MAURICIO SOTELO, CONTEMPORARY COMPOSER.
INTERVIEW
“Flamenco is a learned
artform of memory”
Silvia Calado/ Flamenco-world.com. Amsterdam, January
2011
Flamenco is a contemporary artform.
It is because, as Mauricio Sotelo maintains, “each
artist makes it at the moment in which he recreates it”.
And it is because this contemporary Spanish composer has
understood it as material to use to create those sound architectures
of his which the experts now call “spectral flamenco”.
That is how this classical musician is defined whom maestro
Luigi Nono encouraged, while he studied in Vienna, to delve
into the music of cathedrals and into flamenco, something
which he had inside, since guitar was his first instrument.
He put that lesson into practice and, since 1993, several
of his works have had a core of what is flamenco and flamenco
artists such as Enrique Morente, Arcángel, Cañizares,
La Moneta... And with it and with them he has moved learned
European audiences from Salzburg to Madrid, from Berlin
to Amsterdam.
Mauricio Sotelo at Muziekgbouw.
Amsterdam (Photo Daniel Muñoz) |
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In this Dutch city on the banks of the
IJ, at the restaurant of the Hotel Lloyd, this encounter
with Mauricio Sotelo takes place. A conversation this afternoon
which is a continuation of the lecture he gave minutes before
the premiere of ‘Muerte sin fin’ at the Muziekgebouw,
in the setting of the 2011 Dutch Flamenco Biennial. The
subject he set forth was that of writing. “I’ve
always been fascinated by the contemporaneity of a tradition
which is supposed to be so old and rigid, when in reality
it’s each cantaor who makes it at the moment in which
he recreates it”, the composer explains. Moreover,
he elaborates, “there isn’t a written text and
therein lies the importance of oral transmission, which
is not only heritage of flamenco, but of every initial tradition
in the world. In Tibetan Bon tradition, the mantras are
like the secret key to the universe and they don’t
work if you haven’t received the direct transmission
of a maestro”. In flamenco, “you can’t
learn cante with a book”. Luigi Nono used to tell
him that “flamenco is a very European tradition, with
its roots and its influences. It isn’t the music which
used to be made in the cathedrals in the 12th century, but
with regards to the concept of art with interior writing,
well then yes, and that’s how I vindicate it: flamenco
is a learned artform of memory”.
And he defends it with solid arguments:
“If you know traditional types of music in Europe,
probably the richest one in technique is that of flamenco.
The development which guitar and cantes have had from a
technical viewpoint fascinates every musician. There isn’t
a classical guitarist who has the same level a flamenco
guitarist has. And let’s not talk about the monsters
- Gerardo
Núñez, Cañizares, Vicente Amigo,
Paco de Lucía… -, the thing is that any young
guitarist has such technique that he could eat alive any
professor from a German conservatory”, he states without
beating around the bush.
And where’s the difference,
then?
The only thing that differentiates us,
and I say us because I consider myself a flamenco…
although a spectral one, are the great forms. It’s
the problem which Schoenberg expounded between traditional
music and learned music. We have that wealth, those properties,
what’s called “differenzen” in German,
that granulation which cante has, that microscopic grain
of cante which is absolutely rich, which grows like inwards.
It’s how Arcángel,
for example, elaborates the cantes, plus a series of technical
aspects, the laments, quejíos, breaking… All
of this is part of flamenco’s wealth.
Mauricio Sotelo at Muziekgbouw.
Amsterdam (Photos Daniel Muñoz) |
The advance of music in the West, which
we know as classical, lies in the great forms, especially
Viennese classicism. In flamenco, we’re talking about
small architectural dimensions, like musical haikus. This
is important for me to think about because of what I think
is architecture, a cathedral, a void, like this idea of
Chillida’s, for cante’s resonance. The electroacoustic
dress I do in ‘Muerte sin fin’ are resonators
in which I record vocals and I do filtering and resonance
processes, and also the formal structure which is architecture.
---o---
Sotelo’s approach rejects fusion
head-on: “I’m not grabbing a twelve-tone series
on one hand and… No, we’re respecting the cantes.
What I do sometimes, which suffocates Arcángel, is
to stretch them out a bit more in order to go into microscopic
detail. That’s where I work with the instruments”.
