music on the threshold: Muziek als...

Is it here or there? where is the music? where is it not? is it humorous? is it related to something? is it a lamp or an instrument? is it more than a concert? is that actual playing? is that acting? is that a sound? is that a gesture? is that an echo? where does it start? where does it end? seeing and hearing together? not together? tangentially? is it a lion? is it a lion's roar? is it evocative? is it abstract? is it a time machine? is it a cassette player? is it just a repetition? is it something that will continue in your mind? is it just a page turn or a turn within the piece? is it hidden? is it a mirror? is it reflected music? is it a symbol? is it a blackboard or a magical synesthetic map where sound and image inevitably coexist? is drawing musical? is it a piano étude or a pianist trying to find her way in the world? is it a glass of water or a filter? is it just an encapsulated song or a space for alchemy within a loudspeaker? is it a decontextualized object? is it a real one? is it sounding in your head as a recollection? is it new? is it ironic? is it fragile? is it about you/he/me/us/you/they?

Most average contemporary concerts do not raise such questions because they display such ritualistic structures that empty the actual content of the pieces of most of their intentionality. All expectations are fulfilled. Nothing to declare.
The music generally follows that pattern as well... references to a certain academic background, a safe model, a justifiable array of choices that generates conforting certainties, answers instead of questions,'happy endings'.

Luckily, there is still some scope for difference. The three concerts proposed by Stichting Plan B in the Netherlands (http://muziekalsbehindthescene.blogspot.com/) function as a laboratory for question marks... For me that is one of the most beautiful aspects of this project. The very definition of a 'concert' is put under question, reformulated all the time. The formats are variable, transportable, constituted by daily life objects and low-tech devices, no expensive, massive productions but intimate, fragile and musically-complex universes. These are able to sustain quite unique and solid pieces through deep musical thought instead of technological façades. The concerts work as a laboratory in which the objects are turned into unpredictable artifacts, sometimes they relate to the actual world, creating a certain nostalgia, sometimes they lose completely that function and adopt a fresh significance. Gesture, lights, casette players... they all become ingredients of the musical discourse which is sometimes extended, reflected and frozen in space by different installations.The concerts don't work as a casual overlap of pieces but stay within a particular aesthetic universe. I like to think that the music in this project  inhabits the threshold of things: it lives in the ambiguous realm between the world of reality and its reproductions, between memory and the still unknown, between space and music, between daily life objects and traditional instruments, between acting and playing, between visibility and invisibility, between the dreamed and the experienced.

la ventaja de la retaguardia

Know thy instrument

Know thy instrument (Socrates)
-Morton Feldman

cansado de:

cansado de:
la academia, los discursos aprendidos, los discursos preparados, las cacatúas talentosas, los softwares sin reflexión, la tecnología como máscara, la superficie de las cosas, lo seguro, los críticos con sonotone, los campus-itores, el popurrí, el miedo al error, lo seguro y predecible, la complacencia gratuita, el gesto vacío, el vibráfono con arco, el positivismo yanki, la armonía como maquillaje, la política musical, la poesía buscada, el pop, el miedo al silencio, lo mismo de lo más, el 'patch' de lo justificable, el efecto inmediato y superficial, lo kitsch como rareza fingida, la idea de talento, A+B=C, lo explícito sin 'detrás', la densidad como disfraz de lo vacío, el solapamiento casual, las categorías facilonas.

memoria en 3D

'Living backwards!' Alice repeated in great astonishment. 'I never heard of such a thing!'
'— but there's one great advantage in it, that one's memory works both ways.'
'I'm sure mine only works one way,' Alice remarked. 'I can't remember things before they happen.'
'It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards,' the Queen remarked.
(Lewis Carroll: 'Through the looking glass')

