(English version) Ericsson Castro - research project about Birtwistle

Interview with Ericsson Castro

TP - Ericsson, how have you been involved in guitar world, training, teachers, performance, how many years already? I know you are part of the Duo Ericsson Castro and Andrea Paz. And his interest in guitar and contemporary music, how did it start?

EC - Hello Teresinha. Firstly, thank you for the opportunity to talk about my work and my research. I started studying guitar doing private lessons with Edelton Gloeden, he didn't use to accept begginers, however he made me an exception because my grandfather was very close to Everton (his brother). Starting with a teacher like that, it was great! After about four years I entered the Universidade Livre de Música where I studied with Everton Gloeden, for about four years as well. This was nice, due to that moment when I began to play and doing repertoires; Everton helped me a lot. After, I went to the University, where I studied for three years with Luciano César, it was also a good time, because of more "scientific" commitment to the studies. I’ve finally studied a year at the Escola Municipal with Paulo Porto Alegre, where I’ve seen many technical gaps. I cannot complain from my training, I cannot imagine a better one.

It's very interesting to talk about this because I've seen many colleagues go abroad to study and everything else, I felt I needed to go by different way, launching me... since then I’ve been living only of music, and it has been great, my solo work and in a duet with Andrea. My interest in the guitar is due to my grandfather, who was a friend of Everton, and one day he brought me that tape with the complete solo lute works by Bach, it was a passion. About my interest in contemporary music, I’ve already listened it before playing the guitar, so it was just an opportunity to express something that I already listened to a lot, I didn’t have how to escape that.

TP -  You’ve been doing an academic study (Master's Degree) at Unicamp - dissertation supervision by Dr. Gilson Antunes – which deals some way with Sir Harrison Birtwistle's guitar work. How are you doing this investigation? What is the general purpose?

EC - Being guided by Gilson in the Master’s degree has been great; every talk with him, I go home with a lot of information, either formally or in a coffebreak, I always learn a lot with him.

My initial theme was to talk about the Julian Bream Trust project, but until then we would address three composers, it would be a lot, so we decided to focus only on Birtwistle's work, which is already so much subject; I have not yet found any academic work here in Brazil specifically about Birtwistle, so I found it very propitious. The title of the project is "Construction with Guitar Player by Harrison Birtwistle: interpretative questions, construction of performance and recording".

TP - Birtwistle is an intense composer, whose poetics joins contemporary music, and I felt (by listening to Construction with Guitar ... and in others I looked for) a certain lyricism. You who have studied/approached your work, what could you say about that perception? I know that the listening reception is a very peculiar thing, but I refer to the fact of this match between tradition/innovation in this work. It seems to me that the link is the instance of "gentleness" of the music. Comment it, please.

EC - In fact, the first time I heard that piece for the guitar, I felt it very lyrical, very cantabile, listening again afterwards and now studying, I see, under all that "structure", a concern and care that the composer and his collaborator performers have had about the piece sounds good to the guitar, and it sounds, it sounds organic. Setting aside analysis and understanding of the work, listening to those first notes of the composition is something very beautiful to hear, it is a work of lyricism, melancholy, memory and rhythm.

TP - Deeping in the preceding question, Construction… departed by an extra musical reference (a very famous paintings set) and it seems to me some  "traditional", for those who are aware with the concert music compositional procedures over the 20^th and 21^st centuries, but this makes Construction a masterpiece, as Birtwistle is indeed, because it presents relations much functional, as a kind of climax in the work, the presences of theme/development/ recapitulation, and knowing how to operate both, tradition and the essence of the new – a prerogative of contemporary poetics. What do you see about Birtwistle’s working style?

EC - Birtwistle is a composer who works very well on that question of "modern" and ancient, his music has something of medieval, plainsong, polyphonic, has a certain boldness of a Boulez, has rhythm of Stravinsky, of ritualistic music ... It's something like David Bowie who is called a chameleon, and then, despite several phases, strolling through many sounds, people still know it's Bowie when hear, I think the Birtwistle is like that, Birtwistle's music sounds Birtwistle, despite the influences.

I love electronic music, acousmatic, composition by algorithm, but Birtwistle's music is "human", it’s the tradition of the concert music great composition, as was Elliot Carter, composer of profession, of clipboard, pencils, turn off, redo, erase and redo...

What you spoke of the form is interesting, the presence of theme / development / recapitulation. In spite of that, his music has a something labyrinth, where you already know it's going to come out, you're going to get lost in the way, it may take time, but you leave the labyrinth.

TP - When is the defence of your work?

EC - I shall make a preliminary exam in this first semester (2018) and I want to defend at the end of the year or beginning of 2019.

TP - Thanks for the collaboration. Good luck!

EC - Thanks!

More:

Ericsson Castro plays Guitar and White Hand - Birtwistle's first work for guitar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UzUKlls4T8

(English version) Construction with Guitar Player - Sir Harrison Birtwistle

"Music. The breathing of statues. Perhaps:

The quiet of images (...)"

