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Luis de Pablo’s body of work is characterized by its heterogeneity: each of his compositions poses a new problem that induced him to branch out into new areas of study. He sometimes continued to explore these problems in his next work or much later, and often from different, or even opposing, angles. This approach is perhaps why he composed in a range of artistic forms and genres: orchestral and chamber music, choral music, electroacoustic music, opera, musical theater, collage, etc. It is not easy to summarize his multifaceted and varied output. But it is possible to discern several phases in de Pablo’s creative career, each having certain technical preoccupations or artistic interrogations. These stages overlap and should not be understood as discrete. Evolution did not mean abandoning the techniques he had assimilated; it meant continually enriching his compositional language.
In the 1950s, de Pablo began to look for a new musical language that would set him apart from his influences. Like Cristóbal Halffter, Ramón Barce, Carmelo Bernaola, and other Spanish composers belonging to the Generación del 51, he was faced with the pressing problem of how to regenerate his country’s music. Their aim was to overcome the hyper-nationalist aesthetic that had driven the musical and cultural isolation of Francoist Spain, and so incorporate the latest developments from the European avant-garde. In the absence of sufficiently influential teachers, this generation was forced to reconsider the significant Spanish figures from before the Civil War. They also looked abroad.
Aesthetic diversity infiltrated de Pablo’s production in the 1950s. He drew references from the works of Manuel de Falla (specifically his last period), Béla Bartók, and Igor Stravinsky, adopting techniques that were firmly established in Europe but still unknown in Spain. He drew on the innovations of the Second Viennese School, as well as Olivier Messiaen’s Techniques of My Musical Language, using nonretrogradable rhythms and transforming rhythmic values by addition (“values added to or subtracted from a given duration”). Although he later studied strict dodecaphony in Paris with Max Deutsch, he never used it. He found it alien to his own sensibilities, and he criticized its intervallic monotony and lack of contrast. He did not, therefore, classify intervals in a strict series but considered them as “groups of sounds.” Coral (1954, revised 1958) and Sinfonías (1954-1966) are his only serially inspired compositions. He eventually withdrew most of these works from his catalog, keeping only “those that in some way contributed something personal.” At the end of the 1950s, with Comentarios a dos textos de Gerardo Diego (1956) and the definitive version of Invenciones (1959-1960), “we begin to catch a glimpse of the music I wanted to make, and in which I really recognize myself,” he said.1
De Pablo’s Móvil I (1957) bears similarities to Klavierstück XI by Karlheinz Stockhausen, Troisème sonate by Pierre Boulez, Mobile by Henri Pousseur, and Aleatorio by Franco Evangelisti — all of which date from 1957 and 1958. The influence of these composers prompted him to explore form and chance — or rather, in his preferred wording, “controlled randomness,” which he understood as the more disciplined, European version of John Cage’s radical use of chance. At this moment, he was able to abandon the series as the central idea of composition:
Until then, the series had been for me — and for many others — the beginning of a new sound syntax, a means of neutralizing harmony, of experimenting with an order that was both more rigorous and richer. But after this asceticism, I was thirsty for a more flexible, freer, fresher, truer language, unfolding the organization of sound from ever-new angles.2
During the 1960s, de Pablo continued to study form. He focused on two fundamental and interconnected aspects. The first of these was sonic density, expressed in the interaction of lines, points, and clouds — a phenomenon occupying in parallel György Ligeti, Krzysztof Penderecki, and Iannis Xenakis. Taking into account quantity, quality (e.g., duration, register, form of attack, dynamics, timbre, etc.), and distribution (e.g., in multi-speed planes of emission, forming complex groups, etc.), he transformed sound configurations through processes of growth, decay, and stasis. He controlled the interaction, juxtaposition, and superimposition of these textures either within a defined unit of time (a “measured” numerical ordering of the material) or imprecisely (“an unmeasured ordering of the material”).
The second aspect was a continued exploration of the role of chance.
I have introduced chance into my compositions, neither out of a spirit of ease, nor out of an attitude of resignation, but on the contrary to reinvigorate my work, to give it a new dimension of life and expression. For there is no risk of disorder or confusion as long as a certain number of essential components remain fixed … For me, randomness is nothing more than an effective, topical and perhaps temporary means of destroying the traditional asphyxiating relationship between artist and audience; a way of questioning the very function of creation.3
In aleatoric music, his main contribution to the question of form is his concept of módulos. These are microstructural elements that, when combined, determine the macrostructure of the work. They can be organized according to criteria derived from a numerical idea, as in Polar (1961), or according to malleable, changing suggestions, as in Iniciativas (1965-1966).
