"Vasco Mendonça’s omnivorous curiosity"

Pedro Boléo | Público, 21.01.24

“Composer Vasco Mendonça's relationship with Casa da Música (CdM) began in 2007 when António Jorge Pacheco, then programming coordinator and now the institution's artistic director, invited him to be the Young Composer in Residence, the year the programme began. Now, at the age of 46, he is the composer-in-residence for this season, which has Portugal as its theme country.

"At the time, it was something very special," Vasco Mendonça, a composer that has been consistently making a name for himself in contemporary music, told PÚBLICO. "I had just left school and it was, in a way, the moment I realised that there was the possibility of a career as a composer." Mendonça studied at the Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa (ESML) and then had two important stints abroad: Amsterdam, where he studied with Klaas de Vries, and London, where he went to further his studies with composer George Benjamin.

And what does this residency mean at this point in your life? "It's extraordinary in terms of prestige. You only have to look at some of the composers who preceded me, some of them my heroes, really. And I'm grateful and honoured to be able to present my work in such a substantial way this season," he tells us with a certain pride. But which heroes are they? "Kaija Saariaho, who beyond an artistic admiration was someone with whom I had the pleasure of having a personal relationship, and who was very important to me. But also Helmut Lachenmann, Magnus Lindberg or, more recently, Rebecca Saunders, who are fabulous composers with a very special voice," says Mendonça.

The pieces chosen for this residency give an - open-ended - picture of his journey so far. The first, ‘Group Together, Avoid Speech’, which was performed this Saturday, was written for the anniversary of the Gulbenkian Orchestra (in 2012), but Vasco Mendonça thought it would make sense here, "in this case celebrating the incredible Porto Symphony Orchestra and its soloists. This piece was the moment in my symphonic writing when a door opened and I felt that I had found something personal," says the composer, as if he were pointing out the forks in his artistic road on a map. "A dimension was revealed, which is the dramatic nature of my personal discourse. Almost all the works have this feature of dramatic opposition, whether it's the concerto grosso in Group Together, the two concertos for piano and violin that will be performed at the CdM, or even the two pieces with voice. There's always this theatrical side that reveals my predisposition for scenic drama," says Mendonça.

‘Three Speeches and a Technique’, a suite taken from the opera ‘Bosch Beach’, will be performed this Sunday by Remix Ensemble, alongside works by Peter Eötvös and Emmanuel Nunes, and with mezzo-soprano Christina Daletska. But this suite transforms the opera's original numbers with a new text: "I changed the text into three political speeches, each with a quality: The choice; The future; The recount. And a fourth part, which is called  ‘A technique’, referring to an exercise: how to hold a fist in public to achieve maximum rhetorical effectiveness. I wanted to create a series of musical speeches at archetypal moments in political discourse."

Opera and musical theatre don't leave him - after Jerusalem (2009), Ping (2011), The House Taken Over (2013), Bosch Beach (2016) and The Girl, the Hunter and the Wolf (2022), he continues to work in this field, and is preparing "a slightly less conventional musical theatre piece", without revealing more for now. "Opera interests me a lot as a creator. Next week the French version of ‘The Girl, the Hunter and the Wolf’ will premiere at the Paris Opera, and I'm really happy about that too."

Musical theatre is now part of his nature: "George Benjamin, speaking about Messiaen, said that we need to find our 'vérité'. I think opera fits into my artistic 'vérité'. It also interests me as an educator: I'm writing and directing a series for Mezzo channel, [streaming platform] medici.tv and for RTP2 about contemporary opera. It's a medium and a genre that I think is extremely rich and that needs to be better known,” he says.

"This series arose from a personal dissatisfaction I had. Since the beginning of the 21st century, we've had a group of fabulous operatic works and people still have the idea that opera is Carmen and the Puccinis. It makes sense to show other things. And then it has to do with my own creative satisfaction and my teaching activity. Talking to creators, lighting designers, stage directors, everything contributes to enriching my palette, and not just the musical one: theatre is the main reason for being an opera composer. It's important to understand how artists from completely different fields work and think." And he insists that we must not lose our curiosity: "How can I use these very different languages and incorporate them into my discourse?"

Creating is "confusion and doubt"

How does Vasco Mendonça set about writing music? How, in his case, does one move from the zone of creative chaos to the "invention of the concrete" spoken of by the painter Marcel Gromaire? "The creative process is above all confusion and doubt. But there are two essential dimensions: one is the conceptual vision of the work, a priori, which can be of the most diverse inspiration possible. Then there's the labour of executing, of building the soundscape, which has to stand on its own. A good concept doesn't always create a good piece. More and more in my music there is this urgency of creating, through musical invention, a soundscape that is fresh, contrasting, personal. And that's almost the work of a craftsman, of manufacturing," he explains to PÚBLICO.

At the same time, he seems to be broadening his interests and horizons. "There's also a certain omnivorous characteristic to my research," he says, referring to his pedagogical work (teaching at ESML and Universidade Lusíada), his musical theatre projects and his broadcasting work, because "it's all connected". But for him, contemporary music has to come out of its shell and its "niche" even more. "There are various misconceptions on the part of the public, and sometimes in the students themselves. This idea of 'contemporary music'... That doesn't mean anything. What exists are contemporary manifestations and proposals for music. It doesn't necessarily have to obey this or that aesthetic primer" says this creator who is concerned about the echoes of his music.

Vasco Mendonça believes that there is also a responsibility for artists: "There needs to be an awareness among creators to adapt the discourse, not in what we do, but in the way we communicate. There are initiatives parallel to creation that can help us get out of this dead end. Taking music out of intimidating concert halls, holding meetings with the public so that they have access to the voice of the creators. Because that's also what sets us apart from Beethoven - we're alive!"

A vision

This season, Vasco Mendonça's music will appear again on CdM in March (16th), with ‘Step Right Up’, a piano concerto, and in April (19th), with a new orchestral version of ‘American Settings’ (the version previous one was for countertenor and percussion), a song cycle based on poems by Tracy K. Smith and Terrence Hayes that is, according to Mendonça, “a kind of imaginary American folklore seen through my eyes”. A concert with countertenor Iestyn Davies, which Mendonça considers “magnificent”.

Later, in October, there will be the premiere of a new piece for orchestra: “This one is still a mystery. I'm going to give the muse a little more time so she can get closer...”, he ironizes. And finally, in November, his violin concerto will premiere, with the Remix Ensemble and Carolin Widmann on violin. “I wanted it to be for violin and ensemble – and not for orchestra –, because the character of the violin, in my projection, makes sense with a smaller ensemble”, says the composer, who realized that the violin could give him “more pleasure than what would you imagine” when he composed ‘A Box of Darkness with a Bird in its Heart’, a piece written for Ukrainian violinist Diana Tishchenko, premiered at Gulbenkian Foundation in 2023.

A year full of music for Vasco Mendonça. Music with dramatic momentum, but without drama. "I feel less and less the idea that the world is going to end or be mine depending on whether a piece goes or well or not. More and more I have this notion of ​​creating a long-term discourse, a personal vision of the world."