In focus

Photo: Emmanuel Nunes · 2006 · © MIC.PT

Index

>> Introduction
>> Learning
>> Outside of Portugal
>> “Das Märchen” (2008) · composer and audience
>> Music Language
>> Relation with Technology
>> Pedagogy
>> Significant Works
>> Speculation

>> Emmanuel Nunes · Playlist

>> Footnotes

Introduction

     ‘To compose means to serve and not being served!’ – declared Emmanuel Nunes in the “Auto-Retrato” (“Self-Portrait”) written in 1977 for the Donaueschingen Festival in Germany. ¹

     In 2021 Emmanuel Nunes, one of the most widely-known Portuguese composers around the world, and the only composer who received, in 2000, the Pessoa Prize, would have celebrated his 80^th anniversary.

     Glorified, by some, as a genius, a visionary musician, but also diminished, by others, to an arid constructor of music structures, Emmanuel Nunes, a complex artist, has created his exclusive universe of sounds. Within a logic of continuity, in this universe the composer has kept audible the influences of the polyphonic tradition, culminating in Johann Sebastian Bach’s work, of Franz Schubert’s and Gustav Mahler’s romanticism, and of Alban Berg’s, Anton Webern’s, Karlheinz Stockhausen’s or Pierre Boulez’s 20^th century. ‘My notion of continuity has to do with the fact that Bach is no longer Monteverdi, Beethoven is no longer Mozart, and so on. There’s an invention which renews continuity. Inventing form nothing doesn’t exist. To discover something which results from the lack of culture or honesty in relation to what exists, likewise, isn’t any discovery’ – emphasised Emmanuel Nunes in the interview conducted by Cristina Fernandes for the Público Journal in 2000. ²

     The preservation of the continuity and, consequently, of the life of the work by past and present composers, lies in the responsibility of the present and the future generations. Among other reasons, it is also in this sense that the MIC.PT releases the In Focus dedicated to Emmanuel Nunes – not only to mark his 80^th anniversary, but also to contribute to the continuity of the memory on the composer; memory which is a fragile entity, and which needs to be constantly revigorated, nourished and stimulated.

     On the pages of the monumental work, “In Search of Lost Time”, the French writer Marcel Proust, whose literature was particularly important to Emmanuel Nunes, pronounces that the best of our memory lies outside of us. Proust was one of the first writers to adapt the term ‘involuntary memory’, suggesting that all the memories can be reanimated through the stimulation of the senses with images, smells, or flavours… just as the flavour of the madeleine soaked in a cup of tea, evokes the narrator’s childhood memories in the book “Swann’s Way” (“In Search of Lost Time” – first volume).

     The September In Focus on the MIC.PT doesn’t aim at being an exhaustive study on the composer, nor to present a new perspective on Emmanuel Nunes’ work. It is rather a ‘Proustian madeleine’ in form of a written documentary, in which the facts of Emmanuel Nunes’ biography are mixed with the commentaries by four persons from the Portuguese and international music life, whose paths have crossed with Emmanuel Nunes’ path; they are: António Jorge Pacheco (artistic and education director at the Casa da Música in Porto), Bruno Gabirro (composer and researcher), Guillaume Bourgogne (conductor) and Pedro Amaral (composer and conductor). These commentaries are the answers to the MIC.PT Questionnaire, which they have been asked to answer.

     The creation of this In Focus also includes the participation of João Rafael, composer and Emmanuel Nunes’ friend, who on this occasion has generously provided his text devoted to Emmanuel Nunes, originally published in January 2013 in the “Musik & Ästhetik” Journal: >> Emmanuel Nunes · Anlässlich seines Todes · João Rafael.
This text, an obituary written after the composer’s death in September 2012. Its translation from German to Portuguese made by the author, will be available on the MIC.PT during September.

     Emmanuel Nunes’ work has a weight of a profound thought, a very rich, musical, and philosophical baggage… and this can be intimidating, leading to a difficulty in approaching, in only few words (and, as in this case, in digital and not analogical format), a work which’s so vast and full of symbols and complex musical structures. However, it’s necessary to do it and thus to contribute to the maintenance of the continuity and memory about this music, which poses significant (if not universal) questions about the artist’s/ composer’s role in the modern times, on the capacity to communicate with the audience, on the role of art in the society and about the relation between the work and its creator. Quoting the Emmanuel Nunes’ words: ‘It is, in fact, a paradox… on the one hand, what we compose needs to have an interior, almost biological life, a vital energy given by the composer; but insofar as the character – the work’s interior life –, so to speak, moves on, the composer also lives this life. And here’s the paradox: we need to let the work live, yet we are the ones who make it live, being simultaneously the creature and creator, and oscillating between these two dimensions.’ ³

     Apart from the creation act, by means of which a work of art is born, it’s also fundamental to sustain its circulation, transmission, and reception – and this role belongs to the domain of the institutions, programmers, performers, critics, and the audience. This democratic process of reception allows for the fulfilment of one of the basic human needs and, simultaneously, of one of the fundamental human rights, that is, to have contact with and to experience an art that provokes, questions, challenges, and lets us discover the new… exactly as Emmanuel Nunes’ music continues to do so.

     On the occasion of the composer’s 80^th anniversary, the MIC.PT September In Focus constitutes an incentive to enter into the world of Emmanuel Nunes, within a process of discovery, for the ones who still don’t know it, or rediscovery, for the ones who decided to put it into the ‘20^th-century-music drawer’.

Learning

     'I was born on the 31^st of August 1941, in Lisbon. This was the first stage of my learning.' ⁴

     Emmanuel Nunes grew up in a family without musical traditions. On his own initiative he began to study Piano and Solfège at the age of 12. In 1959 he met Fernando Lopes-Graça who accepted him as apprentice (1960-64), having simultaneously studied Harmony, Counterpoint and Fugue with Francine Benoît at the Academia de Amadores de Música in Lisbon. He also attended 20^th Century Music Writing classes given by Louis Saguer, which later turned out to be of great importance to him. Between 1962 and 1964 he travelled to Germany to attend the International Darmstadt Summer Courses, during which he was particularly interested in the teachings of Henri Pousseur and Pierre Boulez.

