Efferent Verb Team:
Meet David Antúnez Rodríguez, the winner of Voices, Vol. I, a remarkable Spanish composer originating from Baeza (Jaén), Andalusia. David’s unique music journey has seen him studying in locations as diverse as Seville, Oslo, and Milan, culminating in a Master’s degree from the prestigious “Giuseppe Verdi” Conservatory under the tutelage of Gabriele Manca.
His recent work focuses on enhancing the role of the performer in musical composition, a theme he aims to expand as he begins his doctoral studies. An enthusiast for interdisciplinary arts, Antúnez Rodríguez infuses his music with influences from various art forms, from the evocative poetry of Alejandra Pizarnik to the contemporary works of artists such as Gema B. Palacios and Gaia Ginevra Giorgi.
Always exploring new vistas in his creative journey, he’s developing interests in collaborations with theater and dance and the utilization of electronic elements in his music. Not simply a composer, Antúnez Rodríguez exemplifies the essence of true interdisciplinary artistry, crafting unique musical dialogues that transcend traditional boundaries.
Interviewer: How did your experience at the Conservatory “Manuel Castillo” in Seville shape your approach to music composition?
David: Among all the disciplines of the Conservatory, it has been very important for me to get in touch with the composition of electronic music since the first years of my studies in Seville. From the creation of tapes for electroacoustic works to the composition of different types of synthesis on a purely electronic level, these experiences have changed and enriched my concept of sound and have also influenced my approach to the composition of acoustic music. The multiple possibilities that opened up during those years, the freedom to work directly with sound and the rediscovery of listening are still present in my work today.
Interviewer: Can you tell us about the influence that Francisco Martín-Quintero, Alberto Carretero, Asbjørn Schaathun, and Eivind Buene had on your development as a composer?
David: Each of them has helped me in different aspects and moments of my education and I am very grateful for everything they have taught me and contributed, not only musically, but also artistically and personally. In short, so as not to be too long:
Francisco guided each student to follow his own path, so studying with him was very important for my development as a composer. His classes on the music of contemporary composers were very valuable, and I am thinking now of those on the work of José María Sánchez-Verdú or Mauricio Sotelo, composers whose music and artistic approach have greatly influenced me.
Thanks to Alberto, in addition to all that I learnt in his electronics classes, I discovered some of the composition courses that complemented my studies, such as Cristóbal Halffter’s International Composition Course in Villafranca del Bierzo or Festival Mixtur’s Workshop on Composition and Sound Experimentation in Barcelona. In addition, Alberto was the tutor for my Bachelor’s thesis, so he helped me a lot with my first contact with artistic research.
It was through Asbjørn that I discovered Computer Aid Composition and some of the possibilities that Open Music could offer. He also helped me to develop the way I use harmony in my music.
I studied analysis and orchestration with Eivind. From Berio’s Sinfonia or the violin concerto that Eivind had composed from Berg’s violin concerto, I was able to deepen my understanding of intertextuality in music, a subject that had interested me –and still does– since I first heard the music of Cristóbal Halffter.
Interviewer: What inspired you to participate in the Erasmus program and study at the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo?
David: After my first years in Seville, I had the curiosity and the need to get to know other cultures, other points of view on a musical and artistic level. As it turned out, I also thought it would be an important experience on a personal level: to study in another country, to live in another language. Oslo is a city with a great cultural offer, and I was lucky enough to arrive in time for the Ultima Festival. The Norwegian Academy of Music works very well and has many resources for students. The year I was there, the composition students had the opportunity to participate in the Lyden av Musikkhøgskolen festival and organize a self-produced concert evening. If I remember correctly, this was the first edition of the Sonisk Hage, which is still organized once a year. On the other hand, and I was not aware of this when I applied for Erasmus, the electronic music department and the (Norwegian) folk music department also played an important role during my stay in Oslo.
Interviewer: How did your Master’s degree at the “Giuseppe Verdi” Conservatory in Milan with Gabriele Manca contribute to your growth as a composer?