He cultivated open forms along two basic axes. In the first, he combined a free microstructure and fixed macrostructure, as, for example, in Ejercicio segundo (Módulos IV) and Imaginario II. In the second, he did the opposite, using a fixed microstructure with variable macrostructure, through which he strung together preestablished microstructural elements in a variety of modalities.4 But to combine completely indeterminate microstructures and macrostructures could not, for him, constitute a work in and of itself.
At first, de Pablo’s relationship with the interval was to “war against it in favor of timbre”5 (e.g., in Iniciativas, Módulos III, and others):
My first idea, at that time, was to erase, as far as possible, the existence of the interval to better emphasize timbre as a formal factor. It’s a goal that can be seen as part of a fairly collective phenomenon at the time.6
However, his valuing of the interval began to change, leading him to individualize voices by endowing intervals with functional meanings, which led to their playing an increasingly important role in his compositional processes.
Over 1967 to 1968, de Pablo spent a year in Berlin, during which he began to move in new directions. Through his work on controlling sonic material to give it formal freedom, he became more interested in the treatment of pitches (through such elements as register, dynamics, duration, and timbre) than in the pitches themselves.
By an inexorable logic… I could not be the “designer” of pitches or their arranger. Instead, I must limit myself to complementing the fields in which they intervene. This is how my music first integrated nonmusical elements (my first audio-visual experiments date from those years), following from music I hadn’t written.7
He started using quotations (of real or imagined sources), imitating other styles, and incorporating more and more small components of music from the past. His compositions from these years are thus a kind of meeting place for elements from disparate origins, which he tried to unify in a novel way.
This gathering of elements is evident in many works from the late 1960s and early 1970s, including Heterogéneo (1968), which is an enormous collage of diverse quotations. In Quasi una fantasia (1969), a string sextet plays extracts from Arnold Schoenberg’s Transfigured Night. Paráfrasis (1968) is based on three motets by Tomás Luis de Victoria. We (1969-1970, revised 1984) is an electronic collage. Drunken Elephants I-IV (1972-1973), also based on a motet by Victoria, consists of four large-scale frescoes. A Beethoven bagatelle forms the basis of Vielleicht (1973), while Affettuoso (1973) includes a quotation from Beethoven’s Hammerklavier sonata. Finally, Very Gentle (1973-1974) alludes to the styles of Scarlatti and Antonio Soler.
De Pablo gradually abandoned aleatoric components, moving to an increasingly fixed style. However, a trace of the módulos principle remained in the recurring microstructural elements that he combined in constantly changing ways.
As de Pablo states in the above quotation, he began to integrate visual, or even scenic, elements into his music, producing an idiosyncratic musical theater different from that of his contemporaries Mauricio Kagel or Sylvano Bussotti. Responding to his desire to “create music that is resolutely committed” are works such as Protocolo (1968) and Por diversos motivos (1969). According to de Pablo, “I bring in texts and images to give their meaning to the music, while the music simultaneously gives its meaning to the texts and images. Everything tightly fits together.”8 Between 1973 and 1974, he wrote Masque, Berceuse, Sólo un paso, and finally Very gentle, after which he changed his approach.
Electroacoustic music, whether musique concrète or musique mixte, was also a strong interest until 1974. These works include We, Tamaño natural (1970), Soledad interrumpida (1971), and Je mange, tu manges (1972). De Pablo composed Soledad interrumpida and Historia natural (1972) to accompany José Luis Alexanco’s visual work, reflecting a continued openness to collaboration with other art forms. These works reveal him applying his previous experiences, while also seeking “a more spontaneous, more direct use of musical material.”9
A three-year stay in North America, until Francisco Franco’s death in 1975, profoundly influenced de Pablo’s composing. Inspired by American landscapes, he composed large-scale works in the form of long “beaches,” including Portrait imaginé (1974-1975, revised 1998) and Zurezko Olerkia (1975). With these largely static works of considerable length (fifty-one and sixty minutes, respectively), he demonstrated a new sensitivity to temporality.