Bruno Gabirro: Emmanuel Nunes' interest towards music aroused as of ‘spontaneous generation’, as he said at a certain moment. It seems to me that it has been an intimate decision. The desire to compose, to become a composer, emerged later when he was studying at the Academia de Amadores de Música in Lisbon. ⁵

António Jorge Pacheco: What I’ve kept, from the many hours of conversations with Emmanuel Nunes is that his interest towards music awakened very early, when he started to enjoy making noise on pots and pans (yet it really didn’t make him later follow the musique concrète, as he used to say with his typical sense of humour). Later, between the age of 12 and 17, he studied Piano, Solfeggio, and some theory. The audition of the first CDs with music by Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, and Wagner, would mark him forever, exactly as the concerts at the São Carlos Theatre in Lisbon did. The opera world has never ceased to marvel him. The composition ended up imposing itself naturally as a path to follow, what led him to contact Lopes-Graça and to study at the Academia de Amadores de Música in Lisbon. It was there that he had a defining contact with Louis Saguer, who introduced him to the Second Viennese School (with Webern, who has always remained a major reference), Stockhausen and Boulez. When Saguer returns to Paris, Emmanuel feels somewhat lost, even at the lessons with Lopes-Graça, who he’s never stopped admiring and respecting ⁶

Guillaume Bourgogne: Emmanuel Nunes began to take piano lessons at the age of 12. One day, his teacher, an opera lover, offered him a ticket for the opera show “Hansel and Gretel by” Humperdinck, that she was unable to attend. From that day up to being 23 years old, Emmanuel attended every opera production at the São Carlos National Theatre in Lisbon. It became his passion. During this period, he would spend hours improvising on the piano, in parallel to which he read many books about music and listened to a lot of records. When he failed for the first time at the exam to enrol at the Faculty of Pharmacy, he was already beginning to consider becoming a composer. Shortly after, he met the composer Fernando Lopes-Graça, who later became his teacher, and this encounter was decisive for his musical and intellectual path. ⁷

Pedro Amaral: When he was young, Emmanuel Nunes eagerly participated in the Portuguese musical, concert, and operatic life. As he didn’t play any instrument, he wasn’t able to follow the public music education path. Therefore, he enrolled at the Academia de Amadores de Música in Lisbon, where he studied Harmony and Counterpoint with Francine Benoît; soon after he became Fernando Lopes-Graça’s private student. He intervened publicly as music critic and got acquainted with Jorge Peixinho, who opened his door to contemporary music. It’s with him that Emmanuel Nunes made his first journey to Darmstadt. ⁸

Outside of Portugal

     ‘I've made the decision to leave Portugal essentially because I had the need to study and to have contact with the whole musical world, not only exteriorly, but also interiorly and technically – and this wasn’t at all possible in our country.’ ⁹

António Jorge Pacheco: Since the moment when Emmanuel Nunes spends some months in Paris, in 1963, and he attends the famous Domaine Musical concerts organised by Boulez and Barrault, he starts to feel that the Portuguese music environment hasn’t offered him anything that he has been looking for: his own voice in the contemporary composition. In the same year, the presence at the Summer Courses in Darmstadt with Jorge Peixinho was determining for his decision to leave Portugal. He started sharing his time between Paris and Cologne, studying with Henri Pousseur and Stockhausem and attending seminars by other great composers such as Berio. ¹⁰

Pedro Amaral: Having participated it one of the Summer Courses in Darmstadt and due to the scarcity of contemporaneity in the Portuguese music life, Emmanuel Nunes didn’t have any other possibility than to go to study abroad, mostly with Karlheinz Stockhausen. On the other hand, while living abroad one institution, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, substantially supported his international activity. ¹¹

     In 1964 Emmanuel Nunes left Portugal and spent one year in Paris to prepare himself to study composition with Karlheinz Stockhausen and once more with Henri Pousseur at the Rheinische Musikschule in Cologne (1965-67). Then, he went back to Paris, where he continued working on his own until 1970. To obtain a scholarship of the Portuguese Ministry of National Education he signed up for the Aesthetics course led by Marcel Beaufils at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris. He received his ‘premier prix’ in 1971 after developing with Michel Guiomar a thesis on Anton Webern’s “2^nd Cantata” and the evolution of the musical language of that period; a work that he has left unfinished. As a scholarship holder of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, during the 1970s Emmanuel Nunes affirmed himself progressively on the international scene, especially in France and Germany. His works were regularly presented at the Gulbenkian Foundation.

     Between 1974 and 1976 Emmanuel Nunes conducted lessons for future music pedagogues on Initiation to Composition in the 20^th Century at the Pau University (France). Since the 1980’s his pedagogical activity became increasingly important – he conducted Composition Seminars at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon and was invited by Ivan Tcherepnin to realise lectures and conferences on his music at the University of Harvard. From 1986 to 1991 he was teacher at the Freiburg Superior School of Music in Breisgau (Germany). From 1990 to 1994 he taught Composition and Chamber Music at the Romainville National School of Music as well as, since 1992, Composition at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris.

     In 1985 he was invited by Pierre-Yves Artaud to give a group of seminars, “L’attitude instrumentale”, at the IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique / Musique) in Paris, which was repeated in the following year during the Summer Courses in Darmstadt. In 1995 he gave lectures at the IRCAM Summer Academy and again in Darmstadt in 2002. In 2004 he was invited to realise a series of lessons, conferences, and concerts at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile.

     Since 1989 Emmanuel Nunes has been developing his activities at the IRCAM, which gave him the suitable technological means and technical assistance. His work had a privileged position in the French musical life, having incited interest of such musicologists as Peter Szendy, Brigitte Massin or Alain Bioteau, who dedicated his PhD thesis to the composer’s work. 1999 is the year when he received the IMC – UNESCO Prize for his musical work.

