Suite VII by Roberto Victorio - 1st. part

It is good that our excessive facilities are no longer available, that forms fall into oblivion (Artaud, The Theater and its double)

 

Suite VII and its surroundings

My first post of classical guitar and contemporary music is about Suite VII, by Roberto Victorio. This great carioca composer, born in 1959, has guitar and cello as his main instruments. Victorio’s poetics enforces the guitar into level of high complexity, showing representative moments of his artistic creation, in the best tradition of Brouwer’s and Villa-Lobos’ output.

Victorio's catalogue (http://www.robertovictorio.com.br/ ) has more than 200 works, which 40 involving guitar solo or chamber music works.

Suite VII (2015) was dedicated to me, as well other works but more guitarists are close to his production – like Paulo Pedrassoli, Gilson Antunes and, recently, Stanley Levi.

Let's move now to the author's thinking about Suite VII.

I would like to start an approach about the Suite VII; I won’t discuss the object itself, right at the beginning, but the "incubation" of the work – in particular, the utilization of this word (Suite) and titles in general. 

(TP) - Roberto, can we either reveal or fail this "promise" of titles from Suite VII? Can we subtract or reveal the "form" or being very revealing would be unnecessary? Suite attracts and "betrays" what it is underlying this term so historically deeply rooted? And how much we must go through this porous surface in the case of Suite VII and of the series of suites in your production?

(RV) The title itself is an approach with the ambiance of the past, as agglutination of movements and / or dances. In the previous pieces of the series, for example, the link between the movements was a set of texts / ambiences by important Chinese writers from eighth century to sixteenth century (Suites I, II and IV); Devanagari terminology for important cities of Yucatan (Suite III); and the approach to the traditional headings of the form Suite (Suites V, VI and VII). 
Specifically in these last, employee subheadings suggest temporal possibilities of past but with the expansion that goes beyond mere expectation of dance transposition. It is a return exacerbated to the past in such a way that, in its genesis, stood as a binder of profane ambiences. 
This symbiotic condition, already present in the state "in natura" is raised to superior potencies by the complexified treatment of each structure and internal development of materials in the work as a whole, where micro fragments, initially shown, are going to receive a treatment, extremely transformer and dilatant, for composition of body of the whole suite.

Thus, the sub-titles also become "hiperdances", following expansive treatment of musical materials.

(TP) About this treatment sometimes approaching sometimes exacerbating at Suite and the past, the cell that begins Hiperpreludio has a great expressive force in high D, the D 6, it takes me back to the same D that starts the Prelude BWV 998 (already transcribed from E-flat major), it suggests a strong reference, also because in both works there is a return in the end to the sentence to the D 6. 

 

The same in EspirAllemande, the characteristic levare in up-beat (anacrusis) of B and B notes on the Allemande, now coming from the BWV 996, and the way you’ve reiterated this in EspirAllemande, reintroducing levares B and B several times in the work, doing circles in a spiral; such approach, seems to me, must be highlighted by the performer.

I also know that you play these Bach suites for a long time, having great esteem for this set of lute works, so I’ve made this connection.

 

(RV)  These approaches perceived in the first incursions or initial and propulsive gestures of Hiperludio and EspirAllemande were deliberate, and not only as an approximation to the Lute Suites of JS Bach but also the Cello Suites, all of them had been done part of my studies in both instruments. 
Each anacrusis that arises in this approach / distance with the original dance impulse unfolds in other hypo-sub-gestures, like an activation of the memory of the suites and also as distance from them, not only by the harmonic plan, which is treated on all parts, but mostly by the discontinuity of the flux, imposed during all the time, despite the numerous repetitions of anacrusis that almost circulate in its own centre, as an ostinato.