In addition to the use of theatrical or gestural material, another phenomenon appears in his music: the return of consonant intervals. Seeking renewal but unwilling to compose in the tradition of the Darmstadt School, he turned to consonant aggregates without tonal function, as in Yo lo vi (1970). He explained: “An A-flat major chord recurs periodically, functioning like the pilasters of a bridge, between which there is great ‘bedlam’ (untempered intervals, shouts, glissandi, etc.). This chord provides structural landmarks, lending coherence to the work.”10
Tonal chords also appear episodically in Oroitaldi (1971), Visto de cerca (1974), Zurezko Olerkia (1975), and Al son que tocan (1974-1975, revised in 2000), more prominently in Portrait imaginé (1974-1975), Chamán (1975-1976), and Credo (1976), and extensively in Tinieblas del agua (1978), whose premiere was a near-scandal. Here, the tonal chords serve as reference points in a long and complex musical discourse. Besides functioning as markers within a dense development of dissonances, they also provide a simple punctual or sustained coloration (such as in Bajo el sol, 1977). In this way, they are like Debussy’s notion of “rhythmic colors”11 — an idea to which de Pablo returned often. He thus placed harmony at the service of color. Moving forward, he regularly used consonant aggregates without tonal function.
During the 1980s, de Pablo’s works from Madrid are characterized by the use of the voice, marking what José Luis García del Busto calls his “lyrical stage.”12 After a long period of abstention, he had started to reintegrate the voice into his works in the late 1960s, particularly in musical theater and choral music, although he did this without using text. This development led to a more mature dramatic quality in his music, which at times even became operatic.
His use of voice was made possible by his gradual flattening of the textures, leading to their dense concentration. “Following the research begun with Protocolo (1968),” reads a concert program from 1978, “the line occupies a dominant place in Tinieblas del agua (1978).”13 This phenomenon reaches its zenith with the Second Piano Concerto (1979-1980) and his first opera, Kiu (1979-1982). In later works — Senderos del aire (1987), Figura en el mar (1989), Antigua fe (1990), and Las orillas (1990) — horizontal thinking became predominant.
In his lyrical decade, three vocal works stand out. Kiu (1979-1982) is a milestone in his personal evolution, as well as in Spanish music history: beyond zarzuela, Spain had virtually no operatic tradition. El viajero indiscreto (1984-1988) and the concertante fresco Tarde de poetas (1985-1986) exemplify the complete artistic freedom he had by this point achieved.
Kiu is also where de Pablo developed a new compositional process. Rather than being associated with a particular leitmotif, the characters are represented by a pitch, around which intervals are built (primarily thirds and fifths), though stripped of their functional power. From a given note, de Pablo would construct a “vertical or horizontal distribution of intervals” rather than pitches: major thirds above and below the note, to which he superimposed ad lib, “without limit of notes or directions,” other thirds a fifth apart. He would then freely combine the resulting pitches (i.e., not necessarily in their original arrangement) following his musical intuition. For example, above C he could write E, B, D-sharp, A-sharp, etc., and below: A-flat, D-flat/C-sharp, B-double-flat/A-flat, etc. “There can be one section essentially composed of disjoint intervals,” he adds, “another of conjoined intervals, some fast, some slow….”14 In this process all transpositions are allowed, with no preestablished order of appearance. He thus created a functionality “lacking the implacability of functional harmony, yet able to act in the most operative sense on the distribution of intervals.”15 This verticalization of sounds is audible, so listeners become familiar with the superimpositions used, as normally happens within a given harmonic environment. Although this technique relies on intervals, what motivated de Pablo was “the emergent colors, not their tensions.”16 The result was a nonrigid, flexible system. Its “processual modulation” allowed him to use a whole range of predominantly consonant intervals, “without falling into the logic, however remote, of traditional harmony.”17
The effective reappropriation of consonant intervals is, in the final analysis, a problem that preoccupied de Pablo since his early days in Darmstadt. After struggling against the interval in the 1960s, and then going through a lengthy intermediate stage in which he used triadic chords as pillars (such as in Yo lo vi), he had found a new way to use consonance. This intervallic method formed the basis of a new, distinctive musical language, which he continued to employ for the rest of his life.
