I accompanied Hermes Luaces for a couple of hours through the streets of Bucharest waiting his train to Tescani, Bacău, a residence for the artists. In 2008 he won the George Enescu Museum first prize for composition in the bigger frame of the International Enescu Festival. After a while we found each other again in Bucharest. Each time we talked, we shared beautiful, consistent thoughts. Some of his ideas never left me, but it's only now I manage to do this interview and resuming some of the discussed ideas.
Sibi-Bogdan Teodorescu: In his Secret life, Salvador Dali, arguably the author of an opera, describes how he attacked a young violinist with the simple reason to demonstrate painting was superior to music. If this were pertinent, what would be your opinion?
Hermes Luaces: Well, Dalí was a great artist but also a great showman. It is difficult to know what he really pretended with that action. Regarding the underlying question, is painting superior to music? It doesn't make any sense to me. Both forms of expression are an inalienable part of what it means to be human. No culture has developed without them.
S-BT: What kind of listener do you affectionate the most?
HL: My ideal listeners are those who love music in a broad sense. Those who are aware of the importance of music in their lives and who prefer to listen carefully, sing or dance and not just hear the music.
S-BT: You told me once there are all sorts of music for a variety of cases, but can we really bear an infinite diversity?
HL: It is true that there is a wide variety of ways of making music. They all have common features but their diversity is great enough to not consider music an universal language. According to modern neurosciences, our ability to understand new ways of making music, different to the those ones we learned at an early age, is limited. In the same way that occurs with language.
S-BT: Today music is everywhere, as much as the image is present. How do you see this inflation, and what are the worst effects?
HL: The musical inflation that you mention is, in my opinion, one of the greatest problems that music is affording in our society. It is impossible for us to value what is given in excess. Music has become, like air and water, something that we just notice their importance when they are lacking during enough time, what almost never happens.
From other point of view, music is a very powerful tool to convey a way of understanding the world. Its omnipresence makes us very susceptible of getting, without noticing, into the ideological immersion strategies that work in any complex society. Easy access to music can be an opportunity to take more control over our emotions but also a way to keep the population sleepy avoiding any kind of revolution.
S-BT: When we discussed on how one can approach music, you said the best way to understand is simply to play it several times. Do you still think the same? If we can go closer to a Medieval chant could we accept and love something like commercial music as well?
HL: I still believe that the best way to understand music is to listen to it, dance to it, play it, ultimately experience it. All of our early musical experiences burden us with prejudices and expectations. It doesn't matter what musical style you start from. I believe that one of the most important functions of music education is to open us up to new experiences in such an intimate issue as music. People who are able to accept a wide variety of musical styles tend to be more open-minded and less afraid of change. So I do think it’s possible, and necessary, to enjoy Gregorian chant and also pop music.
S-BT: If music could be known mostly by acquaintance, is this could be similar to poetry? What does it mean to understand it?
HL: Understanding music or poetry, in my opinion, means, first and foremost, experiencing an emotion. It doesn’t matter whether or not that emotion conforms to the expectations of the composer or the poet.
There are other forms of understanding music but, in my opinion, if they do not carry an emotional involvement, they are never that deep. However, it is important to point out that emotion, although it has individual nuances, has a very deep social component and, therefore, shared by many people that is often forgotten.
S-BT: More than any other art, music seems to generate serious conflicts between different categories of consumers, although we look to tolerate all this music you hear everywhere, shopping centers, radio and beaches all together.
HL: Music is a very invasive phenomenon that affects our psychological balance in a way that we can hardly control. It produces strong reactions that can lead to conflicts and even violence. It can be surprising if we compare it with the effects produced by other forms of art. Unless we assume that music is something else. I do believe so.
S-BT: Can you imagine the history of music without Bach or any other great composer? By the way, what is a great composer?
HL: I usually try not to give too much importance to the individuals in order to explain history. But… without Bach there´s a certain paradigm of musical perfection that it would have been very difficult to establish. So, no, I can´t imagine the history of music without Bach’s music.
About the other question, I think that a great composer is one who can convince people for a long time that he or she is a great composer. I mean that to be a great composer is something that we define in a cultural context. I love music that moves me emotionally, that makes me feel connected to this world. When I find a composer whose music often makes me feel this way I consider him or her a great composer. But that music sometimes comes from a lucky day of a mediocre composer.
S-BT: Sergiu Celibidache, the exacting Romanian conductor, was very strict with interpretations and recordings. He stated that music needs time to touch and be felt. The tempo of many musical productions and interpretation might have changed lately. What is your position regarding this transformation?