     In 2000 Emmanuel Nunes received the prestigious Pessoa Prize, which is given annually to a Portuguese person/ author, a protagonist of a particularly relevant and innovative intervention in the artistic, literary, or scientific field. In his “Pessoa Prize Acceptance Speech” Emmanuel Nunes said: ‘I need your indulgence as listeners, given the deficiency of the acoustic form of my words, transmitting a content which I hope to be clear (an only-here inevitable incongruency between the sound and the verb). I take this opportunity to emphasise that such a “schism” is unthinkable in any “musical creature” (…) What resides here is perhaps the main reason why many people, even with great literary, and sometimes equally great pictorial culture, fail to find in classical music in general and, a fortiori, in the past-century (20^th century!) classical music, a source of psychic and cultural enrichment, a reality with which they can identify, both rationally and irrationally…’ ¹²

Bruno Gabirro: Music in Portugal continuously lives in a state of minimum services. Minimum services that are sufficient for the political power to take what it needs, but deficient for the population and insufficient for the musicians. It’s not a new problem, but a historical condition with no end in sight. And the money, which is spent, even though it undergoes a significant increase, doesn’t produce any effect. Without structures that would absorb it, it simply disappears. There’s no continuity. We live on events, what doesn’t allow us for a full development as musicians. In the interview with Cristina Fernandes from 2000 ¹³, Emmanuel Nunes responded very clearly to the question: ‘Have you ever thought of coming back to Portugal?’. I quote an excerpt: ‘No. (…) to live there is out of the question. It doesn’t concern the country itself, but the manner how it is developed, cultivated, the mentality… (…)’. ¹⁴

“Das Märchen” (2008) · composer and audience

     In January 2008 the São Carlos National Theatre premiered Emmanuel Nunes’ first opera, “Das Märchen”, based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s homonymous piece from 1795. The premiere performance, staged by Karoline Gruber with Peter Rundel as conductor, was transmitted on January 25^th, 2008, directly to 14 Portuguese theatres. The opera was a coproduction of the São Carlos National Theatre, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Casa da Música and IRCAM. Mário Vieira de Carvalho writes: ‘The origin of the opera goes back to 1975, when Emmanuel Nunes got familiar with a French translation of Goethe’s story. The opera’s project was born immediately, but the release, in the following year, of the book by Yvette Centeno A simbologia alquímica no conto da Serpente Verde de Goethe (The alchemical symbology in the Green Snake story by Goethe) [Nova University of Lisbon, 1976], aroused the composer’s doubled interest on this subject’. ¹⁵

     The ‘action’ of the opera, on which Emmanuel Nunes worked during various years, takes place in a dreamlike universe, with thousands of things happening simultaneously. Right at the beginning the characters sing in an imaginary language, sounding like German…

António Jorge Pacheco: The Wagnerian idea of Gesamtkunstwerk has always been present in Emmanuel Nunes’ music, but the obvious concretisation happened in the opera “Das Märchen”. ¹⁶

Pedro Amaral: While composing Emmanuel Nunes exclusively obeyed his own creative impulse. He has never written for the audience, although, as any artist, he wished for the public applause. However, “Das Märchen” was perhaps the only work in which a painful divorce between the composer and the audience was consumed. And there were two main reasons for this divorce: on the one hand, the complicated musical and theatrical adaptation of the spectacle to an opera house, combined with the public expectations, and on the other, the concrete circumstances which preceded and surrounded the work’s installation at the São Carlos Theatre, including the successive delays of the premiere and the complex institutional relations that were involved. ¹⁷

     At the time of the premiere performance the opera “Das Märchen” created not only lots of expectations, but also controversies and a discussion on art’s function in the modern times. ‘The great public national and international prominence, and recognition which Emmanuel Nunes has, the complexity and the volume of the means demanded by the score, the work’s extension (around four hours of music, which’s an unusual duration in contemporary operas) and, finally, the political-nature circumstances preceding the premiere, were combined into this extraordinary expectation aroused by the event.’ ¹⁸ This work constitutes, perhaps, a reflection on art and its autonomy, making references to the romantic ideals developed by Goethe and Schiller, defining the position of artist, the conditions of the free game of imagination and the qualities of the genius creator. Emmanuel Nunes plays here with a panoply of elements – mythical figures, magic, circles, earth, fire, and gold… – and it is perhaps for this reason that the opera was criticised for the excess of symbolic elements, things to see, to hear and to read. After the premiere Pedro Boléo wrote in the Público Journal: “The São Carlos Theatre was full at 8 p.m., at the beginning of the world-premiere performance of Emmanuel Nunes’ new opera. Two hours later, at the intermission, there were a lot of dropouts. Around half of the public left the concert hall. (…) What remains after “Das Märchen”, is a perplexity. It takes to the extremes not only the contradictions of this art, which desires to be pure (but is so impure, in the end), but also the problems of opera’s function in our times, as the social representation of power.” ¹⁹

António Jorge Pacheco: Emmanuel Nunes has always affirmed that he refused to consider the ignorance of the listener (or the musician). This says everything. ²⁰

Bruno Gabirro: It has always been a disaster, when in the History somebody decided that he or she had known what the others had wanted or needed. In the case of a composer, what is not controlled because it is not possible to control, should be distant from his or her thinking. The audience… I don’t even know what it is. I know what it is as a concept, but nothing beyond it. For Emmanuel, the second attitude involves aspects which don’t concern the one who makes music. For him, ‘composing implies a great respect towards the listener’, as he said it in the interview by Cristina Fernandes in 2000. ²¹ Apart from this Emmanuel took every work as an alive being; in this sense composing means bringing to life. Thus, I define Emmanuel Nunes ' relation ‘artist – work – audience’, as a relation of the deepest respect towards each of the involved parts: towards himself, towards the work, and towards the listeners. ²²

