In focus

Photo: Virgílio Melo · © Bruno Nacarato

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Questionnaire/ Interview

Part 1 · Roots & Education

· 1. How did music begin for you? Which paths led you to composition and which moments from your music education do you find the most important? ·

Virgílio Melo: My music experience isn’t very different from the one which any 1960s urban child, without any music tradition in the family, would have. It was what the media offered me, including, by the way, a much more substantial part of classical music and jazz, than it is today.

I began my instrumental practice relatively early and, later, already as a teenager, I started some incipient writing attempts. As for the personalities who I met during my education years, four of them have particularly left their mark on me:

– Macário Santiago Kastner was someone who had a much broader horizon than it was to be expected from his academic work. He knew how to respond to my thrive for knowledge, which hasn’t always been contented with an often-stiff conservatoire.

– Constança Capdeville who, within an apparently relaxed and informal pedagogical approach, had the ability to give everyone she taught, the necessary directions for their own artistic development.

– Emmanuel Nunes, one of the great composers within his generation and beyond, who taught me great part of the composer’s craft, more even from the pragmatic perspective of elaborating a work, than through his undoubtable intellectual flame.

– Rémy Stricker, who has recently passed away. He was a professor of the aesthetics class at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris. Although his philosophical assumptions have been different than mine, he taught me to think critically and beyond the mere polemic toil of the “dichotomic coteries”.

Part 2 · Influences & Aesthetics

· 2. Which references from the past and the present do you assume in your music practice? ·

VM: Firstly, I will talk about my preferences as a listener, which are eclectic in the etymological sense of the term; in other words, they’re selective:

– The whole great tradition of Western classical music, here designated as art music, a term which, although it seems correct to me, I would, inspired by the philosopher Sousa Dias, sometimes prefer to alternate with the expression “music of thought”. It isn’t limited to any “genre” or “style” – as some cultural journalists or the more primary synthesis-software options intend –, but it rather means an abundance of music expressions: varied, rich, and, contrarily to what is frequently said, open to the world and not organised within any canon or by any authority principle.

– Some types of traditional music (which is mostly modal), and above all the one whose statism is compensated and illuminates a great rhythmical and timbral richness.

– Jazz, whose charm is rooted in an original, because not decreed, miscegenation.

What’s excluded, not by prejudice but by an almost visceral impulse, is the so-called “light” or popular music, a phenomenon which, at least since the invention of the radio, has phagocytosed the elements of the language and the place of other musical expressions. From the omnipresence of the entertainment (which Pascal has been already denouncing, due to its metaphysical implications), one has progressively passed towards eliminating the certainly-fluid-yet-existing boarder between entertainment and culture, up to the point that the former has become part of the latter. As Flaubert said, referring to the French Academy: “Everyone speaks badly of it; everyone wants to make part of it”.

Before detailing, in the following answers, the influences which I detect in my music (others will certainly detect other ones), I would like to explain the way I conceive the tradition/ transmission problem. I firmly believe in the existence of universals. No matter how much contextualisation (necessary, but not sufficient condition) is made, the universals are the drive of the aesthetic enjoyment of music that’s distant in space and time. However, this implies that, even regarding the masterpieces within any considered style, we are only facing a partaking, in the Platonic sense of the term; glimpses of the world of the ideas, archetypes and transcendence. The corollary of this situation is that no language detains by itself a privilege in relation to the other ones. Thence, the proliferation of two symmetrical mistakes: the more or less disguised copy of past styles and the pure and simple denial of tradition.

The true relation with the tradition implies contemplation, digestion, and assimilation. For example, beyond superficial observations, it becomes obvious how much the slow movement of Mahler’s “4th Symphony” has to do with its homologue in Beethoven’s “9^th Symphony”, or Boulez’s “2^nd Sonata” with the “Hammerklavier”.

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

VM: For me, music is a discourse, not necessarily decoded by linguistic or semiotic models, but which, I believe, goes further, both upstream and downstream in the sound immediacy and in the exactness of the construction. The two dimensions and the vibration between them, are indispensable to the whole artwork. The aim of the artist is masterfully expressed in the trinity of attributes, which the “Book of Exodus” has given to the artist-builder of the Tabernacle: empathetic wisdom, technical knowledge, and discernment of the divine realities. A paradigmatic case of how a partial view generates dogma, is the critical reception of Bach’s music; either theological or limiting it to the abstraction in a kind of awkward, eidetic reduction, or still emphasising the rhetorical side of the musicus poeticus. In fact, the master’s work lives in the dynamic balance within the mentioned trinity. Of course, contrarily to a common superstition, expressivity isn’t confined to the legato line, performed with an abusive and omnipresent vibrato.

