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Photo: Isabel Soveral · © Sofia Moraes

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Questionnaire/ Interview

· Describe your family, cultural, and sonic/ musical roots, highlighting one or various essential aspects, defining and constituting who you are today. ·

Isabel Soveral: The fact that there was a piano at home, allowed me to have, since very early, the possibility of exploring the sound and different sonic combinations. However, I initiated my music studies only at the age of nine. This aspect is important because my relationship with this music instrument was prior to the beginning of learning music. And this stimulated my creative side, that is, my freedom in the discovery of the sonic universe.

· Which paths led you to composition? ·

IS: My contact with contemporary music started around the age of 17. At the age of 18 I met Jorge Peixinho who has become the most relevant artistic personality in my path as a composer.

· Do you follow your path according to a plan, knowing, for example, that in “x” years you will fulfil the “y” objectives? Or do you think that reality is too chaotic to create such determinations? ·

IS: The path reveals itself naturally, in face of the challenges that are being posed to me and the ones that I pose to myself.

· In your opinion, what can a music discourse express and/ or mean? ·

IS: A music discourse communicates a creative idea. According to Pierre Boulez, an idea is born within a determined vocabulary. I agree with Daniel Levitin who says that a music discourse happens when the essential elements are combined and related in an expressive way, when the form and the flux are produced from the more basic perceptual elements giving origin to emotions and other aesthetic attributes. Considering both my electronic as well as instrumental music, I usually “illustrate” my music discourse as a sonic sculpture in movement.

· Are there any extra-musical sources, which influence your work in a significant way? ·

IS: Yes, my creative work is strongly influenced by visual arts. Sometimes, my source of inspiration is a painting or a photo.
This interaction moves within a logic that isn’t comprehended as musical, but which gives origin to the musical ideas, since I do communicate through music. I relate the colour to the sound and, sometimes, this sound-colour association becomes a formal principle in the work’s elaboration. However, I always organise my material from the interval, which is a more abstract entity.
Sometimes the inspiration for a new work emerges in a text. And this work can give origin to other pieces taking me again to the initial texts or to other ones by the same author, or to texts by other authors on the same theme. Luigi Pareyson says that within the challenge of “rethinking and forming”, work and inspiration don’t diverge but rather converge as necessary aspects of the creative process.

· When it comes to your creative practice, do you develop your music from an embryo-idea or after having elaborated a global form? In other words, do you work from the micro towards the macro-form or is it the other way round? How does this process go? ·

IS: One of the aspects characterising my creative process is related to the fertilisation of what has already been exposed for the creation of the new – a music fabric in constant transfiguration. I tend to reuse small initial elaborations, injecting them with new music elements. This worked and reworked matter is situated somewhere between a sonic fabric, which hasn’t yet been cut and a more complete gesture, which has an inherent form.
It’s interesting when from a finished music piece I choose small fragments containing the whole associated music information. I use them as a sonic body, which is a departure point towards the creation of a new work. In other words, from the end of one process I go to the beginning of the other one – from a finished work I go towards a new creation.
Within the same cycle, it is possible that the last works already present new directions, moving away from the initial sonic constructions, creating and recreating, configurating and transfiguring the matter. The music keeps renovating organically – previous musical elements guide the new work, which upon happening potentiates new ideas, leading towards the construction of the new music.
An example of this creative process is the work “Anamorphoses V” (1997) for string quartet. It presents the music fabric characterising the cycle in its most mature form, together with new musical elements, fertilising the already existing ones. The new narrative resulting from this fusion asks for a development which is realised in the following works.
There’s always an implicit process of morphosis in these creative cycles. This process makes the material’s potential “infinite”, and it makes me feel like I’m working with living organisms – I know their origin, their evolution and that they need to continue fertile.

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

IS: I like to think that my inspiration is impregnated with the reasoning and that my rational side is “inspired” or supported by the “creative impulses”.

· To what extent can the new electronic and digital instruments open new paths and when do they become constraining? ·

IS: Basically, to compose through instrumental writing means combining the following parameters: durations, pitches or frequencies, intensities, and timbres. As Flo Menezes explains, the music material derives from the combinatorial writing of these elements. I would say that in the case of my electroacoustic music there is a first stage, prior to the articulation of the sound material in time, that corresponds to the elaboration of the sounds themselves: the first sound matter, in which it seems to be more likely that the projection occurs in space rather than in time.
Since the score is the representation of the sounds in time, it would be good to question/ think of this new conception of the material in time, which led to a new way of listening, in the sense that there has been a detour of the listener’s attention from the more abstract narrative of instrumental music towards a listening more focused on the matter of electronic music.
In the studio – a “laboratory for constructing sonic narratives” I look for a creative identity. I would even say that it is a new creative thinking, which doesn’t originate from the traditional writing, and which obliges the composer to reposition her/himself, getting closer, in my opinion, to the sculptor’s creative process.
Normally, the composer confronts this new way of creating in which he or she disconnects from the close relation with the writing and develops a creator-listener position. It’s a relation of an organic symbiosis in which, like the plastic artist, there’s a “live” (“point-to point”) contact with the resulting created material. Here, the sense of the boundlessness, which initially provokes a state of excitation or euphory, can lead towards a block. Pierre Boulez draws attention to the fact that the habit of exercising the writing under the laws of coherent and “correct” construction of the music material isn’t now applicable. New assumptions of the creative combinatorics need to be assimilated and systematised, however the substantive issues on the structural coherence of the creation stay the same.
The interaction between the “music-writing” and the “studio-creation” universes, is fascinating. One discovers new creative assumptions allowed and potentiated by the technology. The importance of spatial configuration and modulation in electronic music has influenced my imagination as instrumental-music composer. An example in which the writing is quite influenced by the electronic-narrative ideas is my orchestral piece “Paradeisoi” (2007), where the spatial parameter became more relevant. There are various spatial configurations in this work, creating a spatial modulatory field.
As for the second part of this question, I would say that the constraint lies in the cost a composer must bear to have a studio where it’s possible to work with quality.