By the 1990s, de Pablo had reached the artistic maturity needed to write in a wide variety of genres. These included the large orchestral works Las orillas (1990), Vendaval (1994-1995), Tréboles (1995-1996), Chiave di basso (2003), Casi un espejo (2004), Natura (2005-2006), Tres piezas para orquesta (2014), and Ostinato (2017). He also composed pieces for chamber orchestra, concertos for various solo instruments (two- and four-handed piano, oboe, violin, guitar, cello, percussion, harp, organ, flute, accordion, viola, etc.), and ensemble and chamber music (e.g., piano trios, string quartets, quintets, sextets).
A return to classical “formations” characterized de Pablo’s late output, beginning in 1978-1980 with the writing of two piano concertos:
Having achieved a certain technical mastery thanks to a series of tools I had created that are adapted to my artistic requirements, I wanted to put them to the test in classical genres and formations. (I use the word “formations” since this has nothing to do with form) … I wanted to test whether I was capable of resurrecting all this terminology with all it implies, of using this nomenclature in other ways.18
He also applied his experience to less common instruments and sound combinations, such as the saxophone quartet and children’s voices.
In the 1990s, De Pablo’s reduced his selected tools of expression. But though the means he used became gradually more restricted, he deployed them with virtuosic skill. As the following list of his works shows, the voice continued to occupy an essential place in his late output:
Opera: La madre invita a comer (1991-1992), La señorita Cristina (1997-1999), Un parque (2004-2005), and El abrecartas (2015)
Works for a cappella choir: Variaciones de León (1992-1993), Romancero (1994), Cape Cod (1994), and Carta cerrada (1999-2000)
Works for voice or choir with orchestra or ensemble: Ricercare-Ricordare (1990), De la América pretérita (1990-1991), Antigua fe (1990-1991), Relámpagos (1996), La Navidad preferida (2000), Los Novísimos (2003), Passio (2005-2006), Circe de España (2006), Martinus (2008), Animae (2013), Me asomo a la noche (2015-1016), Dos canciones (2016), Cantata femenina “Anna Swir” (2016-2017), and La caída de Bilbao (2017)
Enamored of the voice and its expressive power, as well as of literature, Spanish and otherwise, de Pablo became focused on uniting music and text. Though his compositions are surprisingly varied in their use of different languages, Spanish is most common because of its malleability and de Pablo’s own familiarity with it as his mother tongue. He also prioritized Spanish as a matter of principle: it seemed important to him to incorporate it into learned music because it had been
both very little and badly used in the nineteenth century, the period of the great flowering of classical music. In Spain, a country that has kept its folklore alive for a very long time, we only have one form derived from opera, the zarzuela. Spanish folk music was alive at least until the Civil War, producing a particular symbiosis of language, music, and folklore.19
Among the Spanish composers of his generation, de Pablo was one of those who wrote most frequently for the voice, using texts and poems by Vicente Molina Foix, Saint John of the Cross, Luis de Góngora, Rafael de la Vega, Antonio Machado, José Miguel Ullán, Juan Gil-Albert and Jorge Guillén, to name but a few. He also was one of the few to try to endow Spanish with a new kind of sonority.
The many diverse paths de Pablo took in his “zigzagging trajectory”20 were the consequence of his curious, whimsical, dynamic personality and strong need for independence. Although as a young composer he was keen to join the European avant-garde, he never fully embraced serialism. Instead, he sought out a language of his own, which in the 1960s involved exploring density and open forms. And though his quotation-based works that followed bear similarities to works by contemporary European composers who integrated borrowing or collage (such as Bernd Alois Zimmermann, Luciano Berio, Stockhausen, and Kagel), de Pablo was expanding on compositional aspects from early in his career rather than merely following what was then fashionable.
De Pablo incorporated theater into his music partly in response to his political and social commitments. However, he was also sought openness and renewal through extra-musical elements. Once his language had developed to include texts, such aspirations naturally led him to explore opera.
Electronics were another means by which he attempted to decompartmentalize language. Though he later abandoned their use, his work with them palpably enriched his instrumental language. Ultimately, he welcomed any form of stimulus, with literature, the visual arts, and non-European music as sources of inspiration. He sought to establish, in a profound way, “a permanent dialogue with different traditions and cultures.”21
As was the case for many of his contemporaries, de Pablo’s trajectory traces a multi-leveled convex line. Instead of returning to a starting point, to neoclassicism, to simplification, and rather than shutting down exploration, he expanded the musical possibilities of sound.