· 4. Are there any extra-musical sources influencing your work in an important way? ·

VM: The biblical exegesis at its various levels, with a certain cabalistic propension, is undoubtedly one of the most present extra-musical sources in my work. However, I must reaffirm that the autonomy of the music discourse doesn’t disappear with the application of a programme or of a literary text. We are facing an algebra of the infinite: whatever is added up, the result remains infinite.

· 5. In the context of Western art music, do you feel close to any school or aesthetics from the pas or the present? ·

VM: Not withstanding the previous clauses, I’m particularly sensible to the Ars Nova, German romanticism, and the mistakenly nicknamed “Darmstadt school”. They are a kind of secret garden catalysers, not excluding a whole series of inevitable admirations, such as the Viennese Schools or the miracle of Bach.

· 6. Are there any non-Western culture influences in your music? How do you understand the “avant-garde” and what in your opinion can be nowadays considered as “avant-garde”? ·

VM: I’ve merged these two questions as we’ve entered a slippery terrain of what Álvaro Salazar wittily denominates as the “verdigris of the words”. As the cause and consequence of this fact, there’s equally a “verdigris of perception”. Let me give you an example from my own backyard… In the work “Epiclesis” for bass clarinet and electronics, premiered at the Música Viva 2003 Festival, there are numerous references to extra-European music. Since I’ve mentioned this fact in the programme notes, a part of the audience told me that they’d been expecting it and hadn’t heard anything; another part didn’t read the programme notes and didn’t hear anything either; ultimately, a minority appreciated the work as a musical object, positively or negatively.

The term “avant-garde” demonstrates well the first kind of verdigris; if probably necessary, considering the mental laziness of the past music scavengers, its appallingly political and military connotation has become an embarrassment, both for the conservatives and for the rest. In my opinion, the composer should be nor ahead, nor behind, but above (in the sense of the type of vision, not of superiority), as best as he can, aloof to the fruitlessly dividing fashions (as Schiller pointed out).

Likewise, the exegetical, encomiastic or paraenetic discourse, either autograph or allograph, suffers from this conductivity perturbation: how much did one write about Webern, completely ignoring his mystic dimension, or about “Le Marteau sans maître”, omitting the strong rhetorical component, at its various levels?

Part 3 · Language & Music Practice

· 7. Characterise your music language from the perspective of the techniques/ aesthetics developed within 20^th and 21^st century music creation, on the one hand, and on the other, taking in account your personal experience and your path up until now. ·

VM: Summarily, I would say that my music language has three strands:

– A modal one, without explicit references, but implying a polarisation and hierarchy in relation to a determined note. This implies an almost total rejection of a repetitive metric, like the one that nowadays passes by as rhythm. The idea of the mode as a cut in the continuum and the rhythmical restlessness dear to Messiaen, are primordial.

– A serial one, meaning a deductive development from a Klangzentrum and the components hierarchy, built from the mutual relations within a chromatic or other whole.

– A spectral one – using the models deducted from the structure of the either harmonic or inharmonic sound phenomena, and from its envelopes.

I value the shaping of these categories for expressive purposes through various types of intermodulation, with a tendency to abundantly use silence.

· 8. Are there any music styles or genres for which you have preference? ·

VM: Keeping in mind that these labels are more than slippery, I would prefer to take the opportunity to mention the so-called pedagogical works which unfortunately, and under the pressure of music education “research”, crystallised, apart from some honourable exceptions, in a kind of intellectual frailty, which sometimes is almost offensive in relation to the students themselves.

In my catalogue there are the following written and already performed pieces for primary and secondary level music students: “Gesang” (1996), “Perdendosi” (1996), “Embalos” (1997), “Sefer” (2017) and “Dedication” (2018).

Without sacrificing my habitual language, I think that I have achieved works that constitute a challenge and are, at the same time, performable. I use a principle, as a particular approach of what Emmanuel Nunes used to call “freezing of the parameters”, where one or two specific difficulties are illuminated with other, less developed parameters.

