A short quote

This is a short quote I found recently. A colleague from the Conservatoire used the first line in a choral piece he wrote, and I was very impressed by the depth of the text. Here it is, it's a fragment of the Song of Myself by Walt Whitman:
 
I exist as I am, that is enough,
If no other in the world be aware I sit content,
And if each and all be aware I sit content.

One world is aware and by far the largest to me, and that is myself,
And whether I come to my own to-day or in ten thousand or ten million years,
I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait.

Great Speech

I just wanted to take a moment and share this amazing speech with you. I haven't seen the movie, but this is the final speech delivered by Charlie Chaplin in the film The Great Dictator. 

I have listened to it now three consecutive times, and cried on each one.

I would like to hear a real politician say this: to actually admit that what the world needs is love and compassion, that we don't need luxury to be happy, that we don't need to hate our neighbors, that we must love everyone. I would like to hear a politician talk sincerely about despair and human pain, about hopelessness, and about how love and compassion are the only console for this. True love and true compassion.

Here is a quote from the Bible that is amazing for one very particular reason: it speaks about love without mentioning one single time either God, Jesus or any other biblical character of importance. It is very simple and direct, and it summarizes perfectly what the rest of the book is about. It is chapter 13 from the first letter of Paul to the Corinthians:

"If I speak in human and angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal.

And if I have the gift of prophecy and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge; if I have all faith so as to move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing.

If I give away everything I own, and if I hand my body over so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, (love) is not pompous, it is not inflated,

it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury,

it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth.

It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never fails. If there are prophecies, they will be brought to nothing; if tongues, they will cease; if knowledge, it will be brought to nothing.

For we know partially and we prophesy partially,

but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.

When I was a child, I used to talk as a child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I put aside childish things.

At present we see indistinctly, as in a mirror, but then face to face. At present I know partially; then I shall know fully, as I am fully known.

So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love" 

I think it is very relevant to quote from the Bible, to remember how the most influential book in the history of Western civilization, a book that has been quoted over and over to justify countless atrocities towards humanity, is actually about love and compassion. This should remind us of how people with power take our dearest symbols, our greatest and deepest messages, and just distort them, prostitute them, rape them and mutilate them so that they serve their own egoistical ends. 

Sunn O))), Amenra and DakhaBrakha

Yesterday I went to an amazing concert in Paard van Troje, in The Hague (for those of you who live here, it's very close to Grote Markt). The performers were the ones mentioned in the title, plus others. I must confess I left immediately after Sunn O))) finished because I really needed to digest what had just happened.

The night began at 20.00 with a performance of Nicad with the New European Ensemble. They are more on the pop side, but I could tell some influences from My Chemical Romance and music of this style. They had nice arrangements and the orchestration was very well made. It was a bit too nice and perfect for my taste, though, but listenable nonetheless.

Then came DakhaBrakha (link is to a recording of a concert they gave in Roskilde, Denmark), a group from Ukraine. I have never heard anything as amazing as them in this kind of genre, maybe Eivør Pálsdóttir (Faroese singer). I don't know much about Ukrainian folk music, but the group describes itself as "chaos folk," and you can feel lots of harmonies that evoke this traditional style singing, but with a more "modern" (i.e. western) approach. Very interesting, what they do, I especially like the first two songs. I would really like to go to Ukraine and see how it is, I have seen and heard many amazing things coming from this country, I have met many nice people from there, so I would like to know how it is, to feel the air there, to see the people, to hear the language (which I understand is mainly Russian, but anyway).

DakhaBrakha

Because Paard van Troje has two concert halls, the presentations of Amenra and DakhaBrakha were overlapped, so I missed a good half of Amenra's presentation. But what I heard was amazing also. It's a completely different idea, very dark music, lots of "dirty," distorted noises, 4/4 beat, what you would expect from any metal band of this particular genre. On this sense, it was a very "safe" act, there was nothing adventurous about it, most songs were pretty simmilar between them. Despite this, I liked it very much, but mainly because in general I enjoy this music. It seems to me that it comes from the deepest corners of human despair and desolation. A voice shrieking in the dark, "why have You forsaken us?" while the audience moves convulsively, in a kind of trance that leads nowehere but further and further into darkness. Can we help it? Can we avoid being sucked into the blackness? Should we not sing these songs of anguish and wretchedness? The whole place was filled with this massive sound, with this rhythm that drove the audience into a kind of trance, just twitching to the music, moving as we could, following the shirtless figure on stage, with an inverted cross tatooed on his back, not looking at us, but at some unknown point inside himself. He crouched on the floor, screaming. It was horrible and beautiful at the same time. So much pain, so much.

