Draft:Gabriel Erkoreka

Gabriel Erkoreka was born in 1969 in Bilbao, Spain. He received the National Music Prize in 2021 from the Spanish Ministry of Culture. Erkoreka studied under the guidance of Carmelo Bernaola at J. C. de Arriaga Superior Conservatoire, where upon graduation, he received awards in both composition and piano. After studying composition with Michael Finnissy at the Royal Academy of Music in London, he got his DipRAM and Master’s Degree from the University of London. His works have been performed in many countries, including England, China, Japan, Finland, and the US. He has worked with many famous orchestras, such as the Royal Academy of Music Symphony Orchestra, the National Orchestra of Spain, and more. Many record companies released his works. 

Erkoreka also won many distinguished awards, including the Reina Sofia Prize for Music Composition (2008), the first prize SGAE Awards (1996), the Basque Government Award for Contemporary Music, the Josiah Parker Prize, the Prix de Rome (2001) and the Composition Prize by the Colegio de España in Paris and the INAEM. Furthermore, in 2001, he became an honorary associate member of the Royal Academy of Music (ARAM) and taught in many great Conservatoires. 

Erkoreka composes many types of music: orchestral, ensemble, chamber, solo, vocal, and electroacoustic. His music focuses on social issues, the need to protect nature, and the diversity of music from all different places. These combinations of themes make his music rich and interesting. Erkoreka’s website, he stated that “Erkoreka's music is a reflection on different interests and motivations: Nature or the need to preserve it; traditional and folk music of diverse origins, which he uses as a pretext for experimentation, and is materialized in what the composer calls the ‘sonority of a place.’” In his piece HAMAR, I could hear what he meant by “sonority of a place,” which in this piece means - the sound of Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.

The only part of HAMAR I can find online is the third section. Gabriel Erkoreka composed this piece and performed it live in the museum in 2007 for the 10th anniversary of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. The piece is full of fluidity, cleverly utilizing the museum's vast space and the different buildings' shapes to diffuse or block out sound. At the same time, visitors have a very different aural experience as they walk around. The performers not only play in the same fixed place but also play and move around the museum during the performance. Rather than using the traditional "melody" defined in music theory, Erkoreka focuses on the instruments' colors, tonality, pitches, and possible functionality. Erkoreka superimposes the different colors of the instruments and uses spatial dispersion and fluidity to create a richness of layers as if countless museum art pieces were making their sounds. By the end of the piece, when all the performers stood back together to play, it was almost emotional, as if the different pieces of music scattered around the museum had been put together again, but still without losing their richness of beauty.

There always seems to be a big gap between Europe and the United States regarding scholarly opinions about what compositions are more worth pursuing or the aesthetics of a work. Europe favors constant exploration, while the United States is more conservative about old frameworks. This is also reflected in the frequency with which Erkoreka's works have been performed in both the United States and Europe.

The Generation of ’51 is a term used to refer to a group of composers who started their compositional careers in the early 1950s. Led by Luís de Pablo and Cristóbal Halffter (who coined the term), this was the first generation to bring the Darmstadt Serialism and European avant-garde in general to Spain. The Franco regime used this music to promote the idea of a culturally developed nation, and the US State Department contributed financially to the development of this aesthetic to show the West’s superiority in the global context of the Cold War. 

As a composer who incorporates his Basque music into his work and explores musical elements from other cultures, it's hard not to get slammed by the Western musical system, sometimes even from his own country. After the Cold War, the West, especially the United States, made itself more “civilized” and culturally superior and claimed this was the reason for the country's success. Cultural Imperialism has led all mainstream societies that accept this view to treat other cultures and their derivatives, such as music, as different, inferior, and unworthy of attention. Even later, when people's perceptions change to "value" other cultures, the mainstream is inclined to accept that culture as they define it and how they perceive it in their gaze. One of the most straightforward examples is that in the highly acclaimed work Roomful of Teeth in the United States, elements of other cultures' music are valued because they are first incorporated into the "more normative" framework of traditional Western music, notation systems, and harmonies. Still, in the end, the composers refer to elements of other cultures’ music as original.

Experimental music, or music that is less dependent on the usual Western notation systems, is more challenging to perform, which is perhaps also why Erkoreka's works are less frequently performed in the U.S. Finnissy, who was Erkoreka's instructor, also influenced him to focus more on the music itself than on the system of the music or the norms of notation.

Furthermore, transformation can be linked to Ferruccio Busoni’s opinion on transcription, which is that “notation is itself the transcription of an abstract idea [which] loses its original form [...] the moment that the pen takes possession of it.” Finnissy cites this essay as a meaningful influence in his own compositional process, explaining that “...when you transcribe [a thought...], you can never literally write it in the way it initially comes to you” and that, in the process, one should “find imaginative and novel connections between sounds.”

I'm ashamed of not being able to find a score for HAMAR. The following deductions are based on speculation based on watching the video of HAMAR's live performance. Using the HAMAR as an example, even with a score, it would be difficult to record or restore a spatial dimension without working closely with the composer. Creating a layered sound requires precise control of the timing of the performers playing without seeing each other and the sense of space, which may be different even in a different place when the architecture and structure of the space become different. Erkoreka's value of music itself and the musical color may also sometimes leave a barrier, causing the impression that it is challenging to play since it’s not really “traditional Western music structural.”