Pedro Amaral: Perhaps the Gesamtkunstwerk idea was important form an intellectual point of view, but it never had a direct influence on the composer’s work. The idea to cross various arts on the same stage only emerges in Emmanuel Nunes already in the end of his life, in the work “La Douce” (“Die Sanfte”), premiered at the Casa da Música in 2009. Based on a story by Dostoyevsky, this work and the resulting premiere performance, effectively crossed Emmanuel Nunes’ music, both, with a theatrical dimension directed by the composer, and with a scenic dimension based on the paintings by his partner, Hélène Borel. This performance is a direct result of the traumatic experience with the premiere of “Das Märchen” (“Le Conte, dit du Serpent Vert”) at the São Carlos National Theatre in Lisbon in January 2008, where the theatrical and scenic dimensions constituted a profound contradiction to the music. Henceforth, Emmanuel Nunes had the need to stage and direct on his own a spectacle with his music and with the scenography by his partner. This is the meaning of “La Douce” and the reason of it being a unique Gesamtkunstwerk experience in the composer’s work. ²³

Music Language

     According to Rui Vieira Nery, Emmanuel Nunes’ music can be characterised by ‘a great sense of control over writing’, with ‘an established balance between the formal contribution and the emotional impact.’ ²⁴

     Emmanuel Nunes’ work can be divided into three phases – the first one characterised by a preference for open forms and spatial distribution of instruments; the second one characterised, on the one hand, by using live and pre-recorded electroacoustic means, and on the other, by a broader exploration of instrumental techniques; the third phase is a synthesis of the agogic, temporal, and spatial aspects of composition. Additionally, it’s possible to distinguish in Emmanuel Nunes’ music two predominant constants: the first one – joining the works within cycles; and the second one – revising or developing the already-existing compositions, giving thus life to new versions, and creating a form of complementarity. ²⁵

     In his music whose flourishing took place in the post-serial period, one can gradually discover a mix of expressive exaggeration with the objectivity of construction, composed of abrupt rhythms, ruptures, enigmatic perspectives, and a tendency for an almost obsessive repetition.

António Jorge Pacheco: Emmanuel Nunes seriously studied dodecaphonism and serialism, and this was his base. Yet one cannot say that at any time he let himself be limited by the ‘dogma’. Apart from this, Emmanuel Nunes has never neglected studying (frequently passionate) of the music heritage.
Listening to Mahler was for him something essential. We used to listen to a lot of Wagner, while preparing dinner. Or something little known – his attitude of constant curiosity towards jazz, to which he listened with pleasure above all in bars and surrounded by his younger students.
What for me distinguishes Emmanuel Nunes is his constant and innovative (re)search in the domain of rhythmic (the famous ‘rhythmic pair’ is his invention) and counterpoint structures, and their spatialisation; it’s the deliberately complex conceptional rigour; it’s his force of dramatic expression and a singular combination between sensuality and spirituality ²⁶

Guillaume Bourgogne: Emmanuel Nunes' music certainly constitutes the most impactful and monumental sonic world among the composers of his time. His music could be described as the antithesis of what a decorative music would be. The intensity, density, and complexity of his writing, force the listeners to tame what they hear.
A significant aspect of his oeuvre is the equal concern for the micro-, meso-, and macro-phonic temporal structures. At a micro-phonic level, very rarely can composers write so many distinct complex gestures within a short period of time. The observation of the macro-phonic level reveals how much Nunes was concerned with building his oeuvre as a whole: not only is the form of each piece obviously fully mastered, but his works respond to each other, even his cycles answer each other, and there are pieces that contain quotes of previous works. This gives Nunes’ music its monumental dimension, but the role of memory is also crucial. I was not any surprised when I read that he was fascinated by the reading and the re-reading of Marcel Proust.
A lot has been said and written about the integration of space in the compositional parameters. A lot of composers of this generation have innovated the way the musicians and/ or the audience are distributed in the space, but the uniqueness of Emmanuel Nunes' in this regard lies in the fact that he did not use the spatialization only as a futile ‘plus’, but he has integrated a real writing of space into his work. His goal was somehow to not only master the time, but also to master the space and thus to compose them both. ²⁷

Pedro Amaral: Emmanuel Nunes’ music poetics is based on the rationality and extreme abstractionism of the language. In this sense, within the pursuit of a series of technical and formal aspects, he was follower of the Darmstadt generation, particularly of Stockhausen’s work until the first half of the 1960s. In a time marked by the appearance and progressive prevalence of postmodernism, Emmanuel Nunes’ music remained true to structuralism, taking it to the limits of its possibilities. ²⁸
In historical terms, Emmanuel Nunes’ line is the one coming from the German baroque, drawing from the origins of the Italian baroque. Then this line crosses classicism and the First Viennese School, going through Schubert, Schumann, Bruckner, and Mahler to the Second Viennese School, and then to Darmstadt. I also identify myself with the same continuity, though the pure abstraction of the structuralist poetics has been blurred within a much more malleable and less-inward language. This evolution also occurred in the case of spectralism, being in a certain way contradictory to the language crossing brought by postmodernism. ²⁹

Relation with Technology

     ‘I’m convinced that both the learning and the appropriation of the real-time virtuality include the assimilation of a certain number of laws and of acoustic constants translating the primordial characteristics of the sound universe, of certain sound-propagation criteria, of certain specificities associated with each instrumental family and with the distinctive traces of every instrument’s spectral profile, up to a certain consciousness of the main sound-parameters behaviour; such a consciousness allows for the appreciation, even if only very broad, of the acoustic characteristics of a place.’ ³⁰

António Jorge Pacheco: Since early Emmanuel Nunes saw in the technology a mean to extend the acoustic and expressive properties of the traditional instruments. Stockhausen also played a determining role here. With the creation of the IRCAM Emmanuel Nunes found a centre for technological development and a competent and dedicated team, which always supported him and allowed him to acquire competences within computer processing. ³¹

