Published 2012.
“Nós não pensamos nada, não há um
homem propriamente pensante: nós ouvimos.”
(We don’t think at all, Man is not a really thinking Being: we listen.”
With one of his usual aphorisms, Eduardo
Lourenço is able to sum-up not only his long coexistence with Music, but also
his attitude of being a permanent listener. But listening to what?
Eduardo Lourenço is one of the few original
thinkers able to hear the other, be it the President, or a taxi driver. His
unquenchable thirst to devour everything on his path, made the act of listening to music a recurrent activity, maybe even more important than speech itself.
Unable to write about Lourenço’s writing, I
humbly stand aside to make room for his own voice (my own loose translations
from Portuguese into English).
“Ora nada mais propício do que a música para justificar o abismo que há
entre senti-la e compreendê-la. É evidente que a maioria dos ouvintes de Bach
não compreende a sua música: sente-a, faz um todo com ela no momento em que a
ouve e nada mais. Mas isso acontece-lhe com toda a expressão musical. Sentir é
o grau ínfimo da apropriação: é só um ouvir com os sentimentos possíveis de
prazer, desprazer, deleite ou aborrecimento, em suma, um ouvir gostando ou não
gostando.” (página 60)
(Well, nothing lends itself so well for the
justification of the monumental gap between listening and feeling than music.
It’s quite evident that the majority of the Bach listeners do not understand his
music: they feel it, make a whole with it when listening to it, and nothing
more. But that happens with all musical expression. Feeling is the smallest
degree of ownership: it’s just a listening with the available feelings of
pleasure, displeasure, delight, or annoyance, all in all, a like-it-or-not
listening moment.” (page 60)
“Concerto de Bartók: quanto mais o ouço mais me convenço de que a
líquida angústia de um mundo à procura do seu explodido coração encontrou na
sua música a estrada real, a pura busca sincopada e em êxtase que nos dará o
improvável futuro onde morte e vida serão apenas sonho.” (página 67)
(Bartók’s concerto:
the more I listen to it, the more I convince myself that the liquid anguish of
a world looking for its blasted heart has found in its music the real road, the
pure syncopated search and in exaltation will give us the improbable future
wherein death and life will be only dream.” (page 67)
“A fascinação da música reside no
facto de ela tornar a palavra humana uma decadência e uma degradação. Ser homem torna-se então uma
melancolia” (página 113)
(The fascination with music lies in the fact
that it makes the human word a decadence and degradation. Then being
human makes us melancholic.” (page 113)
“Aquilo que eu queria ser e não
tenho coragem de ser, encontro nas suites de Bach”
“What I wanted to be, but I’m not brave enough
to be, I find in the Bach Suites.”
"Certamente se um dia voltar
para Deus, a nenhuma outra coisa o deverei senão a estas estradas de uma
melancolia lancinante que, desde o canto gregoriano até Messiaen, devoram em
mim o sentimento da realidade do mundo visível."
(If one day I return to God, if nothing else,
I'll owe it to these roads of a heartrending wistfulness that from the
Gregorian chant up to Messian, devour the feeling of reality of the visible
world.)
A last word to the wonderful work of Barbara
Aniello, a very able Italian researcher in music, art history, and musicology. This
“tailoring and sewing” of Eduardo Lourenço’s manuscript pages must have been a
real nightmare. For our utter delight, she was able to put into perspective all
of these musical moments.)
The more I read Lourenço, the more I realize
that his texts are not black and white, because his writing his mainly poetic
even when he’s writing in a sort of prose.
(Between Wagner and Mahler; facsimile of a
manuscript currently in the Gulbenkian collection)
