Constança Capdeville and the ColecViva Group: Alejandro Erlich Oliva in Interview with Filipa Magalhães

ABSTRACTThis article explores the ColecViva activities from the perspective of founding member and double bass player Alejandro Erlich Oliva (b. 1948). The group was founded by the composer Constança Capdeville in 1985 with the aim of performing her music and theatre works and as a pioneering project in Portugal. Interviewed by Filipa Magalhães on two occasions (in 2018 and 2023), Erlich Oliva details the first steps of the group’s actions, discusses the ongoing collaborative work among members of ColecViva, and addresses the ‘pedagogy of deconditioning’ concept that he forged. In the 1980s, Capdeville guided stimulating study programs at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in which Erlich Oliva, as a lecturer, defined the contents within the scope of non-conventional procedures for obtaining sound from the double bass. Capdeville dedicated the music theatre work Amen para uma ausência (1986) for a solo double bass to him. At the composer’s request and in close collaboration with her, Erlich Oliva created the graphic score with specific writing notes for the double bass. This last interview attempts to shed light on his perceptions as a performer.KEYWORDS: Constança CapdevillePortuguese music theatreColecVivaAlejandro Erlich Olivadouble bassperformance AcknowledgmentsDecades later, it appears that the inaugural gesture of Constança Capdeville and ColecViva did not follow through. Only recently did some interest in the subject start to emerge among younger generations. I would like to thank Alejandro Erlich Oliva and all the people I have interviewed over the years who have helped me in this crusade of disseminating Constança Capdeville’s music.Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 A music theatre group founded in 1985 by Constança Capdeville in order to perform her works written in the context of this performative genre.2 Source: https://musicamera.pt/en/alejandroerlicholiva/.3 This interview is part of the doctoral research carried out by Filipa Magalhães. The original interview (Magalhães Citation2020b, 323–328) was conducted in Portuguese and is published here in English for the first time.4 Composer, pianist, percussionist, pedagogue, and teacher, Capdeville is the principal figure linked to the music theatre performative genre in Portugal.5 See the full interview in Portuguese in Magalhães (Citation2023, 21).6 The Gulbenkian Contemporary Music Meetings (EGMC) lasted between 1977 and 2002 and were dedicated to the promotion and dissemination of contemporary music in Portugal and abroad.7 Opus Ensemble was a Portuguese chamber music ensemble, founded in August 1980 by oboist and conductor Bruno Pizzamiglio, violist Ana Bela Chaves, pianist Olga Prats, and double bass player Alejandro Erlich Oliva. The highly-awarded ensemble has an extensive portfolio of performances in Portugal and a vast discography. Many Portuguese composers, also some from other countries, composed works specifically for this ensemble, which greatly contributed to the dissemination of Portuguese music around the world.8 Erlich Oliva is likely referring to how John Cage initiated ‘a new phase in contemporary music by calling for greater interpretive freedom, the inclusion of all kinds of sounds in music, including that considered noise and silence, as long as the rhythmic structure remained coherent while still maintaining his interest in the principles of indeterminism.’ [Original: ‘Cage havia iniciado uma nova fase na música contemporânea ao reclamar a necessidade de uma maior liberdade interpretativa, a inclusão na música de todo o tipo de sons, incluindo aquilo que se considera ruído e silêncio, desde que a estrutura rítmica fosse coerente e, ainda, o seu interesse pelos princípios do indeterminismo]’(Magalhães Citation2020a, 280). Author’s translation.9 This notion is eventually based on Varèse’s thoughts on the liberation of sound. For further reading, see Varèse and Wen-Chung (Citation1966).10 Capdeville uses this phrase in works such as Double (1982) in Intervention 6, and Don’t, Juan (1985) in Scene 11, ‘Ucello’.11 The reflections presented in this chapter were mostly written by Alejandro Erlich Oliva and sent by email to Filipa Magalhães on 16 July 2022.12 For more information on Capdeville, see the questionnaire entitled ‘Eight Contemplations on Constança Capdeville’, written by several authors for Capdeville’s eighty-fifth birthday, available at http://www.mic.pt/noticias?where=8&what=3&id=296&lang=en.13 Erlich Oliva shares that years later, he read two books he considered fundamental to his understanding (intellectual and emotional) of this thematic area—El silencio primordial (Citation1993) by Santiago Kovadloff and Sons e Sile^ncios da Paisagem Sonora Portuguesa (Citation2014) by Carlos Alberto Augusto. Namely, Erlich Oliva was struck by the deep empathy with which the poetic and philosophical world of the Argentine thinker, Santiago Kovadloff, and the technical and sociological approach of the Portuguese sound designer and composer, Carlos Alberto Augusto, interpenetrate in perfect osmosis despite the fact that the authors never had any mutual contact. It is also noteworthy that Augusto collaborated with Capdeville as a sound assistant/technician, thus contributing to the assembly of the magnetic tapes, which he also operated during certain performances, including for Double (see Magalhães Citation2022, 66). Thus, Augusto’s thoughts on sound are certainly not disconnected from Capdeville’s influence.14 For more clarification on this subject, see Shultis (Citation1995).15 See Magalhães (Citation2023, 3); Pessanha de Meneses (Citation2023); Benetti and Monteiro (Citation2023, 3).16 Read Erlich Oliva’s comments: ‘For a double bass, or any string instrument, usually the bow is rubbed against the string, but Capdeville wanted the opposite: to rub the string against the bow, producing a totally different effect. Erlich Oliva commented that this gesture, made specifically to extract a different sound from the double bass, is more difficult than playing a full concert by Serge Koussevitzky’ (Magalhães Citation2022, 68).17 See video with Alejandro Erlich Oliva performing Ámen para uma ausência (1986) for solo double bass by the composer Constança Capdeville (1:09:35 to 1:15:49). This concert was part of the 39th Leiria Music Festival and took place on 24 September 2021, also entitled ‘Carta Branca para Alejandro Erlich Oliva’. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbPIZHSiDDo.Additional informationFundingThis work is funded by National Funds through FCT—Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., under the Scientific Employment Stimulus—Individual Call—[CEEC Individual 2022–2022.07416.CEECIND].Notes on contributorsFilipa MagalhãesFilipa Magalhães is a Portuguese musicologist and researcher. She completed her Ph.D. in Musicology (2020), a Master’s degree in Musical Arts and a Bachelor’s degree in Musicology at the Universidade NOVA de Lisboa and Post-Graduation in Historical Archivistics at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities of Universidade NOVA de Lisboa (2022). As part of her research, Magalhães dedicates herself to the preservation of works in the context of music theatre, aiming at documenting and studying them by crossing methodological approaches from musicology and archival science. Her activity as a scholar has been reflected in the expansion made in the field of contemporary Portuguese music preservation with the publication of numerous articles in international peer-reviewed journals and book chapters concerning Constança Capdeville—the composer’s creative processes and also her connections with compositions for film and theatre. In August 2022, Magalhães was awarded a junior researcher position within the scope of the CEEC—Stimulus of Scientific Employment (Individual Support, 5th ed.), with the project entitled ‘Music theatre preservation: a bridge between musicology and archival science’, funded by FCT—Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia.