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Foto: Ângela Lopes

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Questionnaire/ Interview

· Describe your family, cultural and sonic/ musical roots, highlighting one or various aspects that are essential for the definition and constitution of who you are today. ·

Ângela Lopes: I was born in an environment where the music that one listened to was mainly of Portuguese, popular and folkloric character, or such genres as British pop-rock, traditional pop, classical rock, art rock, progressive rock, but also Brazilian popular music, bossa nova or samba. My father was an amateur musician, who played ‘by ear’ various instruments such as the harmonica, accordion, organ, or piano. Since the age of 16 he belonged to popular and folklore music groups, having performed during the traditional evening gatherings of defoliating (corn), or other village dance gatherings, first with his harmonica and then with his accordion as a soloist. He participated in the “Cantar os Reis” troupes, having belonged to the “Ribeira de Ovar” Folkloric Group, since its foundation in 1960. It was an ethnographic group created after the São João marches and whose activity was dedicated to presenting the regional chants and folkloric dances, as well as the traditional outfits from this essentially rural region – of farmers and fishermen, from the land, the sea, and the river. Since the end of the 1950s he also created music groups such as the “Amigos do ritmo”, “Os dangers”, or “Status”, name obviously influenced by the British rock band founded in 1962, “Status Quo”; or still, the traditional group “Os Ramboias”, as well as danceroom, popular-parties or parade ensembles. At the same time, my elder brothers… together we were six siblings at home, so it was a big party…, they listened to the music of the core bands created in the 1960s and 70s, the top of that time, essentially British rock – Queen, Supertramp, The Beatles, Dire Straits, and Status Quo, among others. Meanwhile, my elder sisters used to sing the hits from Brazilian soap operas, being the first one “Gabriela” in the 1970s, which curiously interrupted one of the working sessions at the Portuguese Parliament (!).
By the way, I have found on the internet this written statement from that time: “[Only Gabriela] does the miracle to join everyone, at the same hour (including the ones who take the PS [Socialist Party] as the most leftist party from this and other worlds), in front of the TV and, apparently, as much as it surprises us, with similar emotions…” ¹ – wrote Mário Dionísio in a chronicle published in the weekly newspaper “O Jornal”, in August 1977. Now, the “Estado de S. Paulo” journal from October 1977 writes: “Some say that Soares (Mário) was cautious enough to wait for the soap opera to end, to then appear on television announcing the austerity measures from August 25^th.” ² Other soap operas followed the music success of the first one, such as: “O casarão”, “Escrava Isaura”, “O astro”, “Dancin’Days”, “Sinhazinha Flô”, or “Dona Xepa” (with hits by Gal Costa, Maria Bethânoa, Fafá de Belém, Elis Regina, Rita Lee, or Chico Buarque). I fell asleep a couple of times lullabied by these soap-opera tunes. The presence of Brazilian music was normal in a family whose great part (in this case from my mother’s side) was taken with the 1950s emigration to Brazil, the land of Vera Cruz. My eldest sister used to sing as amateur, those or other tunes, at the Philips-company parties where she was an employee, as well as at Christmas parties, or even in the carnival choir of Ovar. I also can’t forget the presence of the radio at home – it was turned on during the whole day playing diverse stations, and the hits of the time.
The so-called classical music also made part of what I was listening, even before the beginning of my music studies. My eldest brother studied the piano, but to be truthful I didn’t listen much to him! Around the age of eight or nine, I made the first steps in classical studies at a private school, with Edwiges Pacheco, born in Brazil. She was granddaughter and daughter of the Ovar illustrious culture figures, Amélia Dias Simões and António Dias Simões, one of the founders of the “Cantar os Reis” traditions (today – Immaterial Cultural Patrimony), as well as historian, poet, playwright, comedian, painter, miniaturist, and calligraphist; a bourgeois family from Ovar which also included Zéni d’Ovar and Clara d’Ovar, singer, writer, producer, and cinema actress, remarried with Peter Oser, great-grandson of the magnate and multimillionaire John D. Rockefeller. I continued my studies at the Santa Maria da Feira Music Academy, a pioneering school when it comes to the decentralization of music education. There I continued until the end of secondary school.
Essentially my childhood occurred between the two daily-crossing worlds: the feminine one, here represented by my mother and sisters – home, delicacy, maternal care, and teachers; and the masculine one, with my father and brothers, and even the employees of a workshop, always men, in a universe of male clients. Thus, to be a composer connected with the electroacoustic world wasn’t strange, even in a time when there were more men than women present. I was familiar with many of those masculine worlds, and accustomed to the discussions on music and electronic music hardware, as one would now say.
Has all this defined and constituted who I am today? Maybe, or maybe not so much. If I was born in another family, educational, and cultural environment I would certainly not be the same. But I believe that the being of each one of us lies much deeper in the intrinsic soul than in the influences of the surroundings that create us.

· What made you follow the composition path? ·

AL: With this history, nothing foreshadowed that one day I would embark upon the universe of composition, and particularly the classical one. I made my initial Composition (and Analysis) studies at the Santa Maria da Feira Music Academy within the still current subject, Composition Analysis and Techniques, with Professor Nuno Ramos. He was a sui generis personality – a music teacher within regular education and at the Academy, a popular poet, and ‘author of lyrics and music’ as one used to say. Essentially, he used to teach the composition of figured bass, or it is what I best remember. I was a dedicated student, fulfilling the tasks without reflecting a lot on the creative act, which was there imposed. What seduced me in these school exercises was the organisation and the concatenation of the sounds and harmonies, within a rationalistic spirit to perceive the music. I absorbed the mastery of the sounds. Later, already at the Superior Composition Course I discovered music through the creative act, and art’s uniqueness, without forgetting the importance of the rigour, mastery and the technique in the art of composition. Cândido Lima, composer, and professor at the ESMAE ³, who’s challenging by nature, has introduced me to a completely new world, making me (re)think the music foundations, opening the path towards new readings, studies, listening, and the knowledge on a contemporary world, to which I’d been lay. Iannis Xenakis (“Metastasis” was the first work analysed in class), Pierre Boulez, Anton Webern (and the analysis of the “Concerto op. 24”), Alban Berg, Pascal Dusapin, Olivier Messiaen (as one of the class assignments, the first 20^th-century work which I heard was “Quatuor pour la fin du temps” at the ESMAE library), Luigi Nono (during the Contemporary Music Encounters organised by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, perhaps in 1995, in Lisbon, at the Recreios Coliseum, I heard the work “Prometeo. Tragedia dell’ascolto”), among other 20th-century geniuses; but there’s also Mussorgsky (“Chants et danses de la mort”, cycle of songs analysed one day in class, unforgettable!), or Janáček (studied in “Music by Comparative Analysis” ⁴, “Journal d’un disparu”), or Monteverdi’s “Vespers” (“Vespro della Beata Vergine”), or Gesualdo when it comes to chromatism. There were also the recommended readings, Shoenberg’s “Le style et l’idée”, “La técnica del contrappunto vocale nel cinquecento” (Edizioni suvini zerboni – Milano), book bought during one of my elder brother’s journeys to Italy, and which I use until today as a reference to study the 16^th-century counterpoint, and “Il faut être constanmment un immigré/ Entretiens avec Xenakis” (François Delalande), among many others. Music, philosophy, science, mathematics, linguistics… – there were so many themes and challenging subjects addressed during the Composition classes, but also at the ones dedicated to the History of Contemporary Music with Álvaro Salazar, Electroacoustics with Virgílio Melo, Orchestration Forms and Techniques with Filipe Pires, or Music Analysis with Miguel Ribeiro Pereira. During the superior course I developed a series of projects, some of them presented outside the school context. “Cantique” (1999/ 2000), an audio-visual work (light/ sound) premiered at the Franco–Português Institute in Lisbon, or “Harmonium” (2000) and “Canção de Izis” (2000) performed during the 2000 and 2001 editions of the Música Viva Festival. The path was evolving quite naturally. “Caminantes, no hay caminos. Hay que caminar”, says an inscription or graffiti in a 13^th-century monastery in Toledo (Spain), which was used by Luigi Nono in his work “No hay caminos, hay que caminar… Andrej Tarkovskij”, and which illustrates well that the paths are simply being made. I haven’t determined anything. Perhaps with a little luck in the mix! When I concluded my CESE/ DESE, Music Specialised Studies Diploma, various opportunities appeared, and here I would like to show my gratitude towards Miguel Azguime (and Paula Azguime). They made a bet on a young, freshly graduated composer, still without great proof given, having commissioned the work “COOR” (September/ 2003) for bass clarinet and electronics premiered at the Música Viva Festival. With or without commissions other works emerged, such as “DUAL” (2004) for flute and piano, composed on my own initiative, and premiered some years later by the flutist Monika Stretitová and the pianist Sofia Lourenço. In 2008 the piece was released on CD entitled “Dual” under the Engenho das Ideias/ Phonedition label, with works by Álvaro Salazar, my ex-professor at the ESMAE, and today a friend. Simultaneously, I have been developing projects in technical assistance in the field of electronics, together with the composer Cândido Lima. I’d done it before as student, either with Cândido Lima, within the realisation of the work “Gestos-Circus-Círculos” from 2001 (when I was improving my grade in Orchestration and writing the work “Sequência”), premiered at the Helena Sá e Costa Theatre; or with the composer Virgílio Melo, in the sound projection of the piece “Circuitus”, and in the production and projection of Virgílio Melo’s opera “Alletsator XPTO” with the libretto by Pedro Barbosa, created with an electronically synthesised text, also premiered at the Helena Sá e Costa Theatre in 2001. In the same years, 2000 and 2001, and still during the studies, I made part of the mixed-music group founded by Virgílio Melo, MC47, which performed contemporary works, such as “Mikrophonie 1” by Karlheinz Stockhausen.
There are paths with no return… and I’m happy! (From my work “Fado d’Arada” for soprano and piano, August/ 2013)

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

AL: The reality can surpass the fiction. Who could imagine, some years ago, that one day we would all stay confined at home, and that the world would stop due to a virus coming from China? This is science-fiction or a movie script. Until today, the path is being made according to the appearing projects, many of them influencing my path as an author and a composer. In May 2020 the flutist Gil Magalhães invited me to write, or adapt, a work for flute using the traditional techniques of the Bansuri – a flute from the north of India. Combining his performance and doctoral thesis, his intention was that, apart from the technical approaches typical for a certain non-European culture, the work would represent a typical expressivity and ornamentation from the northern part of India, in the light of a contemporary European language. They are worlds that I haven’t explored yet, but they’re common for other authors from our Western culture, being Olivier Messiaen one of the greatest examples. The accepted challenge took me to the exploration of a new culture and a new way of composing. “Mahâr” (2020) for flute and electronics, has thus been born in a Kayal form, based on the Râga Sujani Malhâr (one of the rain modes) and the rhythm modes or Tâlas: Ekatâla and Tìntâla. It also involves some traditional ornamentations from the north of India. European contemporary music influenced by other cultures, as in this case, can be found within the work of various 20^th-century music authors, such as: Pierre Boulez, Karlheniz Stockhausen, Olivier Messiaen, or György Ligeti. Another recent work which has been challenging for me, taking me to unique and singular worlds, and obliging me to rethink my music creation is “Au-delà The blue – Pelo outono”, a work from November 2021, composed for a jerrycan, an artisanal tongue-drum, pot lids, a Tibetan bowl or a glass cup and wind chimes, with amplification, reverberation, and electronics. “Au-delà The blue – Pelo outono” has been commissioned by the percussionist Nuno Aroso and it makes part of the “Materis | Asperes” project. As I mention in the work’s programme note: ‘The work departs from a primary and rough material, to construct a sonic musical universe. This material is a metallic drum, or a typical jerrycan to keep fossil fuels or other materials, and everything revolves around it. From this unnoble material, this not-musical instrument, a new life is extracted (…).’ It is a world combining writing and improvisation, a work of dialogue between the composer and the performer. A work going towards improvisation and sonic experimentation. A new world for me.
Obviously, I have intentions of compositional projects not driven by external factors, either commissions, invitations, or challenges. But these ones are waiting for their turn, or I adjust them to the incoming requests.

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

AL: Both the music discourse and the music language are abstract. Unless the expression of the music thought is accompanied with the thought-through-word expression, either with the prior writing of a note describing the music work (programme note), or with the inclusion of a sung, or spoken text. In the music language we can use other more or less conventional signals, so that the expressivity is more efficient, as the Renaissance composers did in the madrigals, for example. However, I tell my students that if one listened to a pure music work and if then one asked each listener what the work had transmitted to them, there would be as many answers as people in the room. Still, music does reach the level of the human emotions. Whatever the emotions are, there’s a single meaning for each one of us. It is a direct discourse, specific for the sender and the receiver. And the way I receive it is conditioned with a series of factors. By the way, some days ago in class, when listening to J. S. Bach’s “Prelude and Fugue in E flat minor”, the emotion was so strong that tears started dropping from my eyes. None of the students reacted in the same way. What did that moment express and mean to me? What did that moment express and mean for every student in the classroom?
Then there’s also the discernment and the reason. The music discourse is also a synonym of organisation, knowledge, structure and thought, elaboration of a complex material, planification, architecture (form), instrumental and acoustic adaptation. It’s human intelligence. Maybe it was the intelligence of a genius such as Bach that made me so emotional?

· Are there extra-musical sources influencing your work in a significant way? ·

AL: If we comprehend extra-musical sources as using texts, poems, or stories, which inspire us and/ or are transformed into music of most diverse forms; or as the intention of a subtle presence of a distinct and millennial culture, such as, for example the Chinese or the Indian one; or even as the presences of an extrinsic idea, like making an asperous rough material musical and intrinsic; or still as the idea of sustainability (ecology and sustainability)… then yes, there are extra-musical sources influencing and acting in my music. I can enumerate some of these cases: “Madrigal – Cerromaior” (November/ 2020) for 8-voice choir and ensemble (vibraphone, horn, and cello) and “Canção de Izis” (September/ 2000) for amplified baritone and electronics. Both works are based on the poems of Manuel da Fonseca, and they use the word as sound and not as meaning, that is, independently of its linguistic function. The semantics doesn’t exist here. What does exist, are the phonemes and their vocal colours, ranging between the closed, semi-closed, semi-open and open vowels, and the fricative, occlusive, nasal or vibrating consonants, among other ones that give life to the music. It’s the text as sound, or else, only as a source of sound. It is a work on the phonetics – a linguistics subject dedicated to the study of the speech sounds (definition after the ITAD – Institute for Support and Development), applied to music. Another case – “La forêt” (November/ 2008), for solo recorder, is a work inspired in the story “A floresta” by Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen and in the whole world of senses and memories. As I write in the programme note: ‘“La forêt” (…) is a set of four images originally composed for recorder (…). What seduced me was the rich prose-poetic reading of the symbology, allegories, and synaesthesia. Stories-spaces of magic, mystery, and memories – worlds of sensations emanating in Sophia Andresen’s “A floresta”. What led me to the composition of “La forêt”, was the sensorial and poetic writing of this story. What fascinated me in the story was the importance of the nature, on the one hand, and on the other the childhood memories. As in Sophia’s story, I remember the smells from my childhood – of autumn with the red apples being stored after the harvest, a marvellous and unforgettable perfume in a small and humble box room outside the house –, or the sounds of spring with the first swallows, chirping and flying in flocks, in circles, during unforgettable late afternoons. The piece isn’t descriptive (like a symphonic poem), and it’s based on four excerpts of the story “A floresta”, sources of inspiration awakening a given sensation or emotion, and creating the whole synaesthetic world, where various and simultaneous senses are being mixed, confused, and deluded. The first image refers to the Spring, (…) and everything was filled with flowers, sweetly swinging on transparent breezes ⁵; the second image evokes the Summer, Then the Summer was coming, with the days growing and the air being populated with perfumes (…) ⁶; the third image refers to the Autumn, (…) the ground was being covered with yellow and dry leaves, which were breaking loose, one by one, from the high branches of the trees, slowly toppling and spinning in the air ⁷; and the fourth image speaks of the Winter, The plane trees and the lindens, stripped of their leaves, were raising their bare branches onto the pale sky. ⁸’ In an impressionist manner, the texts are spoken or not, and they serve as a kind of (sub)titles, and implied (or not) submerse readings of the work. In “Fong-song” (May/ 2012), for flute and electronics, the text – Maria Ondina Braga’s homonymous story from the book “A China fica ao lado” – constitutes the electroacoustic matter, and at the same time, as I write in the programme note: ‘In “Fong-Song” my intention wasn’t to write an oriental work. The idea was only to recall or translate, within this particular sonic and poetic world, the fascination and the enchantment with distant cultures, present in the work of Maria Ondina Braga.’ And I denote: ‘The text (“Fong-song”) is the sonic matter travelling through the labyrinths of a permanent and continuous music recitative, which rocks (like the sampans at the embankment of any river, in the author’s expression), which swings, which lullabies, calms or makes one restless, soothes or disturbs, which tranquilises or makes one angry, given the nature’s peace or fury, the sounds of the wind and water in “Fong-song”. It’s like an imaginary, supernatural, mystical, or oneiric world that is transcended within a recitative of an intimate, feminine, reflective, transparent, tranquil, and sweet character; it’s a word-music without time, as in a ritual, like so many other described in the author’s stories.’ Other type of extra-musical source is the idea to make the rough, crude, and primary material musical and intrinsic, as a starting point for music creation. As I mentioned earlier, “Au-delà The blue – Pelo outono” (November/ 2021), commission by the percussionist Nuno Aroso to make part of the “Materis | Asperes” project/ concert series, is written for a jerrycan (used for storing fossil materials), and everything revolves around it. ‘From this unnoble material, this not-musical instrument, a new life is extracted. “Au-delà The Blue – Pelo outono” gains form, structure and sonic body, using more or less conventional percussion music practices – vibrations, percussive sounds, tremolos, amplitudes, dynamics, rough sounds, quasi-sinusoidal sounds, sonic friction, among other processes.’ Now, “Reciclo-Recirculos – em forma de sanza” (2019), an acousmatic work commissioned by the DME Festival, premiered in the framework of the 3^rd edition of the Culture and Sustainability Symposium, had its origin precisely in the idea of sustainability. It is a soundscape constructed from a series of imposed questions: ‘As a composer, can I act in a more sustainable way? Can my music reflect the principles of sustainability? In a world where almost anything is disposable, in what way can my work be a result of a more conscious action?’
One way or another, the world that surrounds us is, and will always be present. What is external to the music can be more than an influence. It can determine the work or even make part of it. That’s how I understand it.

· 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 move from the micro towards the macro form or vice-versa? Please describe this process. ·

AL: Every work poses its specific problems. There are works that can start with an exterior material, possessing a form, a macro form, so it’s natural that the music begins with this global form towards a micro structuring. It can be a text, for example. Yet the global vision isn’t always fulfilled! But this isn’t necessarily a condition. Considering that music is a language, I see it more as writing a novel, or a book. The sounds create relations, and there are connexions generating other sounds. There are needs emerging at every moment of writing. It’s difficult to describe this process from the beginning of elaborating a work. A minimal gesture can be sufficient to initiate it. Or not… it can only be an abstract idea of relationships. For example, in this most recent work of mine, “Au-delà The blue – Pelo outono” I started with a recited text, with an idea of superimposing the same text in three different languages – my mother tongue, Portuguese, and two translations in French and English –, read by three different voices; in the manner of 13^th century motets. This idea gives origin to another one: to create a melodic sequence with a significant set of notes. There’s an emotional idea subjacent to the work. Then, there’s the general idea of the gestures’ chaining, so that an idea of continuity pervades the work, when it comes to the elaboration of the instrumental part. There’s simultaneously a central idea: everything revolves around a jerrycan, a simple recipient to store fossil fuels. Do the works always have a departure point? The answer is ‘no’.

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

AL: This is how I responded to this question in 2012: ‘I believe that one is not only either a rational or inspired being. Creation requires both attitudes. What would be of inspiration if there was no practical and determined spirit? Or what would be of practice without imagination? I consider myself an inspired artisan. As composer I know I need to be practical (…). It is through practice and endeavor that I believe to be able to win. As for the emotions, they simply appear, because they’re natural. And some works can simply be more emotive than the other ones, just because (…). In my opinion it is not controllable. But the two attitudes are necessary and exist in creation side by side: reason on the one hand, and emotion on the other. At what scale? (…) The controllable and the uncontrollable! The free and unfree! The calculated and the unpredictable! In my case, there’s perhaps a greater tendency towards the controllable, the unfree and the calculated. Normally I’m inspired by works, readings, diverse music, in search for the emotion; sounds of a kissanji, which I play to the taste of my imagination, or of a rain stick, which I record for an emotional taste, or reading a text; a piano melodic cell, or a chord, which I simply enjoyed… Then, there’s the structuring of the work, and here I think that I use, above all, my artisan spirit. There are various combinations, transformations, and new materials which are being generated; one grasps riddles or filters, thinks of the intervals for each harmony, the intervals of every melodic line, and controls the emotion! I like to know that everything is united in accordance with my condition as an artisan. I need to have a rational explication for the whole process (…). I don’t know if this is the correct manner to approach a music piece, but this is how I work, although not always in the same way, as in every new work everything can happen differently. Every piece constitutes a challenge!’
After nine years, in 2021 (almost 2022), I don’t feel like changing my answer at all, although today my scarce white hair already gives me the permission for certain previously unexploited freedoms. Perhaps today, the weight between determinism and impulses or freedom, has become slightly different. Maybe for this reason (or not) I have two works entitled “A liberdade, sim, a liberdade!” (May/ 2020), or the last already mentioned one, “Au delá The blue – Pelo outono” (2021) for jerrycan and other satellite instruments with amplification, reverberation and electronics – it’s a poetic act of playing between the determined and the incalculable; a unique and unrepeatable performance, depending on the acoustic circumstances of each sonic instrumental space, inserted within a language between the experimentation and the improvisation. I have also embarked on the writing of the already cited work “Mahâr” (December/ 2020) for flute and electronics, inspired by a popular Indian text “Khyâl”, and which explores worlds that are unusual for me. To embrace the Indian culture and particularly its music, techniques, modes (ragas) and rhythms (talas), is a synonym of freedom, of going beyond limits, going further, without fear, and for the sake of emotion!

· To what extent the new electronic and digital instruments open for you novel paths, and when can they become constraining? ·

AL: Since early, more precisely since my superior studies, I have been composing for electronics or I’ve been collaborating in the realisation of electronics/ sound projection in diverse works by different composers. Approximately half of the works in my catalogue are either mixed pieces where I use electronic or digital means, or electroacoustic works with or without other elements such as video, for example. It’s a significant weight of 50 works in total, composed until today. This number is curious as in 2022 I’m celebrating my 50^th birthday! And regarding the number of works that a composer should or shouldn’t write, I always remember a piece of advice given by Álvaro Salazar: ‘Don’t write to much, as each work constitutes a separate problem’. 50 years and 50 works, perhaps I have already exaggerated! (a smiling emoji would fit here well). As I’ve already mentioned, apart from my own works from the electroacoustic field, I have also collaborated in the electronics realisation and/ or projection of works by diverse composers, such as Virgílio Melo, Cândido Lima, Jonathan Harvey or Karlheinz Stockhausen; the works are: “Circuitus” or “Alletsator XPTO” (2001) by Virgílio Melo (already mentioned); “Gestos-Circus-Círculos” (2001), “ETRAS – cantos de sonhi ma” (2008), “ERÉ(Ó)TYICA-Ai Deus e u é” (2009), “Músicas de Villaiana-coros oceânicos” (2009), “Momento-Paisagem” (2009), “OPTIC MUSIC – quadros cinéticos” (2010), “NI(Y)NI(Y)ANA – ecos cibernéticos” (2012), “UMA FLAUTA PARA TURIM-cantiga de louçana” (2016), “IT ONLY TAKES TWO MINUTES TO...” (2017), “ODE AO TEJO – Regresso de um piano de guerra” (2019), “CHANTIER – melodias em pedra” (2019), “BAGATELA para marimba e electrónica-1770-2020 (Beethoven)” (2020), “REGALO I-le klaxon des voleurs” (2020), “TRÊS REGALOS para saxofone tenor e electrónica (new version)” (2020), “Canto de Quadrazais” (2021), works by Cândido Lima; “Madonna of Winter and Spring” by Jonathan Harvey (presented at the Casa da Música in Porto during the Música Viva 2007 Festival); and also “Mikrophonie 1” (presented at the Café Concerto at the ESMAE) or “Mixtur”, both by Karlheinz Stockhausen (the latter presented at the Jerónimos Monastery in Lisbon, during the Música Viva 2008 Festival).
Throughout the years, my father gathered a significant collection of music equipment, for example, reel readers and recorders of different brands, such as Philco, Akai, Sanyo, Philips, or Grundig, many of them used in professional studios. Today this collection constitutes a kind of museum at my family home. As for myself, when I started working, I created my first sounds on a Yamaha SY77, today a vintage synthesizer, the first one produced by Yamaha in 1989. I’ve kept a computer with the Apple Mac OS Z1 – 9.2.2 and Mac OS X 10.2.8 operating system, with two boot discs – an old Mac already worthy of a museum. On this computer I have still recently composed the work “Reciclo-Recírculos – em forma de sanza” (2019), a work already mentioned here and whose theme is reusing and recycling. A challenge! The composer Cândido Lima possesses a Revox and National reel recorder and reader, and a collection of reels with his first electroacoustic works. If there are any constraints in the use of electroacoustic and digital means, one of them has to do with their ephemerality. If I presently wanted to reconstruct, remake, or repair my first three electroacoustic works, it would be an almost, if not completely, impossible mission. But this is a constraint on its own concerning the ‘Early Music’ category, area dedicated to reproducing music exactly as it was back then. The non-permanence of the means can threaten the durability of the works themselves. Presently we all struggle with the computers, hardware, and software, which become outdated, and thus stop being useable. Saving and safeguarding electroacoustic, electronic, and digital music collections is a challenge. It's obvious that the electroacoustic and digital means pose other types of constraints, such as the technical and aesthetic ones, but the paths that they open are incredible to such extent that they compensate almost everything. The possibilities are almost infinite. It’s a whole marvellous world, far beyond the ordinary, and which is controlled only by the imagination.

· Are research, experimentation, and invention inseparable elements of the music creation and, in general, of the Art? ·

AL: Yes. For me ‘to create’ music and art is, in general, a synonym for invention. Either in experimental music and in the one of pure research, or still in the formal music, art is always invention where the ‘attempt and error’ and the search for new paths lives side by side with the knowledge. It’s a matter of balancing research and invention (or innovation!) of new harmonies, new colours, new timbres, new instruments, new orchestral combinations, new instrumental techniques, or of new registers, in this case as far as the human ear understands (between 16Hz and 20000Hz), generating itself, and sometimes new artistic concepts. In the 20^th century the electronic and digital means have made all the difference, in the registers as well as in the timbres and in the colours or environments, opening possibilities with the emergence of the new electronic, and other instruments. The whole 20^th century and the present one, are centuries of invention, of research and experimentation. We are the result of the invention, research, and experimentation of great masters, such as Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Russolo, Nono, Berio, Schaeffer, P. Henry, Varèse, Messiaen, Boulez, Xenakisn, H. Eimert, Stockhausen, Kagel, Ligeti, Pousseur, and Cage, among others. All the great classical masters were also inventors in their own way. Beethoven was and inventor, Monteverdi was an inventor. What kind of inventor will I be? My works that furthermost make part of these research and experimentation paths are also the already mentioned “Mahâr” and “Au-delà The blue – Pelo outono”, the latter for a new ‘music instrument’, a common jerrycan – a container for fossil fuels – and other satellite instruments. Realised between a writing and a thought in the line of contemporary music, between a determined writing and a language proper to improvisation and experimentalism, or open composition, “Au-delà The blue – Pelo outono” belongs to a freer, more spontaneous and uncommitted world. And merely as a coda – what about J. S. Bach’s two and three part “Inventions”? And Cândido Lima's “Invention Notebooks”? Music without invention and innovation doesn’t exist.

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

AS: When we compose for electronics it’s always necessary to think of the space, which’s an inseparable parameter of this type of music, either in a stereo environment, with two acoustic sources, or in another one. I usually dedicate an important part of the project’s time, providing each element with its proper space. It’s also a way of creating reliefs, above all in electroacoustic solo works. Now in the works for conventional, or less conventional but not electronic instruments, or even in mixed music, I acknowledge to use a lot the pre-established spaces in similar compositions. Space hasn’t been a specific and structural parameter in my works, unless it is a commissioned piece, such as for example “A floresta em Dodona” (March/ 2006), my first and unique opera composed for the first edition of the National Biennial Competition – Ópera em Criação (2005/ 2007), with original libretto by Luísa Costa Gomes and premiered at the São Luiz Municipal Theatre in Lisbon. Now the timbre – it makes integral part of the music, and I give particular attention to it. As I frequently tell my students, the timbre is one of the most complex parameters in music. The timbre can result from a series of combinatorial factors, ranging between the register of each music instrument, the instrumental combination (orchestration), the harmony (or the combination of the intervals), the modulation (close or distant), the instrumental technique (affecting, for example, the attack or the attack transitions of each sound, but also its maintenance and decay), the nature of the sound itself (with less or more, modestly, or considerably intense harmonics). There are many factors giving us the sensation of this or other timbre as it’s one of the less calculable qualities of the music and the sound. Still, in my compositions I try to give particular attention to this music and sound parameter. Sometimes I make diverse combinations when joining the instruments. I articulate the registers. I create harmonic combinations within a direct relation, occasionally, with the instrumental colour. In the field of electroacoustic music, I make my choices in accordance with the principles of studio transformation. The timbre or as one conventionally says ‘the colour of music’ is essential for the music survival and innate to the music itself. What we can do is to kind of act on it.

· Which works from your catalogue constitute turning points? ·

AL: In 2012 I pointed out four works: “Dual”, “A floresta em Dodona”, “A Menina dos Olhos de Chuva”, and “7 Peças Fáceis”. The distance of almost ten years allows me to revise or even to redirect the view towards another perspective. Curiously, and contrarily to what I say in the MIC.PT 2012 Interview, “Dual” isn’t the first work of my absolute responsibility (that is, without the intervention or insight of a professor in an academic context). This work was actually “Coor” from 2003. “Dual” is the first piece emerging from an interior necessity to continue composing, independently of any motivations or appeals coming from the outside of the soul, and independently of any extra motivations and appeals other than music. “Dual” thus represents my emancipation, self-awareness in the determination of a path; it’s the self-determination. It has started with a personal initiative, a necessity to continue expressing myself through music and composition, beyond the course, the academic context, and other contractual obligations. “Dual” was released on CD in 2008 under the Phonedition label, performed by the flutist Monika Streitová and the pianist Sofia Lourenço. It makes part of the CD in tribute to Álvaro Salazar, giving the name to the album itself. As for the opera “A floresta em Dodona” – a ‘mini-opera’, or a pocket opera, composed for the first edition of the National Biennale Competition Ópera em Criação 2005/ 2007, with libretto by Luísa Costa Gomes, and mentioned in the MIC.PT 2012 Interview –, this one, yes, I continue to treat as a symbol of a new form of orchestrating and creating new instrumental combinations. Before, I’d already used the same procedures in orchestrating or combining the instruments in terms of timbre, but rather in chamber music in the piece “Duas cantigas de amigo” (2004), and not in a large orchestra. With “A floresta em Dodona” I could expand the method and embrace new combinations, new timbres, new sonorities, within a new way of comprehending the orchestration. Looking behind, apart from these two works mentioned in the 2012 Interview I also consider as meaningful the work “Luz dum impossível – Variações d’Arada” (September/ 2013), commissioned by the Lisbon Contemporary Music Group, for flute, clarinet, percussion, piano, harp, mezzo-soprano, violin, violoncello, and electronics. The work was premiered at the São Luiz Municipal Theatre in Lisbon, and it is for me one of the most accomplished pieces in terms of working the tempo and the rhythm. It is a conceptual matter, where the music time is treated and comprehended as a continuous line with the occurring pitches. Point and line are two visual-arts concepts. It is a matter of vision, and a particular way to comprehend the tempo and the rhythm and to use them in the composition universe. I can’t finish this answer without mentioning two other works: “DITTY-DITTY” for viola and electronics (December/ 2019) commissioned by the Arte no Tempo association, premiered in Aveiro at the church of the Convento de Jesus da Ordem Dominicana Feminina, an unforgettable place with a unique environment distinguished by a sumptuous, gilded carving and Portuguese ceramic tiles. If I was to take with me a work of mine to a deserted island (if I was given this right…), I would probably choose “DITTY-DITTY”. The memory of the work’s unforgettable premiere by Ricardo Gaspar – a young musician with a notable professional path, winner of the Young Musicians’ Award in Portugal in 2012, and the present chief of the viola section at the St. Gallen Symphony Orchestra (Switzerland) –, has left me with a rare sensation of wanting to repeat the experience. On my continuum line “DITTY-DITTY” is one of the works which makes me ask the question: did I really write this piece? Then there’s “Au-delà The Blue – Pelo outono” (November/ 2021), already mentioned here a couple of times. It is a work going in the direction towards the freedom, without fear of exposing myself. But here I could also mention “Mahâr” or “A Liberdade, sim, a Liberdade!” (May/ 2020).

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

AL: I think that the rationality and emotionality are inseparable. The emotionality comes from rationality. I don’t become emotional with something that I don’t understand that I haven’t already assimilated, learnt or decodified. Some time ago, I heard Nuno Crato (I think that still as the Minister of Education and Science) in a daily news interview, regarding the fact that a great majority of pupils didn’t like Math (or the numbers). Then, recently I’ve found it again in the Diário de Notícias from September 17^th, 2021, and it has marked me: ‘(…) we often (also) fall into an illusion, which’s an illusion of a great error, again, a pedagogical one, that first one likes something and then one learns. No. The two things go in parallel, and the main direction is even the contrary one – first one learns and then one likes. That is, the disillusion of the pupils with Maths is the difficulty in understanding it and in succeeding, which is a difficulty that we all have with many things in life. If I can’t drive a car, I stop being fond of driving. If I can’t jump over an obstacle, I stop liking this obstacle. Therefore, what happens is that the young people need to be taught for the Maths and it is the education – the domain of the things in a systematic and progressive form –, that allows the young people to progressively master these basic concepts and to begin to like them (…).’ ⁹ As a pedagogue I also have this great mission to teach Composition, so that the contents and the subjects are apprehended and understood in a clear, transparent, and complete way. Only in this way will they in fact get the taste for the Composition, the Analysis and, as a result, feel the emotion. First one rationalises and then one feels the emotions! Or they are parallel worlds! I consider myself a regular listener. I go to diverse concerts, having already got emotional in various concert halls, with different works performed, or even in studio situations. At the Casa da Música – great works by Bernd Alois Zimmermann, Maurice Ravel, Pierre Boulez, Claude Debussy, Gustav Mahler, Alexander Scriabin, Olivier Messiaen, Helmut Lachenmann, Claudio Monteverdi, Igor Stravinsky, Mauricio Kagel, Salvatore Sciarrino, Arnold Schoenberg, György Kurtág, Joseph Haydn, Modest Mussorgsky, Edgard Varèse, Charles Ives, György Ligeti, Iannis Xenakis, etc… “Daphnis et Chloé”, “La Mer”, “The Poem of Ecstasy”, “Gaspard de la nuit”, “Vespro della Beata Vergine”, “The Rite of Spring”, “The Firebird”, “Giordano Bruno”, “Gurre-lieder”, “The Seasons”, “Songs and Dances of Death”, “Amériques”, “Symphony no. 4” (by Ives), “Atmosphères”, “Lontano”, “Le Grand Macabre”, “Terretektorh” or “Thallein”, etc. There are also other concert halls – the Lisbon Coliseum (where I heard Luigi Nono’s “Prometeo”), or the Gulbenkian Auditorium, etc. In the studio… for Cândido Lima’s work “Optic Music – quadros cinéticos” I collaborated in the execution of the instrumental electronics (a piano blurred into three pianos), and every time I hear one passage from this work (even in the period of construction, in dialogue with the composer) it’s inevitable for me to get goosebumps or even spontaneously burst into tears. The passage begins at 8’32’’. There are certainly reasons for it, but I prefer not to go beyond the emotion, and the heart. Another work which provokes similar sensations is “Dual” from 4’20’’ up until around 6’10’’, where the flute comes from a passage of ‘aeolian sounds’ and the piano re-enters at 4’30’’ with a low D-sharp. It’s an unexpected continuum in a work made of diagonalities and discontinuities, with certain passages causing a certain frisson, and which here and there point to certain pieces. There are other pieces to mention (for reasons that only the reason understands…).

· In the MIC.PT Interview from 2016 the composer João Madureira said that ‘music is philosophy and politics, which is a way of inhabiting the world’ ¹⁰. Do you feel close to this statement? ·

AL: It’s not necessary for the art to have an adjacent political cause (and consequently a philosophy). But it’s also true that throughout the centuries many works have had an interventive character, constituting music engaged in a certain universe. In 2016, within the ‘Russian Year’ at the Casa da Música, there was a concert with Prokofiev’s “Cantata for the 20^th Anniversary of the October Revolution”, op. 74 (also known as the Red or Bolshevik Revolution). The text (its translation) was projected during the performance of the Casa da Música Choir reinforced with various students from the ESMAE School. Obviously, it’s a work with political intentions, composed by Prokofiev during the time of the ‘great purge’, representing the events of the Bolshevik Revolution, with texts by Lenin, Marx, and Engels (from the 1848 communist manifesto), and by Stalin, for example, his speech delivered in the eve of Lenin’s funeral. The “Cantata” also creates an atmosphere of heroic grandiosity. The work is an obvious political compromise with the revolution initiated by the radical wings and then continued by Stalin’s totalitarian government, yet at the Casa da Música it received a standing ovation created by the music’s emotions and grandiosity, putting aside the political, philosophical, and social message. In this case the music came above and spoke more loudly, independently of the political matters. Does art go beyond the ‘words’? In my catalogue there aren’t many works clearly encompassing these politically and philosophically natured dimensions. There are two exceptions though: “E(H)LLE(M) – Sete momentos em forma de trança” and “Reciclo-Recirculos – em forma de sanza”. “E(H)LLE(M) – Sete momentos em forma de trança” is a work composed in 2017 for the Contracello Duo. It's a multimedia piece, with video created by Inês Silva, a young multidisciplinary artist involved in causes such as art and sustainability or ecology. As she refers in her biographical note: ‘(an author) focused on the problems of profound ecology and biopolitics, sonic explorer and DIY philosopher, interested in collaborative and participative, public-space practices’. She’s an ascending artist, author of, for example, “Variações para Piões – N. º 1” realised within the project “The Museum as Performance” at the Serralves in Porto, or co-author of the ToxiCity project, an artistic, collective, collaborative, and educational action, concerning found objects, such as air quality sensors or speakers. She also makes part of the international artistic collectives Mycelium and MOSCXS, based in Porto. The work “E(H)LLE(M)” symbolises the fight for gender rights and it emerges, as I say in the programme note, ‘(from an) invitation (by the Contracello Duo) during the realisation of the gathering “The Creation from a Feminine Perspective” (DME Festival/ Seia/ May 2016)’. At this gathering one discussed the feminine condition in the art. The other two participants and Portuguese composers, Isabel Soveral and Clotilde Rosa, couldn’t be present due to force majeure reasons. I decided then that the commissioned work would be a tribute to all women, who in the Western world contributed in a real and symbolic way for the present modern society, where gender equality prevails. “E(H)LLE(M)” revisits seven emancipated and Caucasian women from the Western world, who have marked the society in different areas: from politics to art, between activism and science (this is only one of the possible lists). Carolina Beatriz Ângelo, Emma Goldman, Milú, Rosalind Franklin, Rosa Ramalho, Peggy Guggenheim and Florbela Espanca. Feminists, activists, syndicalists, scientists, poets, sponsors, suffragettes (in 1911, Finland was the only European country recognising the feminine suffrage), people’s artists, women who’ve conquered the active and direct participation in the public and political life. The equality between men and women (and extrapolating, between races, beliefs, languages, territories of origin, political or ideological convictions, instructions, economic situations, social conditions, or sexual orientations), is a fundamental principle of the modern world and a right in a democratic state. According to the preamble in the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic, it is indispensable for ‘creating a freer, fairer and more fraternal country’. Now the piece “Reciclo-Recirculos – em forma de sanza” (reuse-recycle) fits into what one could name as biopolitics and a certain branch of ecological philosophy. This acousmatic work from 2019 was premiered in the framework of the 3^rd Culture and Sustainability Symposium at the Lisboa Incomum, managed by the composer and organiser Jaime Reis. As I write in the programme note: ‘It is a soundscape constructed upon the idea of sustainability (…) The keywords here are: reuse and recycle. These are the essential principles of the modern management of waste: reduce, reuse, and recycle. In “Reciclo-Recirculos” I reuse and recycle a computer, my working tool, the hardware, and the software, apart from the sonic material from my electroacoustic works. Here I recover an inactive computer with Apple Mac OS Z1 – 9.2.2 and Mac OS X 10.2.8 operational systems (with two boot discs). What would probably make the whole difference in improving our environment is a more conscious (re)use of our electronic and digital instruments, within longer life spans.’ These two works “E(H)LLE(M)” and “Reciclo-Recirculos” are associated with a certain type of message, with a ‘way of inhabiting the world’, as João Madureira mentions. However, they should equally go beyond that, as survivors of an art and a certain type of music. The work “Reciclo-Recirculos – em forma de sanza” has been selected for the World New Music Days 2021 in China, resulting from an invitation to integrate the Miso Music Portugal/ MIC.PT official application for this ISCM Festival.

· Do you prefer to work isolated in the ‘tranquillity of the countryside’ or in middle of the ‘urban chaos’? ·

AL: Either in the countryside, in Arada, or in the city, in Porto, I am calm. I have no preference.