The lead singer of Amenra, with his back to the audience.

Then came Sunn O))) (link is to a concert they gave in Leuven, Belgium)... I don't have words for describing it, it was a huge wall of sound, or more like being submerged in an ocean of vibrations. Most of the sounds were low, dissonant. I felt vibrations on my throat, on my stomach, my legs. After 20 minutes of this, I began loosing it completely. I have never felt something like that, my mind just began going everywhere, I began remembering things from months ago, then I came back to the sound, then I went off again, then I came back. It was almost as a meditation, but much more chaotic and dark. Some people around me were also loosing it. I didn't move at all, but some people began extending their arms, moving, shaking, touching their faces. The singer mostly spoke, saying incomprehensible things that sounded as some kind of ancient prayer said in a cathedral of noise and chaos. The performers were dressed in dark robes, and the stage was full of smoke and coloured lights. It was very impressive. It felt as a further stage into madness, after the controlled despair of Amenra, this was the uncontrolled rage of the forgotten souls. It was terrible, unbearable. At everymoment I thought I was going to faint, to fall into madness. This is what I meant when I said that no work of art should be made that doesn't plunge the spectator into madness. After experiencing a work of art, it should not be easy to go back to the real world, to face the daily routines. This is exactly what happened to me, I could barely drive my bike back. I remember less than half of my route back home (a 20-minute drive under the rain). Sunn O))), at least in my personal opinion, is pure art. They build mountains of sound and just drop them mercilessly on the audience, not caring if they can cope with them or not, because I sincerely doubt the performers themselves can. Simply beautiful.

Light and smoke and figures dressed in dark robes: Sunn O)))

Performance of my piece

On Monday I had the opportunity to attend the premiere of my piece "Another year..." performed at the Korzo Theatre in The Hague. It was an amazing experience, to see my piece finally come to life after so many months of revisions. The musicians were very committed to the music, and it showed. I was very satisfied and, after the concert, several people approached me to say they had also enjoyed it.

I feel very happy that other people liked it, but if no one had liked it, or approached me to congratulate me, I would not have felt disappointed in any way. This piece is one of the few pieces I have made so far with which I am completely satisfied. I did what I wanted to do, exactly as I wanted it, and the sound result reflects almost exactly what I had in my mind (of course, with the added value of the interpretation the musicians gave). This is the most important thing to me. 

Allen Ginsberg, who wrote the haiku

I used as text for my piece.

But then, I also think that the fact that other people liked it is really important (I am assuming that the people that approached me were being honest and not just polite). To me, it means that, in some way, there was a connection between us, that, for one moment, we could communicate without barriers. For me, this is also the most important thing. This is the whole point of making music. I remember a quote from the movie Copying Beethoven, where Beethoven talks to his secretary's fiancé, who is an architect. He says, "you build bridges to connect pieces of land, I build bridges to connect the souls of people," or something along that line. While I don't feel as an almighty God that has the power to make others bow to my will and cry when I tell them to, or smile or sing, I do feel the need to share what I do, because it may reach other people in the same way it reached me and motivate them to be more honest with themselves, in the way I am trying to be as honest as possible to myself. 

I don't know if I succeeded in this or not. I don't expect anything, I just want to be myself and try to motivate others to do the same. We cannot love others if we don't love ourselves first, not in the run-down commercial way of "I buy things for myself, I travel the world, I go to the gym, therefore I love myself," I mean the true way, saying "I love myself as I am, I don't put any conditions on this, I shall be as I am and I don't need anything else to love myself." Only when we attain this level of self-respect can we begin to love the world around us. 