Estoy escribiendo una obra en la que hay una geografía compleja en el escenario: una especie de plano del metro en el que cada objeto está unido con una línea más o menos visible (un cable, un hilo) con un objeto paralelo. Esto determina la arquitectura del sonido también. Lo que se escucha aquí suena análogamente allá, más lejos, al fondo, detrás, delante, fuera, dentro, en el medio, encima, debajo...
 A veces pienso en este proceso de reciprocidad desde el punto de vista de la memoria, tratando de establecer un paralelismo entre lo reproducido por el mundo análogo de las grabaciones y su confirmación en el mundo 'real' de los intérpretes. Una especie de anticipación de lo que ocurrirá unos compases más adelante, o vice-versa, un señuelo que es confirmado más adelante por los altavoces. Me gusta pensar que todo este proceso funciona como un mapa paralelo al establecido por los objetos y el sonido: algo abstracto y subyacente, una geografía del recuerdo que se va confirmando por medio de las grabaciones y su ancla al mundo tangible de los instrumentos así como a la subjetividad de la experiencia de quien escucha.
Casualmente, en esta obra estoy trabajando con pequeños textos de 'A través del espejo'. La reina de ajedrez posee la capacidad de utilizar la memoria en dos direcciones: hacia el futuro y hacia el pasado, de tal manera que lo que se hará mañana se recuerda hoy. Me encanta la idea de esta especie de memoria 'flotante' en el tiempo,  una especie de rebobinado imposible de lo que está por llegar. Por supuesto, todo esto no es ajeno al mundo de la música a través del simulacro temporal creado por el movimiento retrógrado en el contrapunto tradicional.
 En mi obra, las grabadoras funcionan como una especie de pequeñas máquinas del tiempo, donde se congela por unos instantes lo que será interpretado por los músicos algunos compases adelante: una especie de premonición detenida en una cajita, un fragmento que está aún por materializarse en el futuro, en el mundo concreto de los intérpretes. A veces sucede lo contrario: una vuelta de la tortilla temporal en el que la interpretación acaba tomando forma en el altavoz.
Creo que la tercera dimensión de la memoria pertenece, como indicaba anteriormente, a la experiencia individual, a enlazar lo inmediatamente adquirido al mundo particular de los recuerdos para crear un mapa mucho más complejo y subterráneo que el que determina la obra.

'What sort of things do you remember best?' Alice ventured to ask.
'Oh, things that happened the week after next'

auto-questionnaire ( confessions for a program note)

1 why do you compose?

I arrived to the world of composition rather accidentally as I come from a completely non-musical environment. I soon realized that it was a good platform from which I could generate responses to several inner creative questions. I think that as long as those questions exist I will continue involved with composition. I suspect that composition as such is not the ultimate goal but rather a format where I can implement or translate ideas that have been stored in my mind for a long time.

2 how do you compose?

In terms of routine I'm very Stravinskian. I usually work for a regular number of hours every day. That is a somewhat painful process since many times you just confront a blank piece of paper without many expectations of filling it up. However, that sort of daily 'horror vacui' triggers a certain response in the shape of a 'fleeing forward' process. I am a composer that usually works with daily units, that is, what has been produced during a day becomes a somewhat independent and quasi self-sufficient fragment within a larger piece. This is not a diary-like process but rather the result of a method or a habit. The ultimate result of this is the feeling of a constant beginning, the impression of being at a particular starting point every day without completely losing a sense of continuity.

3 why this piece, now, today?

I believe that it is quite difficult to thoroughly justify your aesthetic decisions in relation to the world as many of them just originate and manifest themselves in deeply subjective and subterranean ways. I think, however, that my piece was developed as a bit of a comment towards the highly performative artistic environment in which we live. In fact it is a piece that explores the negative side of a performance: the musicians and the music are placed and aimed towards the backstage, towards an intimate realm which is relatively disconnected from the audience both visually and sonically.

4 could you not do anything better in life?

It would be impossible to answer that question accurately unless we accept the fact that there are several living replicas of myself and we evaluate how successfully they deal with their respective professions. I hope they are not reading this questionnaire though.

5 how do you manage to combine everyday life eating, sleeping, relationships, family, taxes and composing? Do they influence each other? In what way?

I try to isolate as much as possible the act of composition from the rest of things, a bit like a shelter which protects oneself from the inclemencies of the exterior world. Unfortunately, since the expenses of life are usually not covered by composition itself one has to confront and explore other disciplines to stay afloat. I think that most composers end by having multiple faces from a professional point of view. However, I do not believe that those experiences necessarily manifest themselves in the music I write.

6 what attracts you in the music of whom?

There are many composers whose music I deeply admire. They belong to several periods, from Dufay till Feldman and beyond. I try not to see the history of music in a linear, dialectic way but rather as a holistic present frame in which the music of Machaut, Mozart or Grisey have the same level of immediacy. I have never been very interested in the evolution and dialectics of materials but rather in the different ways in which they are articulated. I could therefore mention many composers that have influenced me but that would greatly exceed the scope of this

questionnaire.

7 Schönberg said: The chief requirements for the creation of a comprehensible form are logic and coherence. The presentation, development and interconnexion of ideas must be based on relationship.¹ Is coherence in a work of art still a valid notion today?