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

AL: In the 2012 MIC.PT Interview I spoke of the financial crisis context resulting in a decrease of cultural activity. Then I referred the crisis caused by the collapse of the Lehman Brothers Bank, by the stock-market losses (caused by the fall of trust in Wall Street) and by the fraudulent financial schemes, such as the Madoff pyramid which prejudiced thousands of investors all around the world. Presently and after ten years we are again in crisis originating not in the financial markets, but rather a new mysterious coronavirus, which appeared two years ago in the city of Wuhan (China). As we already know, in situations of crisis it’s the culture sector that is most prejudiced. The examples of fight are the public manifestations or motions, demanding an allocation of 1% for Culture form the State Budget. There are also other ones, less structural and more symptomatic crisis moments, such as the protests of the sound, light and image technicians or of other popular and traditional artists, or still the fight for the creation of the Status of Culture Professionals, protecting them also in situations like the one we’re living right now. If there are structural issues in the Culture sector in Portugal, and particularly regarding Music, there are also other circumstantial issues originating from this two-year semi-confinement, where one of the most affected areas has precisely been the Culture. The Music sector was confined during months – many projects were suspended and some of them are irrecoverable. Luckily and despite everything, there have been governmental actions, and of other entities, attenuating the effects of this crisis. The examples are: the Emergency Fund for the Culture, the Emergency Supports for the Artists and Culture, for example, by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation or the SPA – Portuguese Author’s Society, or still municipal or Social Service funds, such as the extraordinary Support for the Activity Reduction within the Culture, Event and Performance Sector. It was through the Emergency Fund for Culture that I was able to create the work “Au-delà The blue – Pelo outono”. Apart from the crises, as I refer in the 2012 MIC.PT Interview, another main issue is for me the Education: Education for the Culture. As I say in this Interview ‘what lacks is an education freely and openly approaching and practicing different music, from different periods (without fear). Simultaneously what lacks is the State investment in the Artistic Education. Just take the last 2020-2026 contract to support the artistic music schools which provide the public education service, or the more and more difficult contractual situation of the teachers and musicians who provide educative services at these schools. Until the main issues of artistic and general education are not resolved, we won’t have an informed, open, participative, critical, and creative society. We will always be the country of the medieval fairs, popular marches, fado and football, etc. (not that I have any motive to be against any of these manifestations). I only think that we can go further and beyond. I think that the existing talents deserve more. I have already lost count of the number of young performers and composers who do and excellent work outside our country! (And inside!) It’s difficult to evaluate the present situation of Portuguese music, also because there’s not only one music. If we talk exclusively about classical music, even this one has different types. Contemporary music is one of the music subtypes. Is it recommended? Personally ‘(I belong) to a generation of fortunate composers, when compared with the elder ones’ (MIC.PT 2012 Interview). Since early I have had the opportunity to develop diverse projects with extraordinary institutions, ensembles, and musicians. Even in the times of the pandemic, I developed and saw diverse projects being realised either in person or online: “NEGRO ALBA” for marimba and electronics (February/ 2020) premiered at the International Spring Music Festival during a live-streaming concert at the Viriato Theatre in Viseu; “A liberdade, sim, a liberdade!” (version for alto saxophone, soprano saxophone and electronics) (May/ 2020) based on the poetry by Álvaro de Campos (Fernando Pessoa), premiered by Rafael Yerba at the Municipal Culture House in Seia (a DME Festival production); “Tempo de Diana” (July/ 2020) for instrumental ensemble and “DITTY-DITTY” for viola and electronics, premiered during the 3rd Contemporary Music Reencounters at the GrETUA Theatre in Aveiro; or “IULIUS” for guitar and electronics (September/ 2020), a commission by the Miso Music Portugal dedicated to Júlio Guerreiro, and premiered at the O’culto da Ajuda in Lisbon (I listened to this concert at a 350-km distance in Porto, via live streaming, while in confinement). Despite the circumstances, it was one of the most fertile times in terms of composition. The isolation delivered new ideas, new perspectives, new sensations, and new sentiments, at a personal level. From the latter point of view, it was also a difficult time.

· How could you describe the situation of female composers nowadays in Portugal and around the world? ·

AL: The situation of gender equality has been seriously threatened in the recent years. It has happened on the one hand, due to the increasing tendency for right-wing and far-right policies to reach democratic powers, even in Europe, even in the countries that are representative for the democracies – the pillars of democracy. On the other hand, in civilisations traditionally with totalitarian, anti-democratic and military regimes, there have been the failed attempts of change, and there’s the continuous permanence of those regimes, in some cases with significative regression regarding the gender equality, threatening the basic life conditions of women. Even today I read the news about the increasing popularity of Zemmour in France, a candidate running in presidential elections, an extreme right-wing radical with power in the mass-media and television, where he beats popularity records, being in an open rise to the presential power. He takes on anti-gender policies (as well as other ones, racist, and discriminative), such as for example the one he calls the ‘masculinisation of women’. In an on-line article José Couto Nogueira writes: ‘The substance of Zemmour’s thought is published in 15 books with suggestive titles, the first one from 1995: “Le premier sexe” (2006), on the feminisation of the Gallic male, a clear appropriation of the title of Simone de Beauvoir’s’ book “Le deuxième sexe” (considered as the intellectual pillar of the women’s fight for a more equal society)’ ¹¹. There are diverse cases of injustice regarding the gender policies inside the European community frame. Just take such countries as Hungary and Poland violating the EU legislation regarding the ‘protection of human rights for equality, freedom of expression and dignity, guaranteed in the 2^nd article of the European Union Treaty and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (European Commission 2021)’ ¹² (article from the Regional Observatory). ‘The anti-gender attack of the Polish and Hungarian extreme right: Domestic Regression and Delays in the European Social Agenda’ ¹³, is a study written by Letícia Fugueiredo Ferreira in August 2021. According to several studies, like this one, ‘it was during the Covid-19 pandemic (also marked by the emergency-states decree in the beginning of 2020), that the approval of a series of measures restricting the rights of the feminine population (and not only) has been intensified’ ¹⁴. For example, in July 2020 Poland ‘presented an official request to the Ministry of Family, Work and Social Politics, to withdraw the country from the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence, widely known as the Istanbul Convention (CIOBANU, 2020)’ ¹⁵. Outside the European Union, the injustice continues, for example, in Turkey where Erdoğan’s regime is in favour of ‘gender traditional roles’. More flagrant cases are obviously the recent power takeover by the Taliban in Afghanistan, with the military withdrawal of the United States of America and with the already widely known implications regarding the feminine condition in Afghanistan; or still other paradigmatic cases in regimes with doubtful practices, such as the one of the recently disappeared tennis player, Peng Shuai. In Portugal, some right wing and extreme right-wing voices have been heard. For the time being, as far as I know, it doesn’t affect the fundaments of gender equality. There is the controversy on the use of bathrooms and locker rooms raised by the Chega party, for example. However, this situation raises some future concerns regarding the continuity of policies promoting the women rights and their presence in active life. For example, these populist parties are the ones where women are less often elected for political offices. Women in the politics, their participation and intervention in the construction of a balanced, just, democratic, free, enlightened, fraternal, dynamic, productive, and informed world, women in the active life – this cannot be threatened. What does it all have to do with music composition? Everything. Women should be educated and encouraged. They should be provided with the same opportunities as men. They need to be heard in the same way, with the same respect and critique, with the same importance, the same attitude and way of being. A lot has been done – the gender quotas for representative collegial organs of power, such as the Parliament, can be one of the examples. In the area of composition, I have seen diverse projects concerned with disseminating feminine works. I have already mentioned my participation in the gathering at the DME Festival, “The Creation form a Female Perspective” (Seia/ May/ 2016), which gave origin to the work “E(H)LLE(M)”, or the concerts “No Feminino” recently produced and organised by the Sond’Ar-te Electric Ensemble, last September, with works by Patrícia Sucena de Almeida, Isabel Soveral, Ângela da Ponte, Mariana Vieira, and a work of mine “Gárgulas d’Arga” (2013). There are also the concerts organised by the Performa Ensemble, “Portuguese 20^th and 21^st Century Female Composers” (2016), where my work “La Forêt” (2008) was performed together with the music of Constança Capdeville, Ana Tavares, Isabel Soveral, Ângela da Ponte, Clotilde Rosa, Berta Alves de Sousa, and Sara Carvalho. I’ve observed with satisfaction many other projects of this kind in the recent years. It’s even interesting to see that communications with the composers are being distinguished in accordance with the gender – ‘Caros Compositores e Caras Compositoras’. Even though there are many nouns (in Portuguese) that can be used and are common both for the feminine and masculine gender, the case of ‘composer’ is different, and for this reason this change of habits is more than welcome. A day will come when we simply won’t need to talk about the gender issues, but this will only happen when a new world emerges. Since Adam and Eve (since man is man, and woman is woman…), the Western history has condemned women to a subordinate condition. Female composers can and should also contribute for the change of the mentality that has lasted for centuries. It’s not a war or a fight with the men, but rather the war and fight against the bad policies and bad decisions and the bad habits ingrained in civilisations, some of them during thousands of years. They are different natures, yet more complementary than confrontational.