Bruno Gabirro: In his music, the electronics and the instruments form a total symbiosis. They are thought in the same manner and according to the same processes, either in the act of composition or in the act of performance – as a sonic whole. The technological evolution allowed him for a major integration and acuity in his music practice. However, his way of conceiving the electronics, which couldn’t have been independent from this evolution, precedes the question of the evolution itself. It is always the sound and the act of its realisation that are primordial in Emmanuel Nunes’ music. ³²

Pedro Amaral: On the one hand, technology was for Emmanuel Nunes an extension of the instruments (expanding the their possibilities through the live electroacoustic interaction). On the other, it was the extension of the acoustic space, that is, of the ‘spatiality’ within the actual possibilities of spatialising instrumental sounds in the concert hall, by means of loudspeakers. ³³

Pedagogy

     Simultaneously to his activity as a composer, Emmanuel Nunes stood out as a pedagogue, having taught various Portuguese composers from younger generations, including Bruno Gabirro, Jaime Reis, João Madureira, João Rafael, Pedro Amaral, Pedro M. Rocha, Ricardo Ribeiro or ou Virgílio Melo, among many others. Since 1981 the composer conducted the Composition Seminars at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon. The other institutions where he exercised his pedagogical activity were, among various others: Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris (France) and Hochschule für Musik Freiburg (Germany).

     In the process of music teaching, Emmanuel Nunes did not give much value to the transmission of ‘truths’, but he rather encouraged his pupils to encounter ‘the truth within’ what they create, starting, in fact, with their own ideas. ‘(…) the path from the idea to the real object is vast and arduous: what I try to do regarding the possible failures, isn’t to correct, but, yes, to indicate how to follow their own interior paths. We should try to understand what in us corresponds to what we compose. If there is no projection of the composer’s individuality onto his score and, a posteriori, of the score onto the composer, then it is not worth it! And my role is to help to recognise this projection and to show that a given way of realisation concerns this or another mental scheme, which is still unknown to the student.’ ³⁴

Bruno Gabirro: I was Emmanuel Nunes’ student in the context of the Composition Seminars at the Gulbenkian Foundation, between 2002 and 2010, and I kept close contact with him during the two following years. Like me, many other composers also spent time with him at those seminars. This contact was decisive for me. Something very important that I’ve learnt there is that the thought’s fundamental, yet it needs to be materialised into something real through the invention. Otherwise, it becomes sterile. And for this the musical ‘craftsmanship’, the technical capacity, are extremely important. It is consensual and perhaps even trivial, but one thing is to say it and the other one is to awaken it in us, through the confrontation with our own ideas and the form how we realise them. To connect everything and to have the capacity of looking at us from perspective and with a critical eye – this was for me his way of teaching. ³⁵

Guillaume Bourgogne: I was twenty-one years old when I first met Emmanuel Nunes, in 1994. I was in the audience of the final exam of the French composer Brice Pauset at the Paris Conservatoire, and Emmanuel was in the jury. Pauset presented a quite virtuosic piece for solo violin, where the tempo relationships and rhythmic writing were very complex. At some point of his presentation, he mentioned to have fixed the limit of 16 notes per second as the maximum velocity. Immediately after, I saw Emmanuel Nunes, whose name I hadn’t even known until then, grabbing a pocket calculator, tapping on it, and exclaiming: “at this beat of that bar, the violinist has to play 16,87 notes per second!”. It was just before I entered the Paris Conservatoire and it impressed quite a bit the apprentice-musician I was at the time!
Years after, on the recommendation of Emmanuel Nunes, I conducted the Gulbenkian Orchestra at the Composition Seminars from 2003 to 2007. In this context, every year he would give seminars and classes for Portuguese young composers. Then they had to submit scores and Emmanuel, Luís Pereira Leal and I selected a set of pieces for two concerts. I could see his kindness and openness mixed with a strong requirement during the rehearsals and social time. Everyone, composers, and musicians, had a high admiration and respect towards him. I became friends with some of the composers and these feelings are still very active today. The aura of Nunes was also palpable among his students at the Paris Conservatoire, and contrary to what one might think, his thoughts seemed to be as meaningful and relevant for students whose style was very different from his own as for the students who were close to his aesthetics. ³⁶

Pedro Amaral: During various years, between the 1980s and the following decades, Emmanuel Nunes gave a semestral Composition Seminar at the Gulbenkian Foundation. These seminars were extremely rich, yet they didn’t constitute a systematic teaching. The students who attended them realised their regular education at other Portuguese academic institutions. In this sense, although important, these seminars weren’t in any way decisive for the creation of any generation of composers. Since Emmanuel Nunes lived abroad, the Portuguese who wanted to study directly with him, did it at foreign schools (for example, Pedro Amaral at the CNSM in Paris and João Rafael at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg). ³⁷

António Jorge Pacheco: I’ve never studied Composition and I have never attended Emmanuel Nunes’ classes. But, having known him, there’s one thing I can say: Emmanuel would have never wanted to create epigones. On many occasions I have witnessed the joy Emmanuel felt when he was surrounded by young composers. His fascination towards the younger generations was evident, likewise in moments of socialisation which he himself encouraged. ³⁸

Significant Works (according to Pedro Amaral and Guillaume Bourgogne)

Pedro Amaral: “Ruf” (1977) – an orchestral piece, with a small electroacoustic layer (tape), which gave to a post-serial abstract poetics, an orchestral dimension and a sonic ‘violence’, almost unheard in the Darmstadt-generation composers.
“Lichtung I – III” (1991-2007) – by means of live electronics, these pieces take to the extreme the expansion of the instruments and the acoustic space.
“Das Märchen” (2008) is, in a certain way, a summary and an apotheosis of Emmanuel Nunes’ compositional means. ³⁹

