Interview with Juan Trigos, second part

As a composer how do you face the difficult task of writing for instruments that you don’t play or for ensemble that you don’t know thoroughly?

As I said regarding the guitar, you need to became the ensembles or the instruments that one doesn’t known to write well for them, or better to make them sound good. This statement "ensemble that doesn’t know in depth" called attention because it implies the problem of commissions. I believe that a composer writes things for what he has an interest and that he makes a choice, which may be aesthetic or simply an experiment, anyway if he decides to write a piece for his own or if he decides to accept a committee. In any case, if you do not know and have never written for a particular instrument you must first try to know it very well, this is the basis to write good compositions for that instrument in particular.

Listening to your music I got the idea that you come from a great variety of plays and influences, how to manage these fragments of memory in your musical compositions? Do you use them consciously or .... lets freely flow?

I am convinced that all composers are the product of so many plays and the result of an assimilation of culture in general along with the various experiences of life of its own, which is a little what I mentioned earlier. All these things that live inside of us, are processed reflected themselves in the composition, some are controlled by the head and not others, are unconscious. The really important thing in art is that they play both these aspects and that the act of creativity they work together.

I know you studied with Nicolò Castiglioni and Franco Donatoni, of which you were also his assistant .. how do you remember them, their teachings, their musical poetic?

After being for some time in Rome at the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music where I studied Gregorian chant, ancient polyphony, etc., I moved to Milan. This was a first confrontation with a more international environment, so to speak. At that time, we are talking of 1987, I studied at the Conservatory G. Verdi in Milan with Castiglioni which was not completely unknown to me, I well knew that he was a great composer and a remarkable pianist. He has contributed to my education giving me wealth regarding orchestration’s fantasy, fluency in writing and transmitting this richness in the musical figures to make music more agibile. A figure much more important to me, without reducing that of Castiglioni, was Franco Donatoni. He represents to me the internal structure intended as rigor of writing. Above all I care about him about pulse and rereading. Rereading not only in the sense of technique but the concept of reading understood as a spiritual position towards art, which means having a continuous vision of oneself in different times under different points of view, it is self reflection. This was one of the most important lessons of Donatoni, which for me was a kind of musical father or guardian music very important in my training as an artist, beyond it he was also a great friend. This is not to say that my music sounds to him, let's say that we all get something to someone and I, to Donatoni, I have this part. He has been the ultimate solidification of my musical personality, not just for the technical part but also in the spiritual one.

to be continued