· What are your present and future projects? ·

AL: When it comes to composition, I have two new planned projects: the composition of a new work for flute and electronics for young musicians, and the composition of another work for percussion septet. Both pieces have been commissioned by the Arte no Tempo association directed by Diana Ferreira, an exceptional culture encourager, mainly of the music by Portuguese composers. The Arte no Tempo projects with pupils and students from schools all around Portugal, ranging from elementary to higher education, constitute something remarkable. In terms of Education and School Direction (I’m President of the Santa Maria da Feira Music Adacemy, where I’ve carried out the director’s functions for some years, only with a 5-year interval when I was at the Conservatory of Music in Porto), I intend to continue to encourage the young towards Music Composition, trying to be an example for them, and to give my best when it comes to directing a school, its projects, its goals, as well as a set of concrete everyday measures within the school community.

· What are your main artistic concerns at present? ·

AL: Presently I am in between two works. I have just composed “Au-delà The blue – Pelo outono” and I will begin a new work in January. In the last work my main artistic concerns regarded the conciliation of a fixed writing (using an unconventional notation) with the freedom of improvisation and of the performer. That is – how to notate new gestures, new instrumental techniques, new sonorities, new instruments, in a score that is as precise as possible, but which doesn’t abandon the freedom of the music and of its performer. One of the legitimate concerns of Nuno Aroso – the person responsible for the “Materis | Asperes” project where this work is included, and responsible for the work’s commission, apart from being its performer –, is that the work can be also played by any other percussionist. It’s the concern for the works to live beyond the composer and the musician. It is the concern to create a different, unprecedented (!) repertoire, and within the line of a free, improvised, yet notated music. In his MIC.PT Interview ¹⁶ Pedro Amaral said that even if one’d written down the material of a work created from free improvisation, as it happened so often in jazz, it’s certain that the work would have never remained the same. It’s true. A work starting with the principle of the momentary gesture is never repeatable, even when played from the most precise score. However, in “Au-delà The blue” we started with a written and structured idea, moving towards the liberation of the musician (a writing giving space for the improvisation). A free writing. Although the work has already been premiered at the Casa da Música in Porto, its final notation is still in the process of being completed. There are details that need to be notated in the score in the possibly most precise manner, and which have remained opened at the time of composition. It’s a work to be realized together by the composer and the performer.

· In one of the 2020 interviews the Austrian composer Georg Friedrich Haas said that ‘the new-art creators act as yeast in the society’ ¹⁷. 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? ·

AL: The proof of the importance of the Art and of its role in the society, can be found within the confinement and isolation months, when the society was apparently reduced to survival. Do you remember the artistic manifestations on the balconies, in the windows, or on the rooftops? Or the unforgettable rainbow drawings made by children and displayed in the windows or on the balconies? Italy: ‘The habitants of Rome sing “Bella Ciao” and the National Anthem in the windows, on the Freedom Day’; Germany: ‘A skeleton has been seen on the balcony of a flat in Frankfurt, on March 23^rd’; Brazil: ’55-year old Adelmo Carvalho plays the violin on the balcony during the isolation to avoid the propagation of the COVID-19 in Rio de Janeiro’; France: ‘Jessey Koch, violinist from the Mulhouse Symphony Orchestra, performs daily on her balcony to support the health professionals in Mulhouse in east France, on March 28^th’; Poland: ‘The opera singer Michał Janicki performs on the balcony of his flat, on March 28^th, singing for his neighbours in Warsaw during the confinement, to contain the spread of new coronavirus’; USA: ‘Danny Wertheimer plays guitar and sings for his neighbours on his balcony in Oakland (California), on March 21^th, two days after California’s governor introduced an instruction to stay at home in the whole State’; Belgium: ‘The resident Françoise and her son Denis pose on their porch with objects that are meaningful to them, during isolation imposed by the Belgian government in the attempt to slow down the outbreak of Covid-19 in Brussels, on March 19^th’. All around the world, there have been many other manifestations of this kind, some more artistic than the others. The isolation has only evidenced the inevitability of the art, the human expression. It’s the yeast that not even the virus is able to eliminate. New art? Or simply art? Or art in a new circumstance? I respect the work of the Portuguese artists, of the singer and composer Flávio Cristóvam and the director Pedro Varela, who created the music and the video “Andrà tutto bene” (“Vai ficar tudo bem”). Art will always exist in any situation, such as this one, at a distance (with oceans in the middle) and with a social role to fight isolation and loneliness. The entire manifestation of artistic expression – from the vanguard to the non-vanguard, from classical to popular music, from written music to improvisation, from new to early art –, all these manifestations act as an engine in the society. Is avant-garde or contemporary art, so to speak, the front engine? Yes. And what’s its role? To be ahead of any other artistic manifestation: to provoke, to make one think, to cause bewilderment (in some cases), amazement and surprise, to stir emotions, to inspire, transform and impel. How is it possible to increase the importance and impact of this role? By creating even more art.
In this answer I don’t forget other civilisations where art is not art because it simply doesn’t exist, as for example the music in Afghanistan; or it has other roles within society, oriented mainly towards religion. For religious reasons, the Taliban have destroyed great part of a heritage of incalculable historic and artistic value – diverse statues of Bamiyan Buddhas. Statues that were around two thousand years old! And if we go back in the Western history, we have music that nowadays is an artistic object, but which in the past had no other role than to be used in meditative and religious practice. For example, the plain chant or the Gregorian chant. Apart from this concrete case of European music, there are other ones where music wasn’t, and isn’t, included in the civilisational and cultural concept of art. It has played many other roles on the five continents.

Ângela Lopes, between Porto and Arada, December 15^th, 2021
© MIC.PT

¹ English translation by Jakub Szczypa.
² ibidem.
³ School of Music and the Performing Arts in Porto (ESMAE).
⁴ Subject created by Cândido Lima at the ESMAE.
⁵English translation by Jakub Szczypa.
⁶ ibidem.
⁷ ibidem.
⁸ ibidem.
⁹ English translation by Jakub Szczypa. Original, Portuguese version: LINK.
¹⁰ Interview to João Madureira, conducted by the MIC.PT in October 2016 and available at:LINK.
¹¹ English translation by Jakub Szczypa. Original, Portuguese version: LINK.
¹² English translation by Jakub Szczypa.
¹³ ibidem.
¹⁴ ibidem.
¹⁵ ibidem.
¹⁶ IN THE 1^st PERSON, Interview (in Portuguese) with Pedro Amaral conducted by Pedro Boléo, recorded on October 6^th, 2020 at the O’culto da Ajuda in Lisbon. Complete Interview (in Portuguese) available on the MIC.PT YouTube channel: LINK.
¹⁷ Interview to Georg Friedrich Haas, conducted by Filip Lech in June 2020 and available on-line on the Culture.pl website at: LINK.

Ângela Lopes · Playlist