The brain of Magnus Lindberg (Helsinki, 1958) is difficult to follow and decipher. His nervous and restless way of doing things conveys a constant need and curiosity to understand and put order in his surroundings. He himself accepts that he has an easier time doing it with sounds than with words. Lindberg is known worldwide for his avant-garde compositions and for creating with the aid of computers. The pieces combine complexity, experimentation and improvisation, transforming into energetic melodies full of vitality. He has traveled to Barcelona to perform as a soloist one of his most renowned works, Kraft (1985), and he will do so together with the Orquestra Simfònica de l’Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya. With the excuse of his passing through the city, La Vanguardia has the opportunity to talk about his career and his way of reading the world.
I have a feeling you need to understand music.
I think the beauty is in the fact that you don’t need to understand and know everything about music. At the same time, as a creator I want to communicate and therefore you need to order it and write it. For me it’s a triangle: you need the composer, the musicians and the audience.
Why did you choose the piano as your first instrument?
I started playing the accordion and, later, I started piano lessons. My mother wanted to learn to play and a teacher came to the house to teach her. She noticed me because I’ve always had the ability to read music, it was natural to me. I also played other instruments as I got older. I guess this interest in the piano was sustained because it allowed me to play with different computer programs to make music. As a young man, I entered the world of electronics.
Where does the need to compose come from?
I feel part of the continuation of the music that has been written before. It comes from the past and the brutal evolution it has made since its inception. I think the need to organize sound is part of human beings. Although my parents were not musicians, we had a piano at home and my father bought me an accordion at the age of six. My first compositions are from when I was seven or eight. I have always liked to combine the elements, my brain thinks in numbers and organization. As a way of experiencing music, it has been fun because it allows me to make these combinations. It’s harder for me to order words than it is to order sounds.
What do you think of the debate that artificial intelligence has generated regarding composition?
It is nothing new, since the seventies that I compose with the help of computers. I used to write with Fortran, the first programming language, we have many examples of composition with these tools from the fifties. Now, with the vast amount of data that artificial intelligence has, it is impressive and terrifying at the same time. In art it will be a great challenge because the AI ??is already creating works almost identical to recognized artists. It will be used and abused, and it remains to be seen whether computers will be able to compose better than humans. Much of pop is already created with AI and in classical music it is difficult to tell if it is AI or original. Bach still has a level that computers cannot reach. I’m curious because just as I’m terrified, he fascinates me.
What do you think will make the difference between a work created by AI or one composed by a human?
The further we go, the closer the behaviors of humans and AI will be. I don’t think there is a simple answer because there are many aspects involved.
How do you use computers to create?
I write code for myself. Music is a language that has rules and anything beyond this level can be codified. I can give the machine two chords and ask it to combine them by defining some criteria. I give him some guidelines: find the best way to bring two completely dissonant chords closer together and do it gradually. They are things that the computer can calculate because it is an algorithm. The software I’ve been developing for myself does the same job as the notes I can take on paper. I use it to filter, create, order, mix material that I later use to compose. The computer doesn’t do it for me, it helps me understand the material I’m working with. It’s like having a dialogue.
He started studying classical music. How did his classmates take this way of composing? Did they criticize you?
The moment you publish a piece, people have the freedom to give their opinion. It’s one of the things you have to live with when you’re a songwriter. Obviously, this affects the way of working, but it happens in all the arts. In all this time I have written a lot of music and there have been pieces that have been well received and others that have not. One of the things that I am very grateful for is that I have an international career and that allows me to see how the same piece is received in different places.
That has happened with Kraft. Is it the first time that he interprets it in Barcelona?
Yes. The piece is almost 38 years old and to be able to play it with musicians who weren’t even born when I wrote it is fascinating. I like to see the next generation take care of my works. I’ve had pieces that seemed like they had to disappear, and somehow, later, they have reappeared. You never know what will happen.
Have you ever gotten tired of a work you did years ago?
There are many fellow composers who have rewritten works. I only do touch-ups on a piece before performing it for the first time, especially if it’s for orchestra. In rehearsals something always comes up that needs to be defined and I like to write it down. There is no work that I want to forget and, obviously, there is a piece that I especially appreciate.
Can you give me an example?
Kraft is a good example. We have been playing it almost annually for thirty-eight years. For me it is an important piece, but all the works are. What you create leads to your next composition and that makes me think that if I hadn’t written it I would surely be a different composer. The works are not forgotten because they always end up being present in some way.
Do you remember the feeling you had the first time you played Kraft? The piece is very strange.
The premiere was not easy because there was a lot of expectation. The first part of the concert was sung by Teresa Berganza and the organization suffered in case people would stay in the second part with Kraft. There were no problems and it was very good. There will always be someone who doesn’t like it, especially in contemporary music, it’s something we have to accept. That doesn’t make me ignore the audience because I have a responsibility to it, but I can’t prostitute myself because it wouldn’t be real. You can live in falsehood, but there is no point in doing so. With music I want to communicate with the listener.
What do you want to communicate?
I don’t have a message. The music has to speak for itself. If I had a message I would write worse. Music has its own laws and I try to be as respectful as possible with what I feel is right. With a good piece I have the feeling that it does not need or lack anything.
I have the feeling that his compositions are like animals with a life of their own that he tries to protect and care for.
They are organic especially when I work on them. I have to cultivate them. He compared it to the old masters of Greek sculpture: they didn’t see a rock, they saw a figure that had to be sculpted. I have this same feeling of having to shape the material I work with.
