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Ignacio Miró-Charbonnier |
éditions musicales européennes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Ignacio
Miró-Charbonnier was born in Madrid in 1962, where he completed
studies in Classical Guitar (J. L. Rodrigo), Counterpoint & Fugue
(F. Calés), and Contemporary Composition Techniques (Luis de
Pablo) at the Real Conservatorio Superior de Música. For four
years he also attended courses on Non-European Traditional Musics
(also under Luis de Pablo), and the Introductory Course to Ethnology
given by Julio Caro Baroja at the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones
Científicas.
After a stay in Darmstadt (FerienKurse für Neue Musik 1988) and
close contact with composer Francisco Guerrero, he focused strongly
on composition. Especially under F. Guerrero, his private tutor in
composition for several years, he was to compose his first full-scale
works: Perfiles Cortantes for nine wind instruments, the string
quartet Carta para Carl Dreyer, and the computer-music piece Arco
Tenso. Other important influences came from Cristóbal Halffter
and Brian Ferneyhough. His experience in electronic music, started
under Horacio Vaggione, was enlarged through courses by James Dashow,
Ramón González-Arroyo and Clarence Barlow.
In 1993 he started using the computer for devising sound structures that should balance complexity and expressiveness. Several projects were developed in collaboration with scientists of both the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and the Universidad Nacional De Educación A Distancia. One of these projects was chosen in 1996 by the spanish C.D.M.C. (Centro para la Difusión de la Música Contemporánea) and allowed the composer to undertake an in-depth study of several music programming languages (Max, Csound/Cmusic, Patchwork) at the laboratory of the CDMC in Madrid. This paved the way for his mixed-media work El Culto del Roble (for oboe and digital tape), commissioned in 1999 by the C.D.M.C.
The compositions of I. Miró-Charbonnier form groups related to non-musical topics that constitute a sort of aesthetic (and ethic) portrait of the composer. Up to now four groups have been started: (I) Works for string quartet, true messages ("letters") that want to be an answer to some film directors between 1950 and 1970; (II) works for chamber ensembles of wind and percussion instruments, bearing a closeness to far-east painting and calligraphy; (III) works for solo instruments, a personal walk through the writings of the poet Fernando Pessoa; and (IV) works involving electronics and attempting to evoke the rites of the so-called "primitive cultures".
I. Miró-Charbonnier has received commissions from the Centro para la Difusión de la Música Contemporánea (C.D.M.C., Spain) and the Fundaçao Calouste Gulbenkian (Portugal). His works have been performed in the International Contemporary-Music Festivals of Madrid (Punto de Encuentro), Granada, Alicante, Strasbourg (musica), Lisbon (Encontros Gulbenkian de Música Contemporánea), and Brussels (Ars Musica).
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Patience and
Dazzle
"Non
multa, sed multum"
In the heart of Spain's rich and varied panorama of musical talent, Ignacio Miró-Charbonnier's personality is undoubtedly one of the most unobtrusive, if not the most secretive. His music has all the purity of a spring, allied to the inscrutable limpidity of its depth. His rigour belongs to asceticism, his quest intoxicated by the absolute.
Slowly and patiently, he strives for inaccessible perfection, hence a limited output, in which an orchestra or even a large instrumental ensemble do not feature as yet.
Instead, very early on, he tackled the redoubtable sphere of the String Quartet, dreaded by so many of his colleagues. The dedication to Carl Dreyer seems heavy with meaning; one finds a similar striving for the ineffable in the Master's La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc or Ordet.
He has called his piece for oboe and digital tape The Cult of the Oak, in search of immemorial rites. The oak's longevity is not only a symbol of security for mankind but its powerful roots delve deep into earth's nourishing substance, whilst the climbing mistletoe, extracting its host vital sap, is the artist's actual work.
Miró-Charbonnier's great piece for solo violin confirms through its title a truth only paradoxical in appearance. Beyond the references mentioned by the composer, even including Bartók's Sonata, one discovers, for all its abrupt approach, the gigantic and protective shadow of Johann-Sebastian Bach's Sonatas and Partitas and their uncoercible emotional force.
To Understand is to Destroy. This title, borrowed from Fernando Pessoa, informs us that knowledge destroys the mystery of innocence and possession that of virginity. A child breaking its toy to bits so as to understand its mechanism only finds scraps of metal, and a doll's inside reveals neither flesh nor blood but merely sawdust. The scientist only dissects corpses and can only study butterflies when pinned to a board.
Reaching the end of the "how", the analyst comes up against the unsurmountable door of the "why", whose key is only granted him through the humility of faith. Miró- Charbonnier's music belongs to mystic quest, which can never be anything but extremist, as it was in the work of his Master, Francisco Guerrero. "Non multa, sed multum" could be claimed as Ignacio Miró-Charbonnier's own motto.
Travelling at full speed on the highway of industrial commonplaces, it is easy to miss the overgrown beginnings of the narrow path leading to the summits. Steep and arid as it may be, it is the only way edged with flowers which, though small in size, yield colours and perfumes the most intense of all.
Harry HALBREICH
English
Translation: Elisabeth BUZZARD
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Perfiles
cortantes
for nine wind instruments - duration 19'-21'
composed in 1993 - 1994
Arco
Tenso for
digital tape - duration 15'
Laboratorio de Informática y Electrónica Musical
(L.I.E.M.), Madrid, May-September 1995
first performance: 1995, Festival Internacional Punto de Encuentro de
Música Electroacústica, Madrid
Imposible for wind quintet - duration 9'-11'
composed in 1996 - 1997
Manifiesto for solo trumpet - duration 2'30"
composed in 1998
Combatir es No
Combatirse for solo trumpet - duration 9'
composed in 1998