The initial verses from To Music, by Rilke.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle (1934), renowned British composer, has a large and varied production - instrumental solos, chamber music, vocal works and symphonic concerts, with marks of an innovative poetic. His experimental and refined "grammar" is linked to a docility, melancholy, as in Construction with Guitar Player for classical guitar solo. The motivations that led him to compose for the instrument, the premiere and interesting information, such as the title of the work, can be obtained in some points of the Internet (see in More at the end of this post). Here I shall limit myself to this music via listening to the classical guitarist Andrey Lebedev’s interpretation.

Construction... is a complex work, rich in an inherent polyphony. Its speech apparently short, cellular, is engendered in order to deepen, from a "theme" that doesn’t leave and that deepens itself, culminating at a certain point, making the way back, gradually, with gestures that recall the "theme", to provide an outcome.

The exquisite interpretation of Lebedev allows to perceive phrases, dynamics (I didn’t want to have access to the score, for this listening) in breaths and a discourse of very contrasting sections; in the essence, I’ve observed that the ratio of intervals combines the pp with the end of the phrases in descending line, which promotes, for me, a mood of resolution in each block.

This narrative in blocks – more than 20 certainly, during about 15 minutes of Lebedev's performance – is like transitions in which cells, sometimes diluted sometimes extended, remembering the intervals relation of the “subject”. All with a degree of lyricism, "soul-states" and, as I say, a rest.

The guitar sound resources are there: harmonics, tamboras, pizzicato and pizz. a bartok, privileging the timbre, giving a "third dimension" to the work, for those who delivering up in the listening.

Listening path: hearing images – Construction's generating cell is presented in sound plans that intersect, giving a stereophonic effect. The discourse of the initial cell is recovering from low and high registers, specific dynamics of ff and pauses, so the silence is a conquest in this field.

Almost at the end of this kind of "theme" reiteration, with a cross of hands, Lebedev executes an extended technique for the sound sustain, mixture of sonorities/plans, realizing the desire of the composer, from a musical instrument that has difficulties to maintain the sound, as the guitar; the duration of the chord is observed, while the right hand goes to the guitar fretboard to execute the requested bass (at 1:35 of the video).

Suddenly a cell attacks now in agitated path, but briefly returns to the idea of ​​slow, discursive one. This cells alternation will deepen. The thematic idea never disappears, is transfigured, worked, varied; the intersecting planes reappear, covered, not explicitly. Another block of greater agitation arises and little by little it grows in dynamics. The slow, discursive path is resumed, and the subject-cell arises in harmonics.

In the middle of the piece, the timbre takes on importance - ideas with percussion effects and alternation with more moved phrases and others by pizzicatos - and briefly the composer reminds us of the "theme", which intersperses with agitated cells and follows the phrase in tamboras and others, slow, expressive, in harmonics.

A hit on the bridge (a motif) starts a hectic speech, the most of all, and with volume intensity, ending (at 8:20) with a chord. Following more alternation with tamboras and a moving speech that has its culmination (at 8:45) and then attacks another idea that moves towards high pitches (until 09:09), this is the point of greatest intensity in height (at 09:21); this excerpt seems to me like a "golden section" of the work, due to the climactic character (timbre, intensity, height, rhythm).

Then, it softens suddenly with an atmosphere in pp and harmonics. The speech alternates between strong and soft pp and with an obstinately chord in ff (a motive). Again, it rests. Another idea begins – stronger and more agitated, with pizz. a bartok, and a rougher sounds of staccato notes (motives); and it continues to deepen, rhythm and dynamics.

Retaking some of the soft speech; behind the polyphony, sounds already known are expanded, dialoguing in ff (chords) and piano (melodies), are the interplanes in relief; it’s evident that a modified return is occurring. A brief transition leads to the "theme" revisited little by little. Finally, it’s clear that the sonorous event that begins Construction... reappears and going to an end, nuances, chords are recapitulated, sweetly, ending in piano and by a final harmonic.

Synthesis - From Construction ..., by Sir Harrison Birtwistle (sonority even in his name), I wanted to know how it emerges (its initial sounds seem to stand in the air, like gongs inside a temple), how it continues, the way it moves, crosses and as it ends. It seems to continuously expand the cell that generated it, displacing identifiable motifs in the same block, in parallel plan, and, even from one block to another, it sometimes looks like a canon, metamorphosed. For me, the stability of the work lies in the persistence of a "theme" and in its intelligible motifs.

Construction... was created by a subjective perspective, untranslatable, and any notes of mimicry, compliance for references, pictorial approaches with the title, emotive representations... are mere essays, tenuous; however, such level of abstraction comes from a conquered autonomy, in an opening on both sides, by who created it and who received it.

More:

Guitarcoop video – Andrey Lebedev plays Birtwistle

https://guitarcoop.com.br/en/construction-with-guitar/

Fabio Zanon (Guitarcoop video) presents New Music for Guitar, talking about the work

https://guitarcoop.com.br/en/construction-with-guitar/

Andrey Lebedev's page, talking about the work

http://andreylebedev.com/news/picasso-and-harrison-birtwistle/

Julian Bream Trust, commissioned works
http://www.julianbreamtrust.org/scholars-and-commissions