HL: I agree with the statement by Celibidache. Music needs time to touch and be felt. Nevertheless, I think that what is important here is not the “objective” time but the psychological one. An excessively slow tempo can interfere with the understanding of a musical work in the same way as an excessively fast one. However, the framework in which a music works can be quite broad in some cases. I am not intransigent in that sense. The chosen tempo does not make me reject or accept a performance on its own. Interpretation is a very complex act, it is almost like recomposing the music, and it should be judged holistically.
S-BT: What is your relationship to inspiration? The question may be silly, yet it survives as one as the most popular and interesting when it comes to art.
HL: The process of composing a musical work always contains something mysterious. When I finish a work, especially if it is a work that I am satisfied with, I am never aware of how I have come to write it. There are always things that I am unable to explain. Moreover, I think no one will ever be able to explain why some of Mozart's works, for instance, move us more than other ones by his contemporaries. If we could really explain it, we would be able to create new works that would affect us in the same way with ease and that´s not the case. It´s in this context where it makes sense to speak of inspiration, to refer to the ineffable (hence my doubts that an artificial intelligence can eventually create something comparable to piano concerto No. 23). Anyway, I do not need to postulate the existence of a muse or a world of pre-existing ideas to accommodate this mystery but I fully understand why metaphysics have always been so interested in music.
S-BT: Why there are less Spanish operas than Italian, French or German? Are you tempted yet to write one?
HL: I am not a historian but I suppose that the fact that opera developed beetwen 17th and 19th centuries, a time of decline in Spanish cultural influence in the world, has something to do with it. An attempt to revive the operatic genre is currently taking place. Several operas have been premiered in Spain and some of them with a moderate success. I have been intermittently immersed in an opera about The Little Prince for some time.
S-BT: Could you wrap up a list of relevant composers and musicians next to Stravinsky and Ravel, two of my favourites?
HL: The influence of Stravinsky and Ravel has been enormous. There are very few composers who have escaped from it. But perhaps those who currently claim them most openly are the minimalist composers of the United States: Steve Reich, John Adams, Philip Glass...
S-BT: Your work changed a lot from rather airtight forms -at least for neophytes- to more emotional pieces, touched by a particular type of energy, intimacy and even a religious or mystical touch. What were the reasons for this evolution?
HL: There was a moment in my life when I couldn't bear that my musical life was cut off from the rest of the facets of my existence. In my first works, my interest was focused above all on sound itself and its way of structuring itself in time and inhabiting space. I have not abandoned those concerns but now they are not in the foreground. The social function of music and its connection with the experience of living interest me much more.
S-BT: What music the young Hermes listened, and what was the music around him? Many consider Spain the country of Flamenco and folklore.
HL: Probably the music that I listened to as a child and adolescent was not so different from what you listened to. From the 80's the influence of Pop music and Rock became very strong in Spain. In cities like Madrid, flamenco and folklore were not in fashion, they were considered gypsy or redneck music among many young people. My contact with those musics would come later. I started studying piano at the age of ten and since then I gradually discovered the European classical repertoire. The Dire Straits, Mike Oldfield, Jean Michel Jarre and Beethoven were my youth idols.
S-BT: What is essential for making art?
HL: Being a human. Art is unavoidable.
S-BT: You used to be a teacher. Did you like it? What would be now important advice from you to younger people (you could share an experience instead of giving advice)?
HL: I still am. More than advice, what I try to do is encourage certain attitudes in my students such as persistence and awareness of their voice, their own body and their emotions. Teach them that music is a very powerful tool to achieve those skills that are so important in our lives and also to get to know the world in which they live.
S-BT: From all the troubles of our world, what worries you the most (mostly related to what art is concerned)?
HL: My main concern regarding art is the loss of diversity. Human beings have such a strong tendency to think that our reality is the only possible one. A unique and totalitarian thought is the great cultural threat, linked with globalization, that we are experiencing.
S-BT: You worked with a lot of artists; could you spell out some of the most particular experiences? With who would you'd like to work (or dreamed to) dead or alive?
HL: I have worked with many musicians and, not as much as I would like, with artists from other disciplines. I particularly love working with dancers. I think that, in general, they have a very deep understanding of music and they usually are very open-minded. Moreover, I have always felt music closely linked to human body so I enjoy to see my music translated into movement by dancers.
S-BT: Bad muse or good muse?
HL: One of the most important Spanish philosophers, Gustavo Bueno, used to say that “to think is to think against someone”. In that sense, I believe that for artists it is more important to know -not just intellectually but emotionally- what they don't want to do than to have a clear model of what they want to do. Growing up as an artist admiring to someone excessively is a trap that is very difficult to overcome. Perhaps, it is for this reason that I greatly respect artists who defend positions that are very different from mine and I approach their works with more interest than those that may be more similar to mine.
S-BT: What is truth in art? How much does it matter?
HL: The truth of art is in what you do, in the moment you do it, not in what you say you do or what they say you are doing or you should do.
we can listen and purchase Hermes Luaces' music here and here.
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