Peter Ablinger (Compositor) 

Peter Ablinger habla de ruido, de sonido, de todos los sonidos, de todo siempre, del ruido blanco que contiene todas las frecuencias, todas las músicas, pero no las contiene realmente, solo poéticamente.

A finales de los setenta, antes de ser uno de los compositores más originales del paisaje musical europeo, Ablinger tenía dos intereses: el diseño gráfico y el free jazz. También pintaba y estudiaba piano y jazz en el Conservatorio de Graz.

En numerosas ocasiones el propio compositor explicó que todo lo que había aprendido sobre arte lo había trasladado luego a la música, que el aprendizaje fue de lo óptico a lo sonoro, y nunca al revés.

Radicado en Berlín desde 1982, Ablinger es un compositor cuya poética, aunque inequívocamente europea, incorpora las grandes líneas del experimentalismo estadounidense. Sus obras son tan especulativas como su pensamiento. Usa habitualmente materiales sonoros y visuales registrados por él mismo. Ablinger comenta que: “el azar y la falta de intención eran un primer paso para escapar de la obra "absoluta" porque representaban una apertura respecto del encierro en sí mismo, pero a la vez afirma allí también que el sonido ya es de por sí expresión”

A partir del trabajo en su propia música, el compositor comenta que no existe percepción sin intención. En este sentido, comenta: “creo que hay muchísimos sonidos alrededor que no escuchamos porque no hay intención, porque no sabemos qué hacer con ellos ni por qué prestarles atención. Por otro lado, escuchar con intencionalidad implica crear una relación entre yo, el oyente, y el sonido (o la música). Y esto supone que en todo proceso de percepción está siempre en juego nuestra personalidad individual y sociocultural. Nunca seremos capaces de escuchar simplemente lo que "es"; siempre escucharemos también aquello que deseamos. Podríamos hablar de una "proyección": nos proyectamos a nosotros mismos, nuestras posibilidades, nuestra educación en los sonidos. Ésa es la razón por la que no podemos percibir los sonidos de otro modo que como expresivos: siempre nos cuentan algo. Los sonidos como meros sonidos son una ficción. Del mismo modo, concibo mi música como un proyecto de investigación; una investigación sobre la percepción. ¡Y sobre cómo la percepción nos crea!”

Ruth Prieto, for ComposerSpeaks, interviews composer Peter Abliger

Viena, March 2015

Everything always

1. Ruth Prieto: Which characteristic defines you best?

Peter Ablinger: Well, I took a long time to reach this point.

2. R.P.: What is composition for you in this day and age?

Peter Ablinger: And I have probably chosen the title "Composer" just to let myself be slow on the uptake, and be able to think on a single note for days.

3. R.P.: What inspires you as a composer and why?

Peter Ablinger: But it´s not about notes.

4. R.P.: Can you define «contemporary»? And in which way Peter Ablinger is “contemporary”?

Peter Ablinger: It´s about the real, questioning about the real, it´s about asking the right question, and I had been asking the wrong question for a long time.

5. R.P.: What is your main obsession when working?

Peter Ablinger: I had asked whether it would ever be possible to reach the real, whether it would ever be possible to break through the prison of my imaginations onto the real – if only for the briefest moment, whether it would ever be possible to really be HERE or if I always – for ever and ever – would remain trapped in the not-being-here, in my imaginations and in the constructions of my mind, and never reach the real and always just miss it.

6. R.P.: How is your creative process?

Peter Ablinger: But an unreachable real - what would that be?

7. R.P.: What are you working on now?

Peter Ablinger: Would that be something other than just another construction of my mind?

8. R.P.: What are your musical roots (real or imaginary)?

Peter Ablinger: Would that be anything at all?

9. R.P.: What virtues does a composer have to have? And defects?

Peter Ablinger: The question of the possibility or impossibility of reaching the real is also the question of the real itself, the question of whether there is any real, or whether there is really nothing other than my imagination of the real.
 

"The question of the possibility or impossibility of reaching the real is also the question of the real itself, the question of whether there is any real, or whether there is really nothing other than my imagination of the real. "

10. R.P.: If you had not been a composer, what would you like to
have been?

Peter Ablinger: But this is the wrong question.

11. R.P.: What has your greatest extravagance been?

Peter Ablinger: There is, however, also no right question.

12. What does music contribute to education?

Peter Ablinger: For what is only now becoming clear to me, is that all questions of whether, how and to what extent the real exists at all – formulated in this way – do not count.

13. R.P.: What is silence?

Peter Ablinger: The real does not count outside my imagination.

14. R.P.: Who would you rescue from the past?

Peter Ablinger: In other words: A real outside my prison does not count.

15. R.P.: What´s interesting about the present?

Peter Ablinger: If I could tear down the prison walls, I would see nothing real.

16. R.P.: What do you expect from the future?

Peter Ablinger: If I could overstep the constructions of my mind without immediately replacing them with new mind constructions, I would not be able to see anything behind them.

17. R.P.: What would be your advice to a young composer?

Peter Ablinger: What does count, however, is that the real is interesting only as imaginary.

18. R.P.: Which musician(s) or work(s) have made an impression on
you as a composer?

Peter Ablinger: And it might be just as well, that the real can only EXIST as imaginary.

19. R.P.: Have you got a composer of reference?

Peter Ablinger: In any case it can be left aside, in any case it does not matter whether there is, or there is not, a real outside my imagination.

20. R.P.: Have you got any eccentricities when composing?

Peter Ablinger: And concerning the earlier question, the question of the real, the indifference towards the question of the real is a failure, and an acceptance of the fact that the real can never be reached, but only just missed.

21. R.P.: A "must" film

Peter Ablinger: And most likely the acceptance of this failure would actually be what comes closest to the real, what comes closest to being-here.

22. R.P.: Recommend us a book

Peter Ablinger: Or I am only imagining this indifference, I am only imagining that the question of whether there is, or there is not, a real outside my imagination, can be left aside.

23. R.P.: A song that puts right an off day

Peter Ablinger: Even the indifference would then again be just another construction of my mind, another sector of the prison of my mind.

24. R.P.: What have you not yet been asked to do in music?

Peter Ablinger: In a way, it does not seem to be possible to leave this question aside, as it does not seem to be possible not to think.

25.R.P.:  What would Peter Ablinger say about Peter Ablinger?

Peter Ablinger: There is nothing left, but thinking ahead, and it may be just as well that, when thinking ahead, the greatest possible proximity is left behind already, and as I think ahead, I distance myself from it, it is even very likely that I have long passed a certain point of thinking, and that thinking ahead actually brings me back in a great circle, whereas even the circle is another one of my mind´s constructions, just like everything else.