Guillaume Bourgogne: I consider the following pieces highly important in Emmanuel Nunes’ path: “Litanies du feu et de la mer I & II” (1969/ 71), “Nachtmusik I” (1977/ 78) and “Quodlibet” (1991). These works also happen to be some of my favorite pieces. “Lichtung I” (1991) and “Lichtung II” (2000) count particularly as well, especially because I was present at the performance by the Ensemble Intercontemporain in 2000 at the Cité de la musique (Paris), during which “Lichtung II” was premiered and this experience marked me a lot.
“Nachtmusik I” (1977/ 78); being the only piece by Nunes I’ve ever conducted to date, I have a strong link with it, also because the performances (both versions, with and without electronics) were all in the context of tributes to him shortly after he passed away. The piece and its ‘space of absence’ (Alain Bioteau), with the exclusion of the pitches E, G, G# and A, was the best possible choice for these occasions. The somber instrumentation, the deep static harmonies of certain passages, the long suspensions of the discourse and the unique expressiveness of this 33-minute piece made these performances the most heart-touching experiences of my career. This piece is particularly important in Emmanuel Nunes’ path because it is the first element of the long cycle “La creation” and it marks the articulation between two distinct creative periods. This was also the first time Emmanuel used the “rhythmic pair” system he has been using for many years to come.
The two “Litanies du feu et de la mer” are a founding step of Nunes’ work. After these magnificent and introspective pages, he has never written for solo piano again, and more than that, he has barely used the piano in large ensemble pieces. The two “Litanies” seem to be a tribute or even a farewell to his own instrument with which he had improvised so much in his youth.
“Quodlibet” (1991) is the ultimate link between past, present and future. Written to be performed in the venue he had known since he was a kid, Emmanuel Nunes composed this one-hour impressive monument as much for the location itself (the Coliseu dos Recreios in Lisbon) as for the many musicians and the two conductors the work requires. He took the music material from past pieces, as a re-exploration of his own artistic journey. I discovered Emmanuel Nunes’ music though the live-recording of this intro-retrospective extraordinary piece. That was an aesthetical shock, although I have never had a chance to attend its live performance. ⁴⁰

Speculation

     Is it possible to imagine the history of music without Emmanuel Nunes?

António Jorge Pacheco: No. Neither the history of music nor my personal and professional history. ⁴¹

Bruno Gabirro: No. I also cannot imagine the history of music as any line of composers. I see it perhaps as a timeless web, where we know only certain manifestations, the ones that are visible to us; and we try to induce the rest. And little by little we forget the names. There I clearly see Emmanuel, insofar as it is also through the eyes of history that we comprehend and renovate ourselves. ⁴²

Pedro Amaral: It’s not certain whether Emmanuel Nunes’ work will reveal itself as determining (retrospectively) in the contemporary music evolution. ⁴³

Guillaume Bourgogne: During Emmanuel Nunes’ life, within the French contemporary music world, spectral music somehow won the cultural hegemony. Funnily enough, although his work has always been aesthetically far from the spectral stream, Nunes’ preoccupations were quite like those who conducted the spectral revolution: acoustics, space and how to compose the time. One of them, Tristan Murail, similarly to Nunes, cares a lot about the past and the memory of the past while having the objective of creating something new; though their compositional worlds are undoubtedly very different. It is certainly not a coincidence that Murail made more than one collaboration with the Ensemble L’Itinéraire possible for Emmanuel Nunes, at a period where his work was not often performed in France. Nunes’ unique creative force has fortunately kept its own path despite the main currents and trends, and he has nourished and inspired the musical creation in Europe for years.
His oeuvre is still influential today, not only through his former students, but also by the mark he has left behind him. Emmanuel Nunes’ art remains an example of beauty, complexity, novelty and originality for the generations to come, while drawing its existence and substance from the past. ⁴⁴

September, 2021
© MIC.PT

The English translation of the In Focus constitutes the exclusive responsibility of the MIC.PT.