David: The years in Milan were very important for me and I still lack the perspective to be fully aware of what they will mean for my future. Studying with Gabriele Manca not only helped me to grow as a composer and artist, but thanks to him I became aware of some important points that were still latent and on which we worked during those years. As a composer, studying with Gabriele has helped me, among other things, to explore the relationship with the performer, to become aware of the physicality of interpretation, to question writing, to rediscover listening, or to radicalize musical ideas so that they can be embodied in works. As part of my Master’s degree at the Milan Conservatory, I also had the opportunity to attend Alessandro Solbiati’s classes and Professor Grosskopf’s Ethnomusicology course, which, in addition to the music of other cultures, allowed me to get to know the popular music of Italy, such as that of Sardinia. Moreover, my years in Italy have allowed me to get closer to Italian culture, beyond music, which is a great source of inspiration for my artistic practice: read the poetry of Giuseppe Ungaretti, the literature of Cesare Pavese or Italo Calvino, the texts of Umberto Eco or Luciano Berio. Look at the paintings of Emilio Vedova, Lucio Fontana or Alberto Burri.
Interviewer: What was the creative process behind writing the music for “Io, Arturo Martini – Morte della Scultura” for the Lombardi-Tiezzi company?
David: The music for the play “Io, Arturo Martini – Morte della Scultura” was written for an actress and two percussionists. The project was challenging in many ways. On the one hand, it was my first attempt to work with a mainly theatrical voice, although the actress also sang. On the other hand, the play was about the life of the sculptor Arturo Martini, so the director asked me that the two percussionists who would accompany the actress’s voice should work only with instruments made of stone.
The work with the performers before the final rehearsals in Florence was done remotely due to the constraints of the pandemic in 2021. For the percussion part, the creative process focused mainly on finding different solutions for the stone instruments. The influence of Japanese Noh theatre was decisive: in this theatre, half-buried pots are placed under the stage to improve the resonance. In our case, we used upside-down ceramic pots and placed various stones on their bottoms (a total of three stones per percussionist, two of which were placed on their respective pots). In this way the percussionists could strike the stones with other stones or with different types of drumsticks, creating a rich palette of timbres. Another important step was the possibility of having a marmofono (a lithophone whose bars were made of Carrara marble) that could be played not only with a mallet but also with a cello bow, producing a very special sound that blended with the voice of the actress.
But the most important creative process was working with Francesca Gabucci, the actress. I remember that she sent me recordings of some exercises that I had asked her to do in order to get to know better the possibilities of her voice. At the same time, I sent her reference pieces so that she could listen to many examples of different types of vocality: works by Berio, Aperghis, Sánchez-Verdú, Xenakis, and so on. It was very enlightening to experience, in the early stages, the potential of working exclusively through imitation rather than through writing. When I asked her to imitate a certain passage, Francesca was able to carry out vocal techniques and imprint an expressiveness that I doubt we could have achieved (in a relatively short time) by writing. I was also able to implement with her some of the strategies I was researching at the time in relation to the performer’s memory, both in the creative process and during rehearsals and the final performance.
Interviewer: What key insights did you gain into artistic research during your participation in the 2020 WARM workshop and how have these informed your own work?
David: The research project, in addition to providing us with some writing and research tools and the opportunity to present and discuss our projects among the different participants, gave each of us the possibility to write, publish and publicly present an article about our artistic research. This experience was definitely very educational and valuable for all of us. In my case, I would like to point out the discovery of the work of recursive dynamics in the musical composition of the Chilean composer Cristian Morales Ossio, as well as the knowledge of other theatrical possibilities beyond the willing suspension of disbelief, such as the distancing effect of Brecht’s epic theatre. Thanks to WARM (Workshop on Artistic Research in Music), I also came into contact with the Lombardi-Tiezzi company, which is developing a research theatre in collaboration with the Teatro Laboratorio della Toscana.
As far as my work as a composer is concerned, what I found thanks to WARM, more than answers or certainties, was the question towards which I wanted to direct my research and, consequently, my artistic practice; that is, the “theme” of my research: the presence of the performer in musical composition. Thanks to this, I found more and more questions, some of which I had perhaps unconsciously asked myself before. Questions that I was ready to face at the time (and that I am still facing): How can I avoid passive execution in order to work with creative interpretation? Am I satisfied with writing univocal works that seek a (single) “ideal” interpretation? How can I work with the presence of the interpreter without making his/her interpretation “artificial”, unintentionally theatrical? From that moment on, whenever I start a new project, I think about how I can apply or develop these ideas, question them, discard them, reformulate them. This is an ongoing research that is still at an early stage.