· 9. When it comes to your creative practice, do you develop your music from an embryo-idea or after having developed the global form? In other words, do you start with the micro going towards the macro-form or is it the other way round? ·

VM: Facing the complex mereology question, I think that the two mentioned ways of working are a matter of personal choice, and I’m more inclined towards the second one. Nevertheless, any of these options implies an assiduous process of feedback. Without it, once again one falls on the dichotomic sterility – neither the writing with the flow of the pen, nor the more or less automatic filling of a pre-existing scheme.

· 10. What is your relationship with the new technologies and how do they influence your music? ·

VM: The (not so) new technologies are for me a particularly adequate instrument for the already-mentioned intermodulation, either in the use of the fixed media, or the (almost) real-time transformation, or still including the combination of the two techniques.

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

VM: When it comes to the timbre, I refer to the previous answers (including, the 7^th one). The use of the space covers two strands:

– The cinematic spatialisation, for the time being, almost exclusively, in the electronics.

– The static spatialisation, supporting the structural clarity, realised both in the placement of the instrumental set, as well as through the electroacoustic panoramics.

· 12. Which works from your catalogue are for you turning points? ·

VM: I would like to mention three of my works:

– “A Glimpse of the Holy Darkness” (1995) – for the first time, and I think that in a direct connection with the work’s biblical reference (“Exodus” 20:21), without resorting to the electronics, I ventured the use of the juxtaposition and superposition of three distinct tunings: the equal temperament, a tuning constructed from the harmonic series but contained within a relatively restricted register (cello) and a third pseudo-tuning, with the margin of error that is proper to the stationary waves, typical of the flute and clarinet multiphonics.

– “Embalos” (1997) – in this score the technique of intermodulation achieves, simultaneously, an expressive pertinence and a formal integration. Four processes (processus) unfold asynchronously throughout the piece: a group of soloists varies, with different levels of perceptibility, a series of traditional Portuguese lullabies; the strings play one of the layers from “A Glimpse of the Holy Darkness”; the percussion follows an intuitive rule of timbral non-repetition; and lastly, two harps propose a relatively classical, serial evolution.

– “Circuitus” (2000) – first piece in which I extensively cultivated the open work, but other than the John Cage’s indeterminacy, which for me constitutes a sophisticated form of intellectual idleness. The aspect of openness, combined with the variety of music characters, when treated holistically, allows to concoct alternatives to another sterile dichotomy – environmental immersion/ teleology. The great variety of permutations of the flute fragments is counterposed to a direction – always the same –, of the electronics processing.

· 13. To what extent composition and performance are, for you, complementary activities? ·

VM: For many years my performance experience has been limited to electronic means and to conducting, both in context of improvisation. Apart from the MC47 group which realised some concerts, emphasising the music theatre piece “Alletsator” (2001), with the text by Pedro Barbosa, I would like to mention the work realised at various composition/ improvisation workshops, which I have given at a certain number of music schools – two at the Valentim Moreira de Sá Academy (Guimarães), at the Calouste Gulbenkian Music Conservatoire in Braga and with the pupils of the Wind Instruments and Percussion Professional Course at the Dr. Flávio F. Pinto Resende Secondary School (Cinfães). The improvisation is not the praise of the often-narcissistic spontaneity, which Boulez designated as “the cuckoo, putting its eggs in someone else's nest”. It is a rigorous work, encouraging the autonomy and audition of the participants and it needs to be emphasised that, contrarily to the “pedagogical” superstitions, after a certain initial embarrassment it has a strong participation of the pupils. It is obvious that these activities, asking for a minimal discursive organisation, spark, through feedback, the emergence of compositional ideas.

Part 4 · Portuguese Music

· 14. According to your experience, what are the differences between the art music environments in Portugal and in other parts of the world? In this sense, please describe the role of the composer nowadays. ·

VM: Regarding the thorny question of national features in music, I invoke the immortal pages by Marcel Proust in “Le Temps Retrouvé”, referring to the concept of national art and giving the example of Watteau’s painting. While since the 1980s, following the 60s generation breath of fresh air, there has been a wholesome growth of the number of works and composers, and the music education has been increasing the offer and quality, I think that the Portuguese situation is accompanying the descending tendency of other music milieux.

There are three aspects that, although not exclusive, seem to me accentuated in Portugal: the amusia (in the Adornian sense) of a considerable part of our intellectual elite, the desire (mimetic, as René Girard would say) to make part of a membership group and the difficulty to differentiate between the virtues and faults of the work and the virtues and faults of its author.