Graffiti by Banksy

Even more thoughts on the vocal piece

I have been thinking more about this vocal piece. There are some issues with writing a piece that involves so "little" amount of work from my part. I feel like I am not actually doing anything, as if I was just relaying the burden of composing to someone else, doing something like what Borges does on his short story, Theme of the Traitor and the Hero (and others, but this is my favorite example): outlining a possible outcome for a creative idea, suggesting a line of thought that could be followed by a more apt pursuer rather than following it myself.

But, then again, am I really not doing anything? Am I really not working hard to arrive to this conclusion? Is it really not the result of hours and days and weeks of thought, and debate, and changes, and more changes, and questioning and more questioning? Furthermore, should I always comply to an ideal of "hard work" as a kind of work that delivers a finished material to be easily consumed by the public? Why can I not allow myself to trust the performers, to allow them to have some more part in the creation of this music? Must I always dictate to the utmost degree of precision what everybody has to do?

John Cage, one of the fathers of Indeterminacy

I feel that, mainly, this is a result of my own insecurities. I fear that, if I am not clear enough with what I say, the result will be a disaster, or that it will not result in what I want. But, another question, should it always result in what I want? On one hand, I could say "yes, that's why I'm writing music in the first place, so that it stays." But another me could say, "but, wait, do you really need to be able to predict what is going to happen, to have control over destiny in some way, to be satisfied with the outcome? Why not have some degree of surprise, of indeterminacy?" 

This post is a kind of self-debate. I feel the need to be able to justify why I am doing this, because it represents a complete detour from my usual way of working (id est writing everything in a fully-notated way).

I don't feel like I am doing this to impress anyone, or to demonstrate anything to anyone. If I was (I have to be really sure I am not), then the whole effort would have proven meaningless, since then the piece would not have any value of its own, it would not be a fruit of my own liking, but rather a vane attempt to imitate someone else in order to gain respect from others. 

The problem I see with this writing is that the great freedom I give to the performers can be interpreted as a permission to do "anything," which is something Christian Wolff mentioned a lot in his lecture. He said that he has the ideal that the musicians will be willing to put all their effort in making the piece sound as good as possible, but that this is, of course, not always the case. In my case, I have two performers that are very open to working with new music and whom I consider also to be very good persons as well. So maybe this problem is not very much of a problem at all. I also has to do with the rehearsals of the piece, and I intend to have many, so that the performers really feel what the idea is about, and can build the music around it. 

I think it might be a problem of facing the fact that I don't want to control this music, although I feel the great urge to do so. I feel that this piece should be free, it should be what the performer wants it to be. The journey from darkness to light, from ignorance to enlightenment has to be a personal one, this is why the piece simply cannot be a through-composed piece, because each performance has to mean a different search, a different path. Each duo has to find its own way. 

I think it might also be that I am afraid of "wasting" my time in writing a piece that will be worthless, and then having to redo it. But is time really wasted? Who am I to declare if I wasted my time or not, as if I owned it? Would I have learned nothing? I don't think so now.

Maybe there is nothing to worry about, then. Maybe I just need to write the music and see what happens. Maybe I just need to stop being so frightful about jumping into these unknown waters. I am not a believer of the "try everything at least once in your life" philosophy, but I do believe you can apply it to certain things in life. For example, this. I wouldn't like to let go the opportunity of exploring into the terrain of indeterminate music, of musical experimentation. That's why I decided to study composition in the first place.

So, I go to write now. 

More thoughts on the vocal piece and time

On Thursday, I had another composition lesson and my teacher (this is another teacher, I think I forgot to mention that at the Royal Conservatoire, bachelor students work with two teachers) commented a lot on my way of notating the piece. 

In order to have a greater sense of rhythmic freedom in the piece (i.e. in order to avoid a sense of "pulse"), I decided to notate it as a succession of time lapses with some pitches and dynamics inside. So, for instance, you would get a "bar" that lasts for 1'10" where the pianist has to play a low C, then some pizz on the strings, then a chord, another low C, another low C and then another chord or something like that. So the distribution of the sound events is free to be determined by the performer. At the same time, I divided the piece into very precise time lapses, dividing the 7 minutes that we have as maximum (420 seconds) into sections using a 5:3:1 proportion, and then subdividing these sections using the same proportions. 

