home(m),
version with flute, clarinet, violin, violoncello and piano.
deCompagnie and Michiel Delanghe.
do lume que pesa,
for alto flute, bass clarinet, violin, violoncello, piano and electronics.
Sound'Ar-te Electric Ensemble
and Pedro Carneiro.
Hello!
Welcome to the Reading Guide for this project.
In this part, I will briefly explain how this website works and reinforce a few essential ideas for a complete understanding of this project.
The decision to present this project in Research Catalogue is driven by the project's profound emphasis on its artistic perspective. In this way, I was able to create links that would take the reader to a particular example or piece, videos of interpretations of pieces I've written or of the festivities in Braga, and to create different links between different parts of the text: for example, jumping between the explanation of Braga's "Queima do home" to the description of the creative process of the piece "home(m)", based on this festivity. As you can see from this example, the links are always in this colour. Please do not hesitate to click on these links to listen, watch or read something related to what has been said so that you can better understand my music and my point of view.
As this is a website and not a printed text, I decided to add to each chapter, sub-chapter or section (depending on the size of the text) the average time it takes to read that particular part - as you can see above the text.
Throughout the texts, the reader will find menus on the left side - to make it easier to jump to or return to any section of the page - and videos related to what is being explained in the text. I would like to invite you to listen to the pieces in this project. I've put them in this Reading Guide to demonstrate how they appear throughout the project.
The reader will find the footnotes on the right side of the text. I placed the footnotes throughout the text so you wouldn't have to jump around the site to find the reference.
As I point out in the project, it has changed a lot. Initially, the idea was to develop essentially musical elements. Still, over the years, I've used a broader notion of culture in the pieces: in other words, using some traditional melodies, I use traditional musical elements (which follow a tradition), philharmonic bands, Zés Pereiras, for example. Despite this, there is also a concern to translate the idea of the "soundscape" of the festivities into music. This is a very important point in this project and in all the pieces I've written throughout it because, in reality, this is an artistic interpretation of the events. This artistic interpretation is linked to the specific time in which I wrote the pieces. If I were to start writing another piece today, at the moment I'm writing this text, with a connection to any of the events I've used as influences for the pieces in this project, the pieces would inevitably be different.
The first part of this project has texts that I wrote in order to be more aware of the theoretical part. I called them "background texts" because they are just that: background texts supporting the second part - the artistic part of the project.
In the second part, and taking the "background texts" as a starting point, I tried to explain how I see culture, tradition and identity and, therefore, how these theoretical concepts are present in the music I create. This is an extremely important aspect, which is why I say at one point in this thesis that "Each new piece was a reaction to the previous compositions, reflecting a changing approach to traditional elements".
So this is an artistic project where the main aim is to create art by transforming festivities into pieces. As Barthold Kuijken said: "By definition, artistic research is never definitive nor complete. It cannot be exactly repeated and does not strive to prove something. It is never a goal in itself but leads to deeper understanding and thus, hopefully, to better performance or creation. The results needed to be practiced, technically and artistically mastered, applied and integrated in my own thinking, feeling, playing, conducting, and teaching, until they became part of my 'mother tongue' ".
Thank you for your attention.
Carlos