José Manuel Lopez Lopez: Works for soloists and ensemble

MUSIC AS THE ART OF LIGHTNESS

There is 'heavy', down-to-earth music that blows at us from below, paralyzes us in a beneficial way by moving us: think of the virile power of rock music, of the chthonic masses of Xenakis or the drums from Burundi... And then There is ›light‹ music that tends to evoke the sublime in the Kantian sense and feeling, that tends to escape into the air and strikes poetic, mysterious and spiritual chords.

If we now at all costs classify the music of José Manuel López López with the help of this simple pair of terms – one expects a musicologist to use labels – then we would like to see it on the side of 'light' music. In many respects, it spreads like an art of the obvious sound, as an art of dissolving matter, its softening and loosening: there are no solid components in it, and as soon as they appear, they are already blurred.

As with spectral music, its formal structure often consists of processes - a progressive development in which matter seems to slip out of your fingers. Another quality points in the same direction: the extreme refinement of the composition, especially in the timbre, reminiscent of the music of impressionism, of the musical art of shading, of escape - this refined art goes hand in hand with the awareness of a diversity that the composer claimed for himself.

Furthermore, even a down-to-earth listener is likely to be catapulted to the heights of cypress peaks - thanks to the presence of 'rockets' (rapidly ascending scales) or the long note values ​​at the very highest pitch. But perhaps the most significant feature of this music of weightlessness is the intense feeling of a tonal poetry it conveys.

José Manuel López López explains his own development: »from the note to the spectrum and from pure music to tonal poetry«. This CD also shows this: works from 2003 and 2005, one from 1998, another - perhaps still a youthful work - from a time when the alchemy of spectrum and sound poetry did not yet come to light.

Le parfum de la lune (2003) for solo violin and instrumental ensemble (a work commissioned by the Résidence en Bourgogne dedicated to Dominique Dournaud and Anne Mercier) is inspired by Yosa Buson (1716–1784) and his haikus, which are neither philosophy nor emphatic gestures, but rather extreme offer subtle allusions to moments of being one with nature, such as: »In the evening wind / brushes my face / a piece of the mosquito net«.

The composer writes: »The idea is to use […] the different states of mind, time and nature etc. that Buson presents as perceptible basis for compositional techniques derived from sound physics«. It would be difficult to find the exact correspondence between a haiku and a musical moment, but it is likely that the solo violin, which constantly gives new impetus, is the real engine of the string ensemble.

As far as the ›sound physics‹ are concerned: José Manuel López López derives his sound material from spectral analyzes of the sound and the way the instruments used are played. The intensity of the tonal poetry, which arises when listening to Le parfum de la lune, arises, among other things, from the incredibly rich selection of timbres, playing styles of both the violin and the other instruments: in some respects, the lightness of this piece is that of our past childhood .

A few ›airy‹ passages should be mentioned for the listener in a hurry: at the beginning the long note in the highest register; spectral arpeggio in bar 31 (02:00 of the present recording); Rockets (T. 38, 02:43); Rainmaker (t. 105, 06:40) - [The rainmaker (or rainstick) is an effect instrument - a long hollow tube filled with various rattles and used to create special sound effects]; ascending glissandi in the strings, polyphonic in the winds, spectral scales... (T. 118, 08:19); Solo violin and then string tutti on a line which 'seeks the frequency played by the clarinet and then plays around it', at the frequency of the highest playable note (bar 239, 13:15).

El arte de la siesta (2005) for solo accordion, flute, clarinet, piano, percussion, violin, cello and real-time electronics is a commissioned work by CIRM dedicated to Esteban Algora for the Manca Festival 2005 in Nice. The composer, inspired by Chinese poets of different dynasties - such as Lo Tien (772-846), Ming (1368-1644), Wen Cheng Min (1470-1599) - »refers to sound impressions typical of summer: the sweltering summer heat, chirping songbirds at dusk, the light breeze, hot wind, the lush foliage of the trees, drizzle or a downpour.

With the help of technology and an instrumental and data-technical composition set, he tries to represent these timeless perceptions that are well known to us«. It should be added that the accordion, with its blower, is ideally suited to the musical description of a siesta. However, this is no quiet siesta! From the very beginning (T. 2, 00:53) the pianist (by slamming the lid of his instrument) lets us understand that the dream sometimes turns into a nightmare; and this is indeed the case as the music becomes progressively heavier and darker. One should probably not recommend a siesta after too heavy a meal!

And yet, as always with José Manuel López López, the lightness prevails – thanks in part to the electronics and their grainy sonority (first heard at bar 7, 01:14), which the instruments sometimes imitate, for example when they are reminiscent of the rainmakers .

A Tempo (1998) for solo cello and instrumental ensemble, dedicated to Pierre Strauch, is characterized by the variety of tenses that occur (“structural, contemplative, physical, psychological, etc.” – as the composer writes), by the predominant spectral chord above the note C, whose higher overtones constantly evaporating, due to the “rocket technology” of the movement and also due to other aspects, it is probably the piece on the CD that is most reminiscent of Debussy – at least in the middle section, where one sometimes thinks one hears the French master.

It is in this middle section that the very fluid spectral chords (such as those of the ascending arpeggio C, G, E, A#, F#, C# in m. 218, 04:52), which dissolve at the end of the piece, contrast with the chopped up one Composition technique of the beginning, which consists of small motifs in offset. Moreover, A Tempo is perhaps one of the first works in José Manuel López López's catalog to adopt the aesthetics of tonal poetry, in which spirituality and tonal physics are intertwined.

Take a picture of the composer's note, somewhat in the tone of an imaginary concession by Borges: In this piece, “I found myself in the state of an unexpected, peculiar chemical reaction that propelled me, bar after bar, further into an experiment; which allowed me to follow paths that I would never have taken otherwise.

So it came about that I gradually achieved the symbiosis that I had in mind for years: the transformation of sound poetry into science and from science into music. An infinite number of states of mind, feelings, or ingrained impulses arose and, through a musical language of simple, direct gestures, entered the realm of the fundamental physical laws that govern sound.«

The piece Rhea (1989) for string trio and instrumental ensemble, dedicated to Nicolas Brochot, bears witness to an intensive work on the musical time: reô, Greek for ›to flow‹; Rhea, the »goddess of duration«, as the composer says. Shorter than the pieces before it, it's also grittier at the same time – less easy, more classical in a sense – it sounds a bit like 'contemporary music'; it works less on tone, timbre and sequence than on harmony and gesture.

The original spatial staging (the soloists stand in the middle of the stage, the ensemble is divided into two subgroups, each placed on the right and left) allows the young José Manuel López López to introduce new ideas of sound. Moreover, “the relationship between time and space […] serves to develop the form – not towards a flat and rectilinear object, but towards an object with various, changing surfaces, a kind of three-dimensional sound sculpture that moves around in front of us to present itself in all its different auditory aspects«.

Makis Solomos
Translation from French: Franz Dartmann

References to the quotations: Notes by José Manuel López López on his works; ›La biología del sonido‹, conversation with José Manuel López López in Andrew Ford/José Luis Téllez: Música presente, Perspectivas para la música del siglo XXI (Madrid, Fundación Autor, 2006)