What my teacher pointed out was the contradiction between wanting a pulse-free sound and dividing the time so precisely. He concluded that, in performance, it would not sound very different from a fully notated score, and he showed me the score of Berio's Concerto for 2 pianos, which begins with a time-lapse, "free," notation and continues, once the orchestra enters, with fully notated rhythms. The difference between the two sections is barely noticeable, if at all. 

Terry Riley

What he suggested was to look at the examples of some American composers, who worked with "programs" instead of fully notating their scores. Christian Wolff came back to mind, with his pieces that are mainly sets of suggestions that can result in performances that vary greatly between each other. I was interested in this idea, but I feel that this kind of notation can very much result in music that does not have any drammatic element, which is fine, but it's not what I wanted to do with this piece. Then he also mentioned Terry Riley's piece in C, where he gives a number of melodic patterns to be played in order, but with a free amount of repetitions, free dynamics and free tempo. I think that this can be more suitable for what I want to do, because it gives me the chance of writing melodic lines and harmonies that can convey the atmosphere I wanted for this piece, while at the same time making the piece less "stable," by also giving the performers much more freedom of interpretation.

I leave you with a quote by Jorge Luis Borges (my favorite writer of all), from his essay A New Refutation of Time:

Time is the substance of which I am made. Time is a river that sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that mangles me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire. The world, unfortunately, is real; I, unfortunately, am Borges.

Also, here is a recording of Terry Riley's in C.

P.D.: I apologize for my carelessness. Terry Riley's piece does have a very definite pulse and tempo. What I meant (but was obviously very unclear about) was that the concept utilized in this piece (id est the free repetition of patterns, which can be extended or reduced as well) is a very useful idea for me to use in a different way in my piece. 

Tristan und Isolde

I just finished watching the second act of Tristan und Isolde, by Richard Wagner. I intended to watch the whole opera tonight but one of my housemates is really tired and the house, as one would expect, is not completely soundproof. I don't think he would be very pleased trying to fall asleep with a soprano screaming on the room next to his (I was watching the opera on the TV we have in the living room, and even with the volume close to the minimum, the music was still sounding really loudly).

The music is amazing, I was really impressed at how Wagner builds up the tension continually throughout the whole development of the opera. When Act I finished, I was left with a feeling of "I need to know what will happen next" even though we must admit that not much actually happens in the opera, since it is mainly composed by dialogues between the characters. They don't do anything, just talk between them, but the psychological drama(together with the unresolved musical tensions that dominate the harmonies in the orchestra) keeps you on the edge of your seat at least until the end of Act II (I haven't watched Act III, so we'll see how well everything comes to an end).

Waltraud Meier, who sings Isolde in the version I'm watching. 

I love the intensity of all her gestures, like in this photo.

The story is really simple, as well. Isolde, a member of the Irish nobility (I am assuming the princess of Ireland at the time, although I didn't understand that entirely) is being taken by Tristan to Cornwall to marry King Marke, his uncle. She remembers that Tristan (using a very clever alias, "Tantris") came to her not long ago, wounded and weak, asking her for refuge and help. Se cured him and later he came back, proud and strong, demanding to take her as King Marke's future wife. For her, this is a disgrace, since the King of Cornwall pays tribute to the King of Ireland, apparently. Also, because Tristan killed her future husband (whose name I forgot but I was something like Mordol, Moldor, Mordor - no, that's Lord of the Rings...) and sent her back his head, almost as a joke. So we can farily say that, at the beginning of the opera, Isolde pretty much hates Tristan and wants to kill him both to avenge her dead fiancé and to avoid the disgrace of marrying the King of Cornwall. At the end of the act, after one hour of talking about dishonour, revenge, death, blood, and the like, she tries to kill him by offering him a drink, which is supposed to be a deadly poison. She drinks too (thinking, I suppose, that thus she will commit suicide), not knowing that her maid didn't pour the poison in the cup, but a love potion. Isolde and Tristan fall in love. The rest of the opera is both of them dealing with the fact that they are in love, loving each other and suffering because they are not supposed to be in love, since Isolde is the King's wife and Tristan is supposed to be one of the King's most loyal knights. Of course, the King finds out about this affair and everything just collapses. I still don't know how it all will end, though, I hope I have time soon to finish watching it.