Emmanuel Nunes · Playlist

Footnotes

¹ Emmanuel Nunes · “Auto-retrato” [“Self-portrait”] (1977) in: “Emmanuel Nunes – Escritos e Entrevistas” (“Emmanuel Nunes – Writings and Interviews”) · edition by Paulo de Assis · Casa da Música/ CESEM · 2011 · p. 42 · translation to English: Jakub Szczypa (the translation, made without any intervention of the author, constitutes the exclusive responsibility of the MIC.PT).
² Emmanuel Nunes in the Interview conducted by Cristina Fernandes, “A minha cultura é um todo” (“My Culture is a Whole”), Público, June 25^th, 2000 · translation to English: Jakub Szczypa (the translation, made without any intervention of the author, constitutes the exclusive responsibility of the MIC.PT).
³ Interview to Emmanuel Nunes in: Sérgio Azevedo · “A Invenção dos Sons. Uma Panorâmica da Composição em Portugal Hoje” (“The Invention of the Sounds. A Panorama of Composition in Portugal Today”) · Editorial Caminho · Lisbon 1998 · p. 232 · translation to English: Jakub Szczypa (the translation, made without any intervention of the author, constitutes the exclusive responsibility of the MIC.PT).
⁴ Emmanuel Nunes · “Auto-retrato” [“Self-portrait”] (1977) in: “Emmanuel Nunes – Escritos e Entrevistas” (“Emmanuel Nunes – Writings and Interviews”) · op. cit. · p. 39 · translation to English: Jakub Szczypa (the translation, made without any intervention of the author, constitutes the exclusive responsibility of the MIC.PT).
⁵ Bruno Gabirro · answer to the MIC.PT Questionnaire about Emmanuel Nunes · question no. 1: ‘According to your knowledge – what were Emmanuel Nunes’ music roots and what made him follow the path of music and composition?’ · MIC.PT, 2021 · translation to English: Jakub Szczypa.
⁶ António Jorge Pacheco · answer to the MIC.PT Questionnaire about Emmanuel Nunes · question no. 1 · MIC.PT, 2021 · translation to English: Jakub Szczypa.
⁷ Guillaume Bourgogne · answer to the MIC.PT Questionnaire about Emmanuel Nunes · question no. 1 · MIC.PT, 2021.
⁸ Pedro Amaral · answer to the MIC.PT Questionnaire about Emmanuel Nunes · question no. 1 · MIC.PT, 2021 · translation to English: Jakub Szczypa (the translation, made without any intervention of the interviewee, constitutes the exclusive responsibility of the MIC.PT).
⁹ Interview to Emmanuel Nunes in: Sérgio Azevedo · “A Invenção dos Sons. Uma Panorâmica da Composição em Portugal Hoje” (“The Invention of the Sounds. A Panorama of Composition in Portugal Today”) · op. cit. · p. 215 · translation to English: Jakub Szczypa (the translation, made without any intervention of the author, constitutes the exclusive responsibility of the MIC.PT).
¹⁰ António Jorge Pacheco · answer to the MIC.PT Questionnaire about Emmanuel Nunes · question no. 2: ‘Why did Emmanuel Nunes decide to work and live abroad?’ · 2021, MIC.PT · translation to English: Jakub Szczypa.
¹¹ Pedro Amaral · answer to the MIC.PT Questionnaire about Emmanuel Nunes · question no. 2 · 2021, MIC.PT · translation to English: Jakub Szczypa (the translation, made without any intervention of the interviewee, constitutes the exclusive responsibility of the MIC.PT).
¹² Emmanuel Nunes · “Discurso de Aceitação do Prémio Pessoa” [“Pessoa Prize Acceptance Speech”] (2000) in: “Emmanuel Nunes – Escritos e Entrevistas” (“Emmanuel Nunes – Writings and Interviews”) · op. cit. · p. 53-54 · translation to English: Jakub Szczypa (the translation, made without any intervention of the author, constitutes the exclusive responsibility of the MIC.PT).
¹³ Emmanuel Nunes in the Interview conducted by Cristina Fernandes, op. cit. · translation to English: Jakub Szczypa (the translation, made without any intervention of the author, constitutes the exclusive responsibility of the MIC.PT).
¹⁴ Bruno Gabirro · answer to the MIC.PT Questionnaire about Emmanuel Nunes · question no. 2 · MIC.PT, 2021 · translation to English: Jakub Szczypa.
¹⁵ Mário Vieira de Carvalho · “Macdonaldização da comunicação e arte como fast food: Sobre a recepção de Das Märchen” (“Macdonaldization of the communication and art as fast food: On the reception of Das Märchen”) in: “A Arte da Cultura (Homenagem a Yvette Centeno)” [“Art and Culture (Homage to Yvette Centeno)”] · eds. Alda Correia, Gabriela Cardoso, Fernando Ribeiro, Manuel Canaveira · Lisbon, Colibri, 2011 · p. 169-196 · translation to English: Jakub Szczypa (the translation, made without any intervention of the author, constitutes the exclusive responsibility of the MIC.PT).
¹⁶ António Jorge Pacheco · answer to the MIC.PT Questionnaire about Emmanuel Nunes · question no. 4: ‘The Wagnerian idea of Gesamtkunstwerk was important for Emmanuel Nunes?’ · MIC.PT, 2021 · translation to English: Jakub Szczypa.
¹⁷ Pedro Amaral · answer to the MIC.PT Questionnaire about Emmanuel Nunes · question no. 7: 'There are two types of composers: the ones who claim that they write for themselves and the ones who say the contrary – said Emmanuel Nunes in the interview conducted by Cristina Fernandes and given to the Público Journal in 2000, the year when he received the Pessoa Prize. In this context, try do define the relation artist – work – public in the case of Emmanuel Nunes' · MIC.PT, 2021 · translation to English: Jakub Szczypa (the translation, made without any intervention of the interviewee, constitutes the exclusive responsibility of the MIC.PT).
¹⁸ Mário Vieira de Carvalho · “Macdonaldização da comunicação e arte como fast food: Sobre a recepção de Das Märchen” (“Macdonaldization of the communication and art as fast food: On the reception of Das Märchen”) · op. cit. · p. 169-196 · translation to English: Jakub Szczypa (the translation, made without any intervention of the author, constitutes the exclusive responsibility of the MIC.PT).
¹⁹ Pedro Boléo · “Metade do público abandonou a ópera de Emmanuel Nunes na estreia no Teatro de São Carlos” (“Half of the audience left Emmanuel Nunes’ opera premiere at the São Carlos”) · Público Journal · January 27^th, 2008 · translation to English: Jakub Szczypa.
²⁰ António Jorge Pacheco · answer to the MIC.PT Questionnaire about Emmanuel Nunes · question no. 7 · MIC.PT, 2021 · translation to English: Jakub Szczypa.