Nowadays, the role of the composer – and I think that its valid everywhere –, being able to be realised in many different manners (but, as one will see onward, actually not that many), should be guided with a certain type of ascesis: the given gift (pleonasm intended) should be cultivated; this work can take an infinite number of paths, but it will always need to tend towards the subtlety of the discourse and the stirring up of audition. If refraining from cultivating the gift in a venial sin, the capital one is to put it at service of a communication strategy, which will progressively impoverish the work of art in function of the audience, which, for its part, will demand more and more simplification. It’s a tragic and circuslike vicious cycle! May the composer move closer to the medieval craftsman than to the content creator…

Part 5 · Present & Future

· 15. What are your present and future projects? ·

VM: Presently, I am finishing the piece “Circuitus II” where I extrapolate for orchestra and soloists the issues of “Circuitus”. What will follow, will be the result of a long, inner work, enabling me to write what's possible according to the human finitude, without bearing in mind the exterior circumstances and pressures: an opera entitled “A morte de Moisés”, a piece for large orchestra entitled “A Glimpse of the Holy Darkness II” and an extensive string quartet.

· 16. Could you highlight one of your more recent projects, presenting the context of its creation and the particularities of the language and the used techniques? ·

VM: I would like to highlight “Sefer” (2017) for violin and electronics, not only for already having been performed three times by two different musicians, but also because it introduces a notable level of openness within a pedagogical approach. In accordance with the above-mentioned principle, the whole work is written in a locked register, in first position. The rhythm is moderately complex and the timbral changes are more frequent than it’s common in school repertoire. The piece also cultivates the principle of autonomy, since the response of the live electronics isn’t predictable, containing three types of readings: the ring modulation, with intervals based on pure fifths and their division with a neutral third; delays that can reach up to 22 seconds; and the use of granular synthesis, with preference for long grains producing, what I would call a “canonical interpolation”.

· 17. How do you see the future of art music? ·

VM: Let’s start with the bad news and try to gather and develop some of the above-mentioned points. The already referred tyranny of the popular culture, in the Anglo-Saxon sense, causes that the mentioned art forms are levelled down and move close to it. The traditional music has dissolved into world music, the jazz, in the major part, has stiffened, losing the capacity for innovation and the “music of thought” is in many cases dangerously degrading, presenting lack of discourse, use and abuse of the stylistic supermarket, formal poverty.

It’s not only the mercantile logic that threatens the “music of thought”; the other tenacious jaw is the discourse which reigns almost exclusively in the academy, either at the music or teacher formation courses. When it doesn't restrain to ideology glorifying the unwritten music, or it is lost in the pragmatic advice (a modern parallel for sinister memory totalitarian directives), art music has confined to an academic model, requiring a permanent race towards the résumé elephantiasis, which gives more consideration to the metalinguistic function than to the sound itself. An example, among others: as never before, one has now the technical means to create the Gesamtkunstwerk; yet with the use of the image we have realised that it either tries to seize the attention of the public that is increasingly unfamiliar with the unfolding of the music discourse, or it refers to the vision of composers indulging in the poorest mickeymousing, since time is the enemy of productivity.

I will introduce the good news with an anecdote. The composer Anton Reicha (1770-1836), when confronted with the fact that his music was rarely performed, answered: “between looking for concerts and sitting at the working table, I prefer the second hypothesis”. We live, now more than ever, in the society of the spectacle, as it has been masterfully theorised by Guy Debord: who doesn’t appear in the media, in the social networks and, nowadays, in the journals, doesn’t exist. But since I believe that there aren’t any generations more unskilled than other, I also believe that there’s a lot of valid work that stays in the drawer or in the computer.

Equally, in between the meshes of uniformity, one can catch a glimpse of some phenomena carrying hope, such as a dynamic Iranian composition scene or various non-referential improvisation groups, for instance. Obviously, to collect these lumps should be an important task for musicology, which instead is sadly more concentrated on the inventory and the contextualization than on the analysis and evaluation.

I would like to invite all the talented colleagues who are entangled in the web of all these contingencies, to strengthen the group of the ones who don’t want to be the “great men of the Moment”. Let me quote Saint Bonaventure and his magnificent evocation of Jacob’s ladder, simile to the asymptotic path of the gnoseological development: “[…] speculative knowledge that starts in the sense, reaches the imagination and passes from the imagination to the reason and then from this one to the understanding, from the understanding towards the intelligence and from here to the wisdom, in other words, where the intelligence exceeds its own capacity and which, though it can be initiated in this life, is achieved in the everlasting glory”.

Virgílio Melo, May/ June, 2021
© MIC.PT

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