Isolde is healing "Tantris," in what looks like a movie

version. Unfortunately, I don't know much about it.

One of the things that surprised me the most was the intensity of the text. I knew beforehand Wagner's musical habilities, I really enjoy most of his music and I think he was a great composer. I also knew he wrote the libretti for his operas himself, which I find quite impressive, but I didn't expect it be as impressive as it was at least in this particular opera. The love duet at the beginning of Act II (which I could say lasts easily 30 minutes, although I'm not sure) is really dense and poetic. I think the two most important themes that I at least can recover from it are the idea of the "night" in a very St. John of the Cross way, but more linked to romantic love, and the concept of "Liebestod," the death in love. Night is portrayed, not as a fearful environment, as one would find in a horror film, but as a place of solace and comfort. A soothing atmosphere of silence and rest where the lovers enjoy each other, maybe both in the physical and in the spiritual way. Tristan and Isolde also see their love as a way of death. Death of the self, of the "me," and the birth of the "us." Isolde stresses the fact that now they are bound by the word "und" ("and"), they are no longer two separate entities, they are one.

Tristan and Yseult (1887) by Jean Delville

I also sensed a little bit of what I discussed at the end of my previous post, the fear of death. Isolde at some point seems frightful of the idea that the love between them might end, with the death of one of them (most likely Tristan, since he is a knight), but Tristan responds that, through death, their love can become immortal, but then Isolde knows that, for this to happen, she should die as well. At the end of Act II, she eagerly accepts to follow Tristan "to the dark land from which [his] mother sent [him]."

I leave you with one of my favorite fragments of this opera, the "Liebestod" aria. I believe this is taken from Act III, since I still haven't seen it in the version I'm watching, but it's one of the most famous parts. This version is by Jessye Norman (one of the most impressive sopranos I've ever heard), the video doesn't say which conductor or orchestra, I apologize for that.

P.S.: I just read a quote from Clara Schumann on Wikipedia, where she declared that this opera was "the most repugnant thing I have ever seen or heard in all my life." This was too amazing to leave out.

Lesson with the vocal piece and some other random thoughts

Yesterday I showed my teacher the vocal project for the first time. He was really interested in it and made lots of comments. I am very happy that I already have a text, he liked it very much too, and that the music is flowing much more than it usually does with me. The comments he made I can summarize on the following notes.

• Write more of the piece and then come back to the first sections and correct them. The idea is that it is better to correct the beginning of the piece, which as of now is less than satisfactory, when I have a clearer idea of what happens later. 
• Do not relay so much on the pedal of the piano. My initial idea was to keep the pedal of the piano throughout the whole piece, which gave it a more murky and dark sound, but my teacher pointed out that this can become a really cheap ad cheesy "horror movie" effect, and that a better solution might be to think about using combinations of sustained and short notes, to give more life to the music.
• Use notes outside the tonality to give more interesting colours to the music. The musical ideas I have for the song are all mainly in C minor, although in a less conventional way than writing a Vienese-style Lied. Nevertheless, my teacher still suggested that it would be more interesting to add "outside" notes to the harmonies, following the layout of the overtone series. In other words, to take advantage of the fact that, when having a C on the bass, I could, for example, add a B natural on a higher octave, without the risk of it interfering with the functional characteristic of the C, but adding a more interesting colour to the chord that is formed.
• Make the piano part follow the voice part. In what I have written up to now, the voice mainly comments on what the piano does harmonically, my teacher suggested that it could also be interesting to try and do the opposite, making the piano do harmonies commenting on what the voice does melodically.

It was a really interesting and intense lesson, I have lots to think about and to write as well. I agreed with mostly everything that my teacher suggested. The piece will be quite long, I plan to use all the 7 minutes we were given as a maximum for it. 