He opened up musical language to a more consonant universe made up of intervals and consonant aggregates, while avoiding tonality. He was not motivated by nostalgia or a late-onset gravitation toward ease. On close examination, one can see that consonance had been present in his work long before, for example in Glosa from 1961. His approach converges with that of other composers, such as Tōru Takemitsu and André Boucourechliev, who also reincorporated consonance into their own harmonic languages. A parallel phenomenon accompanied this return to consonance: the preservation of richness of sound, without the aggression and vehemence of the 1950s and 1960s, when the young de Pablo had to affirm his identity within an often unreceptive milieu.
Likewise, his reappropriation of traditional genres, forms, and forces (such as opera, large multi-movement orchestral works, the string quartet, and the piano trio) was not an “act of reconciliation and public repentance.”22 It instead reflected his attempt to find new solutions within conventional frameworks. He was motivated by a concern to fit into a historical musical lineage, a desire to join the tradition while enriching it.
In the end, de Pablo’s work embodies a paradox. While he asserted his personal freedom regarding genre, language, and, more generally, anything that might limit his creativity, he simultaneously aimed to integrate his music into widely understood notions of a musical tradition. His compositions — poetic, whimsical, ebullient, prolific, even anarchic — navigate between a relentless drive for innovation and a wish to be part of a historical tradition. Although he was a Spanish composer who came late to the ranks of the European avant-garde, de Pablo was nevertheless a pioneer in many areas. His insistence on consonance, a lyricism compatible with experimentation, and the expansion of opera foretold the evolution of many of his peers.
1. Luis DE PABLO, A contratiempo, Madrid, Círculo de Bellas Artes, 2009, p. 37. ↩
2. Comments by Luis de Pablo in Maurice FLEURET, “Il faut démolir la partition,” in Le Nouvel Observateur, 24 April 1968. ↩
3. Ibid. ↩
4. On this subject, see DE PABLO’S article “Toward an Aesthetic of Contemporary Music” (Approche d’une esthétique de la musique contemporaine, 1968). It is a first-rate source for understanding the issues in his music from the 1960s, as well as the diversity of his compositional strategies. ↩
5. Personal communication with Luis de Pablo, Madrid, June 2012. ↩
6. Interviews by Bruno SERROU, Grands entretiens: Luis de Pablo (“Musique Mémoires” series, Institut National de l’Audiovisuel, 2001), chapter 73: “Techniques compositionnelles.” ↩
7. Luis DE PABLO, “El folklore vasco como material de composición,” in Cuadernos de Sección: Folklore (Jornadas de Folklore, 18 al 23 de Mayo de 1981), Donostia-San Sebastián, Eusko Ikaskuntza, 1983, p. 269. ↩
8. Press release, dated March 18 to 23 (source unknown), in the CDMC Paris documentary file “Por diversos motivos” (Cote DD CDMC13321). ↩
9. Ibid. ↩
10. Personal communication with Luis de Pablo, Madrid, June 2012. ↩
11. Letters from Claude Debussy to His Editor, edited by Jacques Durand, Paris, Durand, 1927, letter dated 3 September 1907 from Pourville, p. 55. ↩
12. José Luis GARCIA DEL BUSTO, “Crónica de vida y obra,” in Piet de Volder, Encuentros con Luis de Pablo: Ensayos y entrevistas, Madrid, Fundación Autor, 1998, p. 32. ↩
13. Extract from the concert program for the Seventh Rencontres Internationales de Musique Contemporaine, Metz, 13 November 1978. ↩
14. Personal communication with Luis de Pablo, Madrid, July 2011. ↩
15. Ibid. ↩
16. Personal communication with Luis de Pablo, Madrid, June 2012. ↩
17. Ibid. ↩
18. Ibid. ↩
19. Personal communication with Luis de Pablo, Madrid, July 2011. ↩
20. José Miguel LÓPEZ, “Luis de Pablo: Entrevista,” in Ritmo, XLV, no. 455, October 1975, p. 5. ↩
21. DE VOLDER, Encuentros con Luis de Pablo, p. 57. ↩
22. DE PABLO, A contratiempo, pp. 54-55. ↩
Do you notice a mistake?