I think that Schönberg's idea is rather classical and scholastic. I do not believe that elements necessarily need to be presented, interconnected and 'justified' in order to build a piece of art. Sometimes the uniqueness of an event is sufficient in itself. I believe that coherence is an 'outer' rather than an 'inner' aspect of a piece. When we listen to a piece we establish interconnections between the elements we are presented with, or we don't. We link those events to our experience of the world or not. Coherence is something that cannot be clearly determined and controlled by the composer, it is something that generally flows through the subjective channels of the listener.

8 what is essential for you in composition?

What I appreciate more in composition and art in general is a certain sense of difference. This is not necessarily related to notions such as 'professionalism' or 'quality' (which are normally used within academic environments). It is not about 'inventing the wheel' either but rather about reformulating what already exists.

9 is the concept of 'new' still relevant today? if so, what does it mean?

I like better the term 'different'. I believe this is an essential issue. As I stated in the previous answer I do not believe that we have to invent the wheel over and over again but rather to re-contextualize or reformulate what is already there. Materials, regardless of their origin, usually belong to the supermarket of possibilities, to the array of creative choices. It is just the way in which we reformulate and reuse them what makes the difference. This may be carried out by mere musical procedures or by other external means: space, gesture...

10 is there any relationship between what¹s happening in the world and your work?

I personally try to detach as much as possible what I do as a composer from the social aspects that surround me (this does not mean that I am not actively taking part in society from a personal perspective). I think, however, that even if I intend to build an artificial, creative refuge there several aspects of experience, of the time and the space in which we live that involuntarily permeate into my work. I never try, however, to evidently incorporate them in my work, to push them manifestly over the surface of the piece. They occasionally show up as a remnant of a thought, an image, a sound, a text, a perception...

de 1 a 1100

Hay autores que nos insertan en un laberinto del que escapar no tiene sentido. El laberinto es la obra y los saltos y ramificaciones de la novela no encarrilan un pensamiento en una dirección concreta sino que se van multiplicando constantemente. En 'el arcoiris de gravedad', Thomas Pynchon va saltando de un tema a otro sin una lógica preestablecida. Los personajes desaparecen y reaparecen de manera impredecible, como si estuvieran acechando tras una bruma de palabras. Las situaciones se encadenan constantemente en una inacabable aventura de 1150 páginas, de las cuales es difícil extraer algo concreto. Slothrop, un sujeto víctima de experimentos pavlovianos de los nazis va viajando de escenario en escenario, de situación en situación en la que cada página podría ser la última (o la primera). La potencialidad de direcciones posibles que adquiere la novela provoca que el lector se halle siempre en una especie de punto cero, de comienzo constante. La maravillosa anarquía de la novela sitúa en un mismo plano situaciones hilarantes, pornografía, humor, muerte, canciones populares, referencias eruditas que funcionan como un comentario burlón a la literatura, la sociedad y por ende al oficio de escribir...
Pynchon, cual equilibrista de la verborrea, va saltando atléticamente de cuestión en cuestión, sin profundizar nunca en nada, quedándose en la superficie de las cosas, evitando la búsqueda de 'sentido', creando contextos y situaciones, mapas mentales...Sí, suena predecible, postmoderno, lo que uno quiera... sin embargo hay algo magnético que te atrapa hasta el final. En mi opinión, el libro funciona como un desmesurado y prolongado chiste que trata de abarcar todo lo literario, mirándolo desde una erudita carcajada que no acaba por hacerse escuchar.
'El arcoiris de gravedad' es una obra en la que el espacio está siempre definido: el territorio lleno de  cascotes, ruinas y tuberías de la Alemania derrotada tras la segunda Guerra Mundial. En ocasiones, la obra adquiere una dimensión claramente teatral, en el que  los personajes parecen irremediablemente destinados al espacio acotado del escenario .
A mí me parece que las novelas de Pynchon tienen algo profundamente musical. El uso de los personajes no es psicológico, no analiza su 'mundo interior', su pensamiento. Son utilizados como materiales que van apareciendo y desapareciendo entre el fluir constante de las ideas. Esa idea se me antoja completamente musical, los personajes 'están' pero son utilizados como objetos: se repiten, se transforman, se rozan... pero sus acciones no están justificadas, son elementos necesarios de un flujo, de una inacabable obra-laberinto que se reinventa constantemente a lo largo de la propia lectura.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZS0YjdmuHc&feature=related