· Do research, experimentation and invention constitute inseparable elements of music creation and of Art in general? ·

IS: The objective of experimentation is to keep the path alive and exciting. Every new experience leaves a trace in the brain, which the memory, in a creative moment, activates in a new context. And thus, invention begins. Obviously, it’s important to develop the expertise – a learning which requires consolidation and concretisation of the ideas in the work’s creative process.

· What is the importance of space and timbre in your music? ·

IS: The spatial and timbral configuration in my work is of utmost importance, and has a modulatory character when it comes to its elaboration. One of the variants of the construction regards the “harmonic timbre”, in the plastic sense of the term.
In the piece “Anamorphoses V” (1997), the essential of the music already presented in the first works of this cycle, interacts with a new material. These new musical elements correspond to a sequence of intervals, which is presented and then expanded, and which emerges from the principles like the ones applied in the rhythmic elaboration of the cycle’s earlier music. This sequence of intervals is contracted and expanded, leading towards the emergence of quarter tones, which’s a sonic/ timbral element that hasn’t been elaborated in any of the preceding pieces. What emerges here is the new sonic dimension in the acoustic instrument.
The fragmentation of the tone into small intervallic particles has already been present in the cycle’s first works, but only in the electronics. This new intervallic dimension adds potential to various levels of the sonic body, namely, to the timbral parameter. In the music discourse, the perception of these new elements is gradual, accentuating, once again, the sense of morphosis and anamorphosis. Let’s say that these micro intervals are being unveiled as if one was stretching a music “fabric” for the sonic microworlds to emerge from its interior.
In “Anamorphoses V” (1997), the micro intervals initially emerge as part of the textures, resulting from the intervallic sequences (melodic lines), presented so quickly that they offer neither the melodic nor the horizontal contours.
The audition of the sequence in its “perfect” or “correct” form only happens later in the piece (anamorphosis process). It starts with a texture, in its more plastic form, until revealing itself as a melody with a well-defined contour.
In certain works, I create a direct relation between the organisation of the timbre and the space. In “Paradeisoi” (2007), for orchestra, there’s a permanent internal sonic transformation, delimited by a fixed spatial configuration – high and low notes, and, sometimes, the note defining the central axis. For example, the main chord of “Paradeisoi” (2007) has an essentially timbral function, which’s relevant in the work’s spatial geography – the E in the high register (in the chords and xylophone harmonics) and the C, a quarter tone above, in the low register (in the low chords).

· Which works form your catalogue do you consider turning points in your path? ·

IS: “Anamorphoses III” (1995; violin and electronics), “Anamorphoses VII” (2003; chamber orchestra), the “Le Navigateur du Soleil Incandescent” cycle (2004-07; the orchestral works) and the more recent work, “Anamorphoses IX – Concerto for Cello and Orchestra” (2017-18). My orchestral works’ catalogue isn’t vast (contrarily to the chamber-music-works catalogue); however, it’s in the orchestral works that I always find myself in turning-point processes.

· How do you listen to music? Is it a rational (analytical) or rather an emotional process? ·

IS: It depends on the genre of music and on my state of mind in the moment of listening.

· In the Interview given to the MIC.PT in 2016, the composer João Madureira said that “music is philosophy and politics, which is a way of inhabiting the world” ^*. Do you feel close to this affirmation? ·

IS: I would say that music is the place where I know who I am, where I find the sense of my existence and peace.

· Do you prefer to work isolated in the “tranquillity of the countryside” or in the middle of the “urban confusion”? ·

IS: In the tranquillity of the sea.

· Try to evaluate the present situation of Portuguese music. ·

IS: Too much music in the drawer!

· What are your present artistic concerns? ·

IS: I have a great need to write for orchestra, yet this creative project is difficult to concretise in Portugal. With the pandemic the concerns have multiplied. A composer needs to be in constant contact with the performers, and to have his or her work regularly played.

· In one of the interviews from 2020 the Austrian composer Georg Friedrich Haas has said that “the new art creators act as yeast in the society” ^**. What is, in your opinion, the role that art music plays in the society and how is it possible to increase the importance of this role? ·

IS: Perhaps the different radios should play more art music. Perhaps the concert halls should programme more art music. Perhaps the budget for culture should be bigger. Ultimately, a lot of things can be done to increase the presence of art music in the society, provided that the organisations with the power of decision are conscious of this existing necessity.

· In terms of aesthetics and techniques the history of Western art music is full of births, ruptures, deaths, rebirths, continuations, discontinuations, other ruptures and so on… Taking on the role of a “futurologist”, could you predict the future of Western art music? ·

IS: The question is to understand whether in the future we will continue to have clear boundaries legitimising us to speak of a Western art music, or of a Western culture from a more comprehensive point of view, without just talking about of the past. It is certain that art will always confirm/ evidence realities and through art we will be able to read the future and the past. However, I’m not able to do this “futurology” exercise, since I’ve “lost the thread” already some time ago.

Isabel Soveral, March/ April 2021
© MIC.PT

Isabel Soveral · Playlist

* Interview to João Madureira, conducted by the MIC.PT in October 2016: >> link.
** Interview to Georg Friedrich Haas, conducted by Filip Lech in June 2020 and available on-line on the Culture.pl website: >> link.