And he recalls his maestro to explain it. “When Enrique
Morente was given the National Music Prize in 1994,
he said that nobody should think that he was a composer,
but rather he just grabbed the roots in order to stir them
up. It’s an accurate idea. And that’s where
I think flamenco’s essence is distorted: now a lot
of guitarists and even cantaores believe that they’re
composers. No, we’re just performing”.
Arcángel, premiere of
'Muerte sin fin' by Mauricio Sotelo in Amsterdam (Phto
Daniel Muñoz) |
One of his maxims is “the method
is the way”. In the case of flamenco, he points out,
“you have to sit down and talk to find that common
space, you have to live it together”. That’s
what they’ll do following the premiere of ‘Muerte
sin fin’ in Amsterdam, in view of the version which
will be done in Spain. On speaking about that method of
his, he denies that it’s a matter of applying classical
harmonies to flamenco. “I don’t act as an arranger
who sticks the same notes from guitar into orchestra. That
isn’t being a composer”, he affirms. And he
goes further upon considering that “you’re betraying
flamenco tradition there because you have enough with a
guitar and a cantaor, why ruin it?”. And that’s
why he has played flamenco guitar very little; just in 'Como
llora el agua' with Cañizares.
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“When
they say that flamenco is very close to jazz or to fado,
that is fusion and that is cookery, but it’s not
flamenco” |
He also rejects fusion, in turn: “When
they say that flamenco is very close to jazz or to fado,
that is fusion and that is cookery, but it’s not flamenco.
May they forgive me but when they say that flamenco has
pain and so does blues… that definitely is bringing
together two different things; you’re making nouvelle
cuisine. It isn’t because I want to be right,
but rather I respect and love flamenco too much to destroy
it myself”.
You can’t say that 'Muerte
sin fin' isn’t flamenco...
There’s an important point in my
production which is 'Cuarteto de Cuerda nº2' which
I did with Arcángel and which we premiered in Madrid
with the Cuarteto Artemis and then we went to Berlin, Hamburg,
London… The experience there lies in a few cantes,
martinete and toná by Enrique Morente, with the seguiriya
he sings on the album 'Homenaje
a Antonio Chacón'. From then on, I’ve looked
at the French Spectral school, which is the analysis of
the sonogram. What I do is analyze the sonograms of the
cantes and voices which interest me; it’s like taking
an x-ray of the cante. There’s when you start to see
the entire spectrum and you realize that in the voice of
an opera singer the formants are parallel, whereas in the
voice of a cantaor this is compressed and there are a ton
of sounds without harmonics. The important thing, the reason
why that voice is flamenco, lies in that degree of rugosity.
Premiere of 'Muerte sin fin'
by Mauricio Sotelo in Amsterdam (Phto Daniel Muñoz) |
Is it the first time you’ve
worked with baile?
I’ve known La
Moneta for some time now as an admirer and we’d
done a small collaboration together. I think we’re
going to pave an interesting way. What happens with my music
is that even some students of mine who are very radically
modern think I’m ‘lolailo’, hate flamenco,
don’t understand it, believe you have to make little
noises all the time. I’m the one who’s brought
the little noises to Spain, the one who’s taught them
Lachenmann’s music! On the road that we’re paving,
what she’s danced is very flamenco; we aren’t
destroying flamenco. She’s extending the body vocabulary,
but we’re always doing soleá, seguiriya…
To me it’s the diary of a traveler; it isn’t
a text, it’s an experience.
In flamenco a certain complex compared
to classical music is talked about...
The great performers have always played
by heart. There’s a way of playing which is also oral
transmission between the great maestros. In my case, I’ve
received the initiation and oral transmission through my
maestro Luigi Nono. Through him I have Schoenberg, I have
the last Wagner, Beethoven… I’m along that direct
line, like in flamenco. That doesn’t mean that I’ve
studied in Vienna and I’m therefore cleverer. A lot
of people don’t realize that if you don’t know
the codes, you can’t see.
