This was the first time I had the opportunity to engage with musicians rehearsing and recording in studio Colours (in circles). Although this was not a performative experience, I must say that the way rehearsals developed, and the whole journey from the 15th April, when we started, until the 18th April, when we finished, was very special. At the end, If I tell you that this experience was gratifying and exceptional, not only because I had the opportunity to listen to the music I wrote, but also because I had the opportunity to engage with other musicians, with other ideas; sharing the same room everyday, sharing different approaches, different perspectives; enjoying every moment, every idea, every thought, every note of music; this blog note will be nostalgic and sentimental.
Maybe everything I am about to say here will be so obvious, but I am wonder if we composers think about it when composing? Maybe we partially do.
On first rehearsal, we worked in specific sections, as for example where violin 1 was together with viola; or violin 2 was together with cello and guitar. We slowed the tempo and started to rehears the rhythm patterns, tuning the pitches and making sections in blocks. During this process, I never stopped composing. You rely so much in the music software that sometimes you overwrite sections. When I say overwriting, I mean not only in the amount of notes you put on the score, but also the amount of information you give to musicians, as for example dynamics. They can be a tricky part of composing. When I write dynamics, sometimes is because I want that section louder than the other, or want a specific instrument to be more relevant in that section. However, sometimes dynamics are just an attitude, a direction. But how do you write that attitude in score? I think it is impossible, and the only way possible is just to demonstrate to them. That is why rehearsals, sharing ideas, knowledge, different approaches and perspectives are so important.
On the other hand, composing is like discovering a foggy image, and the music software is a sort of fog lights on a car. You need them to see the road. If you do not have them you are risking your self to have an accident. However, you cannot rely only in the fog lights and you need to be twice alert on the road. Music software, or MIDI sound, it is a very helpful tool for composers that do not play any harmonic instrument or do not have perfect pitch. But helpful does not necessarily means the answer for all your problems.
Rehearsals continued and I never stopped composing. I changed dynamics, harmonics in the guitar, glissandis in the strings, accents, adjusted tempos, deleted accelerandos and ritardandos, changed triplets to normal crotchets and in difficult rhythmic sections, when the expected result was a sort of effect, I suggested to do it as precise as possible. All these were the result of a collaborative work during the rehearsals: suggestions musicians made, instruments limitations and different approaches in how to play together. It is not just a matter of writing rhythms, notes, dynamics, accents, accelerandos and ritardandos; it is a matter of playing together. Pulling the cart to the same direction. What is written and what you hear should have the same function. The imagistic way composers write the score should be analog to the sound one will hear — a sonic analog to what one see. But this is impossible to recreate in your brain. It is kind of a puzzle, but the last pieces are hidden by the musicians. So you kind of know what is the final image, but there are bits that you cannot see, and for that you need performers and musicians to help you to construct the final result. That is why during the rehearsals and even the recording session I was still experimenting, changing and composing.
Of course, musicians and performers do not always have the hidden images. However, they play a musical instrument and they know it. Musical instruments, as Luciano Bério discussed, are "tools useful to man, but they are tools that lack objectivity: they produce sounds that are anything but neutral, which adquire meaning by testing meaning itself with the reality of facts. They are the concrete depositories of historical continuity and, like all working tools and buildings, they have memory. They carry with them traces of the musical and social changes and of the conceptual framework within which they were developed and transformed. They talk music and—not without conflicts—they let themselves be talked by it. The sounds produced by keys, strings, wood, and metal are in turn all tools of knowledge, and contribute to the making of the idea itself.” So, if instruments have the knowledge to contribute to an idea, and musicians know their instruments, composers should believe that they may have the missing bits of the final image.
Experiences are part of your mental library and you will learn with them; and, on the next work you do, you will have them present. However, every time composers work they are trying to figure an image that it is not clear, and every image is different, and it seems that the cues for that image are in the experimentation, in the changing, in deleting, discussing different approaches, knowledges and ways of playing.
Just to conclude in the same way I started — nostalgic and sentimental — it was an intense and exhausting week of rehearsals and composing. However, on the next day I was already missing it.