²¹ Emmanuel Nunes in the Interview conducted by Cristina Fernandes, op. cit. · translation to English: Jakub Szczypa (the translation, made without any intervention of the author, constitutes the exclusive responsibility of the MIC.PT).
²² Bruno Gabirro · answer to the MIC.PT Questionnaire about Emmanuel Nunes · question no. 7 · MIC.PT, 2021 · translation to English: Jakub Szczypa.
²³ Pedro Amaral · answer to the MIC.PT Questionnaire about Emmanuel Nunes · question no. 4 · MIC.PT, 2021 · translation to English: Jakub Szczypa (the translation, made without any intervention of the interviewee, constitutes the exclusive responsibility of the MIC.PT).
²⁴ Rui Vieira Nery in: Ana Marques Gastão · “Música, perfeito organismo” (“Music, perfect organism”) · Artes e Multimédia · Diário de Notícias · December 2000 · translation to English: Jakub Szczypa (the translation, made without any intervention of the author, constitutes the exclusive responsibility of the MIC.PT).
²⁵ According to: Adriana Latino · “Emmanuel Nunes” in: Grove Music Online · Oxford Music Online · www.oxfordmusiconline.com.
²⁶ António Jorge Pacheco · answer to the MIC.PT Questionnaire about Emmanuel Nunes · question no. 3: ‘In the interview conducted by Jorge Lima Barreto and published in the book “Musonautas – Entrevistas”, Emmanuel Nunes said that Stockhausen’s great revolution didn’t reside in the technical processes, but rather in the general vision of music. What is your general vision of Emmanuel Nunes’ music and what distinguishes his sonic universe within 20^th and 21^st century music?’ · MIC.PT, 2021 · translation to English: Jakub Szczypa.
²⁷ Guillaume Bourgogne · answer to the MIC.PT Questionnaire about Emmanuel Nunes · question no. 3 · MIC.PT, 2021.
²⁸ Pedro Amaral · answer to the MIC.PT Questionnaire about Emmanuel Nunes · question no. 3 · MIC.PT, 2021 · translation to English: Jakub Szczypa (the translation, made without any intervention of the interviewee, constitutes the exclusive responsibility of the MIC.PT).
²⁹ Pedro Amaral · answer to the MIC.PT Questionnaire about Emmanuel Nunes · question no. 9: 'In 2000 Emmanuel Nunes said: Continuity has always had the aspects of rupture and vice-versa. If I was to choose one of them, I would say that my attitude was more connected with continuity. (…). My notion of continuity has to do with the fact that Bach is no longer Monteverdi, Beethoven is no longer Mozart, and so on. There’s an invention which renews continuity. In this sense, could you trace a line from Emmanuel Nunes’ work, passing through the present and looking towards the future?' · MIC.PT, 2021 · translation to English: Jakub Szczypa (the translation, made without any intervention of the interviewee, constitutes the exclusive responsibility of the MIC.PT).
³⁰ Emmanuel Nunes · “A virtualidade do tempo real” [“The virtuality of the real-time”] (2001) in: “Emmanuel Nunes – Escritos e Entrevistas” (“Emmanuel Nunes – Writings and Interviews”) · op. cit. · p. 234 · translation to English: Jakub Szczypa (the translation, made without any intervention of the author, constitutes the exclusive responsibility of the MIC.PT)
³¹ António Jorge Pacheco · answer to the MIC.PT Questionnaire about Emmanuel Nunes · question no. 5: ‘How is the influence of the technological evolution manifested in Emmanuel Nunes’ music?’ · MIC.PT, 2021 · translation to English: Jakub Szczypa.
³² Bruno Gabirro · answer to the MIC.PT Questionnaire about Emmanuel Nunes · question no. 5 · MIC.PT, 2021 · translation to English: Jakub Szczypa.
³³ Pedro Amaral · answer to the MIC.PT Questionnaire about Emmanuel Nunes · question no. 5 · MIC.PT, 2021 · translation to English: Jakub Szczypa (the translation, made without any intervention of the interviewee, constitutes the exclusive responsibility of the MIC.PT).
³⁴ Interview with Emmanuel Nunes in: Sérgio Azevedo · “A Invenção dos Sons. Uma Panorâmica da Composição em Portugal Hoje” (“The Invention of Sounds. A Panorama of Composition in Portugal Today”) · op. cit. · p. 231 · translation to English: Jakub Szczypa (the translation, made without any intervention of the author, constitutes the exclusive responsibility of the MIC.PT).
³⁵ Bruno Gabirro · answer to the MIC.PT Questionnaire about Emmanuel Nunes · question no. 8: ‘What was Emmanuel Nunes’ approach as a pedagogue and what was his importance and contribution to the creation of new generations of composers in Portugal?’ · MIC.PT, 2021 · translation to English: Jakub Szczypa.
³⁶ Guillaume Bourgonge · answer to the MIC.PT Questionnaire about Emmanuel Nunes · question no. 8 · MIC.PT, 2021.
³⁷ Pedro Amaral answer to the MIC.PT Questionnaire about Emmanuel Nunes · question no. 8 · MIC.PT, 2021 · translation to English: Jakub Szczypa (the translation, made without any intervention of the interviewee, constitutes the exclusive responsibility of the MIC.PT).
³⁸ António Jorge Pacheco · answer to the MIC.PT Questionnaire about Emmanuel Nunes · question no. 8 · MIC.PT, 2021 · translation to Enslish: Jakub Szczypa.
³⁹ Pedro Amaral· answer to the MIC.PT Questionnaire about Emmanuel Nunes · question no. 6: 'Please chose and briefly describe three Emmanuel Nunes’ works which, form your point of view, are the most important in the composer’s path.' · MIC.PT, 2021 · translation to English: Jakub Szczypa (the translation, made without any intervention of the interviewee, constitutes the exclusive responsibility of the MIC.PT).
⁴⁰ Guillaume Bourgonge · answer to the MIC.PT Questionnaire about Emmanuel Nunes · question no. 6 · MIC.PT, 2021.
⁴¹ António Jorge Pacheco · answer to the MIC.PT Questionnaire about Emmanuel Nunes · answer no. 10: 'Can you imagine the history of music without Emmanuel Nunes?' · MIC.PT, 2021 · translation to English: Jakub Szczypa.
⁴² Bruno Gabirro · answer to the MIC.PT Questionnaire about Emmanuel Nunes · answer no. 10 · MIC.PT, 2021 · translation to English: Jakub Szczypa.
⁴³ Pedro Amaral · answer to the MIC.PT Questionnaire about Emmanuel Nunes · answer no. 10 · MIC.PT, 2021 · translation to English: Jakub Szczypa (the translation, made without any intervention of the interviewee, constitutes the exclusive responsibility of the MIC.PT).
⁴⁴ Guillaume Bourgonge · answer to the MIC.PT Questionnaire about Emmanuel Nunes · answer no. 10 · MIC.PT, 2021.