Right now I am listening to the 11th Symphony by Shostakovich. I have some mixed feelings about it, beacuse I enjoy it very much. It's really beautiful music, very emotional and appealing, with a strong message and a clear voice. But, on the other hand, I cannot help but feeling that Shostakovich repeats himself so much in his symphonies. There's always these passages with low, long notes on the bass and sad melodies on some wind instrument, or this big orchestral hits with long melodies by the strings in double octaves. Also, I have the impression that, as he got older, he was less and less adventurous with his musical material. You hear, Symphony 1, 4 or 5 and then to 10 and 11 and mostly the same things happen, as if he was forced to write them and didn't have much material to work with, so he decided to recycle. Maybe I am being too harsh with him, and it may sound as if I don't like his music. Nothing could be more false, for me, Shostakovich has been one of my great influences, mainly in terms of expression and how to deal with melodic material to make it sound unique. But I have the impression that he betrays himself in some way. 

Here is a link with an excellent version of this symphony, performed by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, conducted by Thomas Søndergård at the BBC Proms 2013.

Siberia, this is what I imagine with the beginning of the Symphony.

I also feel this with Penderecki: that, as he got older, he became "softer" in the sense that he went back to more "tonal" ideas and less adventurous orchestrations, for this you can compare his Symphony No. 7 with any of his earlier pieces like Utrenja or Polymorphia. Maybe this is something that happens to all of us, as we get older, we begin to look back to things that give us more safety, maybe because we fear to look into our future, and so we look back to the past for some comfort. I don't deny that this might also happen to me, I am still 20, so I am very young and I have no idea what it is to have lived for so long, and have more and more the certainty that my death is near. Again, maybe I am being too harsh on them, maybe all this is a lie, but, first of all, I don't condemn them for doing wat they do, both of them are masters in their own way, and second, I think it's a good thing to think about. 

What would I do when I know I must be facing the last years of my life? Would I also become afraid and look back into earlier, probably happier or more fulfilling times? Or will I plunge, face forward, into this new, final era of my life and see what is there for me? I always thought being old must be one of the most amazing things in life. To be able to look back to your life, and see all that you have done, all the things that have happened to the world around you and inside you, to see the new generations building their own world, having their own ideas, changing the ideas that your generation had. I think it must be wonderful, but at the same time terribly sad. Sad at the thought of having to leave this world, with no certainty of another world after this one, with maybe an increasing fear of the void, of the possibility that there is nothing else, and that we just extinguish, like candles, leaving no trace but the memories and the things we have done and the people we have loved. 

I think much of what we do is guided by our fear of death. The burden of our consciousness is that we are always aware that life is an ephemeral phenomenon, and that we have absolutely no clue of what happens later. We fear anything that would pose a threat to our lives. We fear that which we don't understand because we fear it will harm us and cause us pain. I think this is the reason why we have wars, why we have money, why we have religions, why we develop policies against groups of people, why there are countries, why we build walls, why we accumulate goods, why some starve while I can write comfortably in my computer after having had lunchm why we hate Mondays and birthdays, why we consume drugs, porn, Facebook, newspapers, alcohol. All of this is because we cannot avoid the horror of the void, of the fact that this life is not eternal, that it will end some day and after that there will be nothing of us left, because we know, deep inside ourselves, that there is no ultimate purpose in this world and that anything and everything we do is meaningless for the Universe. 

Our planet

Maybe I have too much of a Lovecraftian vision of the Universe, but I think this should not be a dauting idea. I think that, although all our experiences would be meaningless in the universal scale, they are not meaningless to us. We live, we die, we dream, we love, we hate, we create and destroy in this small spec of dust. What we do here affects us, we are destined, whether we want it or not, to live in this planet with each other and with all the other creatures that also inhabit it. I think that this Lovecraftian universal scale, more than overwhelm us and make us become suicidal, should make us see that we cannot pretend to be the masters of the Universe, the guardians of the Sole Absolute Truth, because we are not, we are just an infinitessimal dot in space. I think this should make us realize the meaninglessness of our urge to gather money and power, to destroy our enemies, to hate each other, because in the end, we are the only thing we have, I think the only thing that would make us worthy in the face of some cosmic oblivion, would be our sense of unity and the thought of looking at someone else in the eyes, some unkown news vendor on the street, and feeling that this person is also a part of me, that he is my brother and she is my sister, that we are all one.