Simon Ible interviews Eduardo R. Miranda

Published originally in the programme of Peninsula Arts Contemporary Music Festival (PACMF’11), 11-13 February 2011, Plymouth, UK. Slightly edited version re-printed with permission.

Simon: There are countless approaches to creating a piece of music and I am aware that composers find it very difficult to verbalize what is going on in their mind when they compose. Do you ever reflect upon your own compositional processes? And if so, can you tell us something about them?

Eduardo: This is indeed a difficult question to address. Yes, I do reflect upon my compositional processes very often. Unfortunately, the more I do this the less I understand them. One thread that I am currently contemplating explores an idea suggested by philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche in his book The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music. Nietzsche suggested that great artistic creations could only result from the articulation of a mythological dichotomy referred to as the Apollonian and Dionysian. In ancient Greek mythology, Apollo is the god of the sun and is associated with rational and logical thinking, self-control and order. Conversely, Dionysus is the god of wine and is associated with irrationalism, intuition, passion and anarchy. These two gods represent two conflicting creative drives, constantly stimulating, provoking one another. As I understand it, this process leads to increasingly high levels of artistic and scientific achievements. Although dating from the 19^th century, I find this notion compelling.

If I were to write a book describing how I compose music it would be entitled “Apollonian Adventures in Dionysus’ Wonderland”. One side of me is very methodical and objective, keen to use automatically generated music, formalisms and models. Conversely, another side of me is more intuitive, emotional and metaphorical. Each side has it own agenda, so to speak, but they are not unrestrained. They tend to inhibit each other: the more I attempt to swing to the Apollonian side, the stronger is the Dionysian force that pulls me to the opposite side. And vice-versa.

Simon: You are renowned for working at the crossroads of music, science and technology. I am surprised to hear that you have been looking to 19^th century philosophy for inspiration. How does this relate to science and technology?

Eduardo: It turns out that Nietzsche’s Apollonian vs. Dionysian dichotomy resonates remarkably well with the way in which scientists think our brain works.

There are parts of the human brain that are undeniably Apollonian, whereas others are outrageously Dionysian. The Apollonian brain includes largely the frontal lobe of the cortex and the left hemisphere. Generally, these areas are in charge of focusing attention to detail, seeing wholes in terms of their constituents and making abstractions. They are systematic and logical. The Dionysian brain includes sub-cortical areas, which are much older in the evolutionary timeline, and the right hemisphere. It is more connected to our emotions. It perceives the world holistically and pushes us towards unfocused general views. The Apollonian brain is concerned with unilateral meanings, whereas the Dionysian brain tends to forge connections between allegedly unrelated concepts.

The notion that the Apollonian and the Dionysian tend to inhibit each other reminds me of the way in which the brain functions. Inhibitory processes pervade the functioning of our brain at all levels, from the microscopic level of neurons communicating with one another, to the macroscopic level of interaction between larger networks of millions of neurons.

In this context, I believe that the further my Apollonian brain pushes me to perceive the world according to its agenda, the stronger the pull of my Dionysian brain to perceive the world differently. Hence, computer technology is of foremost importance for my métier, because it allows me to stretch my Apollonian musical side far beyond my ability to do so by hand, prompting my Dionysian side to counteract accordingly. I would say that this cognitive push and pull is the driving force behind my musical creativity – and possibly behind my scientific research as well.

Simon: Can you give us a concrete example of this process?

Eduardo: Albeit not necessarily obvious to the listener, there were a great deal of Apollonian processes in the composition of Mind Pieces. [Note: Mind Pieces, for orchestra, percussion and prepared piano was premiered at PACMF’11 by Ten Tors Orchestra.] If we metaphorically compare it to a peacock, I would say that my Apollonian brain built its hidden skeleton, whereas my Dionysian brain designed its visible plumage. For instance, in the second movement, Evolve, I started with a set of computer-generated rhythms, which were generated by means of a simulation of evolution and transmission of rhythmic memes; memes are the cultural equivalent of a gene, a term coined by Richard Dawkins. The simulation was developed in collaboration with one my doctoral students, João Martins. These rhythms, which are played on the snare drum, formed the backbone of the movement. Then my Dionysian brain somehow connected this to Ravel’s Bolero and I decided to base the orchestration of the entire movement on that of Bolero. As my Apollonian side strived to be as systematic as possible, following the same orchestration scheme laid out by Ravel, my Dionysian brain brought in melodic lines and themes whose origins I don’t really know. They emerged quite spontaneously. I guess they were musical memes lurking somewhere deep in my memory.

Simon: In the notes for your piece you wrote that it is “inspired by the phenomenon of memory retrieval by the brain and how our memory frequently distorts information”. How does this relate to the creative process you just described?

Eduardo: It is to do with how those musical memes I mentioned before made their way into the piece. I often find a tune or part of a tune stuck in my head. This phenomenon is popularly known as “earworms”. My earworms are not just tunes, but also rhythms, timbres, sound textures, sound effects and orchestral passages. The strange thing is that some of these earworms do not exactly match anything I remember hearing before, but rather, they resemble elements of music or environments I am very familiar with. This is what I mean by “distortion”. My brain certainly stores information about the sounds I experience, but the retrieval of this information is not perfect; my earworms seem like variations of the originals. In Mind Pieces, I explored this to a great extent, particularly in the fifth movement, Rhapsodia. In Rhapsodia I explored earworms that are primarily melodic, and which sound rather British. Indeed, the orchestration of this movement is inspired by Holst’s orchestration of Jupiter, from The Planets.

Simon: Why have you used a prepared piano in Mind Pieces?

Eduardo: I had envisioned a wide range of pitched percussive sounds in the piece, which cannot be easily produced by standard orchestral percussion instruments. I considered using electronically synthesized sounds for this, but in the end I settled on the prepared piano. Metal screws, coins, wooden clothes pegs and rubber wedges inserted within the strings piano provided the sounds I was looking for.

Simon: Your composition for piano and electroacoustics Mozart Reloaded, has been featured at Radio 3 earlier this year. Can you tell us something about it?

Mozart Reloaded is for piano and electroacoustics, composed for pianist Luciane Cardassi. The piece draws from an eclectic sonic melting pot of classic, electronic and pop music ideas. I chopped up the recordings of 10 Mozart piano sonatas into short musical shreds, which were shuffled in a virtual basket. I used the computer to recombine some of those shreds to form new musical materials. I applied a number of electroacoustic techniques during the recombination process to produce unusual sonorities, such as stuttering piano, DJ-like scratch effects, sound sausages, and ‘noisification’. For the acoustic piano part, I drew inspiration from pieces by composers other than Mozart, which share fragments (or memes) with his sonatas: Beethoven, Gluck, Haydn and J. S. Bach. I had the idea to compose this piece after I learned that musicologist Steve Jan identified memes in the works of these composers, which appear in the Mozart’s sonata K457 in C minor. The composition of Mozart Reloaded involved an extensive planning phase and painstaking signal processing to chop the recording of the sonatas and recombine them into new materials. All very well, until Dionysus intervened with sampled Brazilian percussion instruments, pop rhythms, synthesized voice and chanting monkeys, adding a completely new dimension to the piece, which I had not planned.

[Note: Mozart Reloaded was part of BBC Concert Orchestra’s Mozart Mash-up project:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/orchestras/learn/co_mozartmashup.shtml. The score and CD is due to be released by Sargasso this Summer: http://www.sargasso.com ]