---o---
La Moneta and Ed Spanjaard
on 'Muerte sin fin' by Mauricio Sotelo in Amsterdam
(Photo Daniel Muñoz) |
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But he also feels a certain rejection to
the inverse: “From the flamenco side, those who don’t
understand me haven’t listened to my music. There’s
also that closed perspective: that guy coming from the conservatory,
don’t come in here”, he denounces. And you get
the sensation that his is a natural road which someone should
take, since flamenco was never isolated in a bubble. How
right Sotelo’s proposal is can be felt today at the
Muziekgbouw, brimming over and fervently giving ovations.
“What fault of it is mine if I go to Germany and my
concerts are jam-packed. There are composers who’d
die to be at Universal Edition and they’ll ask what
this ‘lolailo’ is doing there. We don’t
earn much, we have enough to eat, we have fun, we also suffer,
but things are jam-packed there. And among the public we
have Gerard Mortier, the director of the Lucerne Festival,
my friend Helmut Lachenmann...”.
And recalling how Lachenmann created that
musical world of his own which so many second now, he returns
to his reflection on flamenco. And he praises how complex
it is “to reach that command, that mastery of technique
or that degree of expressiveness by La Moneta or by Arcángel”.
He likes “that they’re very clean, it isn’t
alarmist, they have expressive strength which lies in the
vocabulary being very clean in technique; that’s why
it gets things across. To get things across and to break
the audience’s soul, the cleaner, the better”.
Where does your interest in flamenco come from?
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“To
get things across and to break the audience’s
soul, the cleaner, the better”
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My first instrument was the guitar and,
logically, it comes to me from there. When I went to Vienna
at the age of eighteen, I had the idea that I wanted to
be really modern and I ignored flamenco because it was a
little folkloric for me. I wanted to be like Schoenberg.
And I was lucky to have good maestros. As Nono told me,
what have you been doing living in Vienna so long trying
to make music which used to be made 150 years ago? That
modernity was in the early 20th century. It’s like
a painter now who wants to paint like Picasso. Nono was
right and he told me to listen to the music of cathedrals
and to flamenco. To re-orient yourself a little bit.
And with it you achieve a differential
value in contemporary classical…
A Dutch critic has just told me that he’d
never heard anything like it. This has been starting to
come together. The first work I did with Enrique Morente,
may he rest in peace, in the year ’93, was ‘Responsorios
de tinieblas’. I had a cassette with the old-time
flamenco cantes. I had that stuck in my head. I was thinking
of making these responses with the texts in Latin and at
the moment when Jesus was being crucified, I heard Morente’s
voice in my head. And I called him up and he opened the
doors of his house to me. Morente has always been my maestro.
Differently than for Arcángel because I’m not
a cantaor… but well, in a certain way I am a cantaor.
Premiere of 'Muerte sin fin'
by Mauricio Sotelo in Amsterdam
(Phto Daniel Muñoz) |
Do you think that contemporary
classical music can contribute new things to cante and guitar,
like contemporary dance has done to baile?
In fact, as it so happens, one of the things
I did in my work for guitar with Cañizares is the
‘scordatura’. It isn’t something new;
it was done many centuries ago, changing the tuning of one
of the strings. In this case, what I do consciously is to
change the tuning of all the strings. This means that your
hand no longer goes to the model, but rather it has to seek
another place and find a new way. And in the end, it isn’t
even so strange because you get used to it right away and
it has a weird sound, but it’s an archaic sound, which
is what flamenco has and it’s what really moves people,
stirs up their bowels.
---o---
He himself asks the last questions: What’s
the space of creation? What’s the respect you have
for tradition? What’s the reading where you’re
reading from? And he responds by recalling his participation
in the lobby group which upheld Enrique Morente’s
candidacy for the National Music Prize. “My mission
was to convince the classical people. I would go to the
concerts or the rehearsals where I knew they were on the
jury, “maestro, what a nice show and so on and what
would you think if a prize were given to a cantaor, for
example, to Enrique Morente”, I would slip into the
conversation. “Good grief, boy, I’d refuse completely,
how are we going to give a national prize to hick who can’t
read music!”, some even told me. I didn’t tell
Enrique, but I did tell his manager and he answered me calmly:
“What do you mean he doesn’t read music? He
reads it in water”.
Premiere of 'Muerte sin fin'
by Mauricio Sotelo in Amsterdam
(Phto Daniel Muñoz) |
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