Melissa Portaels about Luc Brewaeys

Ten years after Luc Brewaeys’ death, many concerts are coming up. Melissa Portaels reflects on his oeuvre.

Talisker, OBAN, Laphroaig, Cardhu
No, this isn’t a classic road trip along Scottish distilleries. Rather, it’s an intriguing journey through the favorite flavors of Luc Brewaeys, to which he connected several of his compositions. Not because the music necessarily sounds like those whiskies taste, but simply because a work needs a name. And, as Brewaeys once said: “You shouldn’t take yourself seriously, but your music.”

Yet the often humorous titles in his catalogue reveal more about the composer and his music than you might think at first glance. Take OBAN: that whisky, according to Brewaeys, has a round, full-bodied flavor—best matched with low instruments like the double bass, cello, and viola. That those low instruments are asked to play unusually high notes has everything to do with the unique timbre of each instrument. Despite all the viola jokes: the violin is not a substitute here.

Painted Pyramids
Painted pyramids? Blending sound colors was one of the most important elements in Brewaeys’ composing. This places him in the realm of spectralism, a French-originated movement led by figures like Gérard Grisey and Tristan Murail. A spectral composer finds material by dissecting sounds. Like a beam of light split by a prism into a rich spectrum of colors, every sound consists of a mix of waveforms. Countless overtones and harmonics accompany the fundamental tone, giving the same note a different sound on a violin than on a viola.

To spectralists, breaking open a sound is like unlocking a treasure chest of sonic possibilities, which they can further “color” with electronics. In spectral music, sound-color clouds often unfold slowly in the listener’s ear. But not with Luc Brewaeys: he preferred bold contrasts and momentum. Consider titles like Fasten Seat Belts!, Fêtes à tensions, and Eppur si muove (“And yet it moves”). He replaced the typical slowness with alternating slow and extremely fast passages, a tangle of melodic lines, chords, and sudden sonic explosions. Most of all, he loved making as much audible at once as possible.

Symphony n°
Brewaeys was truly in his element when writing for orchestra. There he could fully indulge his love for abundance. A page of his score might contain hundreds of notes. In such cases, titles that fire the imagination aren’t always necessary. Sometimes, just symphony is enough. The music speaks for itself. “Not that the music expresses nothing,” he said in an interview with De Morgen, “I absolutely feel things when I write or listen to music. It’s just not necessarily my aim to transfer those feelings to the listener.”

Kientzyphonie
In that same interview he said, “First seduce the musicians, then try to charm the audience.” In his Fourth Symphony, Brewaeys explicitly addresses the performer he dedicated the work to: saxophonist Daniel Kientzy. The music Brewaeys wrote is, to say the least, challenging for musicians. At times, he even tested their limits. In Kientzyphonie, he has the saxophonist play two saxophones at the same time. No easy feat. In Non lasciate ogni speranza (“Do not give up all hope”), the same saxophonist had to sustain this for seven minutes straight—only possible with the extremely difficult technique of circular breathing. That was the limit, said Kientzy.

Brewaeys insisted that virtuosity in his music was never a gimmick, but a musical necessity. That probably explains why musicians are so eager to put his music on their stands.

Last Minute Piece
With this short piece for oboe and clarinet, Brewaeys set a personal record time. Known for pushing deadlines—often past the limit—he wrote Last Minute Piece literally at the last minute. He whipped it together in about an hour at a café to save a concert, after the singer had to cancel, leaving the program noticeably shorter. Brewaeys signed the score with “Esso ai. That’s it.” Those spoken words were also how the musicians closed the concert. He remained modest about it, but this once again confirmed: Brewaeys was a musical genius.

A few years ago, MATRIX [Center for New Music] organized an exhibition about the work of Luc Brewaeys. The online component of that expo is still available to visit.