Interviewer: How do you incorporate the figure of the interpreter in musical composition in your artistic research and compositions?
David: Recently I have been concentrating on working on the performers’ reading, remembering and listening, both at the time of performance (or rehearsal) and in the process of composing the work. I hope that I can outline this in the following examples:
A work with reading in the creative process could be the development of a kind of “instrumental phonetics” taking a text as a starting point. During the composition process it is necessary to test and refine the material with the performers, so that the “phonetics” don’t crystallize, but the flexibility of the language is maintained. One of the points that interests me is that the written material is not interpreted as a set of “phonemes” that follow one another as discrete units, but that its limits are worked on, blurred if necessary, in order to achieve a sonorous flow that, being purely instrumental, evokes the sonority of a spoken language. Just as when we listen to a language we don’t know and therefore tend to concentrate “only” on its sound.
Working with the performer’s memory in the creative process can be done by giving them an audio reference, asking them to listen to it just once and then to sing or play what they can remember. In this way the original material is eroded by memory, shaped by forgetting. It is crucial that the nature of the material provided allows for this process of erosion. For me, the materials that the performers return through this technique have a great richness that can be explored as a starting point for the composition of a work. This type of work is influenced by the recursive dynamics that Morales Ossio has developed in his work with the performers.
A work with listening, following the ideas of Luigi Nono, can be applied through the use of sounds whose emission has a high degree of instability. These are sounds that take time to form, whose behavior is more or less predictable but not controllable, sounds that require from the performer a sensitivity, attention and presence that I find very valuable. To be more precise: to ask a pianist to work with the left pedal when the preparation –applied to two of the three strings of the middle register– allows the search for an infinite number of possible intermediate points between the two preparations (una corda – “attentive listening” – III corde).
Interviewer: As one of the winners of the “Premio Straordinario di Composizione 2020” and the winner of the “I Concurso de Composición Musical Jóvenes Andaluces,” how have these accolades impacted your career?
David: I am very grateful for the jury’s confidence in selecting my music and for the fact that these works have been performed in concerts as a result. As far as the impact of the two awards on my career is concerned, I think that in addition to the recognition they bring to one’s work, they can sometimes act as a kind of endorsement for those who don’t yet know your work. Having said that, I think it’s important to write what you really need to write, to be true to yourself, without trying to fit into what has the best chance of winning a competition or being programmed. It is necessary to keep taking risks and avoid writing “on the safe side”. Keep looking for the next step in each new project.
Interviewer: How would you describe your collaboration process with ensembles such as Plural Ensemble, Nou Ensemble, Aksiom Ensemble, Taller Sonoro, Divertimento Ensemble, and Mdi Ensemble when working on performances of your compositions?
David: The collaboration grew over time with each new ensemble I had the opportunity to work with. With Plural Ensemble and Mdi Ensemble, the works they performed were already written. With Nou Ensemble, Aksiom Ensemble and Taller Sonoro, the works were written specifically for them.
In the case of Taller Sonoro, a work for ensemble and electronics, instead of using a tape, a clicktrack or automated live electronics, I worked with the performer who was in charge of the electronics, so that he could play his part by listening to the ensemble. Not a rigid, inert or automated electronics, but a more human electronics, an electronics that could listen and breathe through the performer.
The case of the Divertimento Ensemble is the most significant in terms of collaboration between performer and composer. Thanks to the Laboratorio per giovani compositori sul pianoforte preparato, I was able to work with the pianist Maria Grazia Bellocchio during the various meetings organized by the workshop. The collaboration took place on a timbral level, during the experimentation for the piano preparation, as well as on a formal level, since I used a (partially) open score, in which the pianist’s contemplation of the material played a fundamental role. In addition, I was able to compose a work in which the performer’s listening was central. I focused on enhancing attentive listening and working on the fragility of interpretation: the example of the left pedal described above was crucial in this work.
I would like to collaborate in new projects, either by writing instrumental or vocal works, or by participating in interdisciplinary projects that involve any kind of collaboration at the sound level (with other composers, sound artists, electronic music) or with other arts, such as theatre, dance or video-art.
Contact:
Email: davidantunez95@gmail.com
Website: https://soundcloud.com/davidantunez