piece, Big Bend, for a 24-channel system conceived by Rui Penha, using his Spatium software, and the spatialization was thought as an integral part of the piece. It has a relevant role in some sections where all the sound elements are “frozen” momentarily, while moving in the space, 360 degrees around the public.
What is the importance of experimentation in your music?
RD: I like to consider composition as a mean for experimentation and investigation. It is stimulating to think that I can, for example, compose a piece based on a literary work or a painting, using a mathematic or genetic algorithmic models, collecting data on Saturn rings, or on trees in Amazonia, and thus to live the world around me in a more inspiring way. In every piece I try to explore new concepts, formats or techniques. Nevertheless, I am also aware that it is important to have the opportunity to develop the concepts, techniques and language, and it doesn’t happen as much as I would like to, taking into account the lack of time, with which unfortunately I need to struggle.
Part 4 - Portuguese Music
What do you think of the present situation of Portuguese music? What distinguishes Portuguese music on the international panorama?
RD: I think that, generally speaking, the level of composition has been increasing. This can be probably attributed, on the one hand, to the quality of teaching, which has become more and more diverse. This contributes to educating better-informed students, who on their part shall pass this knowledge to their own pupils, etc. On the other hand, the access to information has been changing radically the panorama of research and teaching. This causes that the students, professors and composers can be more autonomous, and have more direct contact with currents and schools from different countries and cultures. I don’t want to say that younger composers are better than the previous generations. I want to say that there are more composers and more diversity in the personalities and compositional languages, and that the medium level of students and graduates is probably higher now than ten, twenty or thirty years ago.
Nonetheless, I believe that in Portugal we have some difficult problems to solve when it comes to the relation between the music mean and the society in general, and these are deep-seated in our culture and society. Culture and art aren’t sufficiently valued, and living inside the music environment has not always been the easiest. Teaching composition is rather marked by what can’t be done than by what can, and there is a huge separation between the professional environment and the public in general.
In my opinion Portugal lacks an amateur music environment that should be larger and more diversified. When it comes to music there is a kind of complex of superiority among professionals and a complex of inferiority concerning amateurs and the society in general. The majority of people like music, yet there is a kind of generalized dogma that music is only for the professionals. The amateur music activity contributes considerably to bringing people closer to music and to educating better-informed audiences.
There is also a huge lack of qualified and artistic opportunities for the professionals in the field. Art and culture are completely peripheral in Portuguese society, and there is clearly little orientation in managing and creation of financing formats for the arts; forms that would create stable and permanent systems of artistic production.
Rui Dias' official website: www.ruidias.pt
Rui Dias, April 2015
© MIC.PT
