Composer, cultural producer, and writer, Luis Codera Puzo has dedicated years to music and to the collective spirit that emerges from it. His works focus on the search for specific, unequivocal ideas, often derived from his work with electronics.
Enjoying a high degree of artistic freedom, as in his case, requires careful and disciplined study, as Codera Puzo explains in numerous articles. In this context, the electric guitar—often foregrounded in much of his music—and the modular synthesizer, at the core of his creative process, both find their place.
In this interview, all these topics will be addressed, delving into what has so far emerged from the Catalan composer’s catalogue.
Your career and work are very broad, but let’s start with a concrete question of great interest for Obiettivo Contemporaneo. How was your learning process with the electric guitar? Why are you interested in this instrument in particular, and can you tell us if you have favorite electric or acoustic guitarists?
My relationship with the guitar has been very irregular. I started as a self-taught player and then studied with several jazz and rock teachers, only to stop playing later. Years later, I returned to it and began to find my identity with the instrument as I matured as a composer. My journey as a guitarist has been linked to learning to listen and imagine music and to defining the ideas I want to express, rather than to spending hours on the guitar developing dexterity or technique. Now I fear I play any music worse than I did years ago, but I hope I’ve learned to make music that is uniquely mine in a more solid and singular way.
Continuing with the electric guitar, several of your works feature this instrument, such as π (2014), Las declinaciones (2021), and Discipline is happiness (2022). Tell us about these works and the roles and materials you use on the guitar.
π and Discipline is happiness are two chamber pieces whose differences mostly reflect my changes as a composer between the stages in which they were written. Perhaps the most important for my relationship with the instrument has been Las declinaciones: a solo piece that was extremely difficult for me to create, revising it again and again over a long period. It’s the closest I have been to the instrument, and it is defined by ideas impossible to imagine without that proximity. There is something there that doesn’t appear in my other music, and I have a special affection for it because of that.
In general, my approach to the guitar usually includes the volume pedal as an essential element (sometimes one before and one after the amplifier, because of its influence on distortion gain), continuous use of the floating bridge, and many harmonics. I play with a pick and currently feel close to the VOX AC30 distortion. In chamber contexts with classical instruments, it has been crucial for me to care for the sound in relation to the rest, especially when I use distortion, even if the other instruments are also amplified. I think some old digital multi-pedalboards have done a lot of damage to many contemporary classical concerts with electric guitar. An amplifier and an acoustic instrument are different worlds: they come from different acoustics and listening frameworks, with dynamic behaviors difficult to integrate. Sometimes I fear that this problem has been underestimated. It’s probably a personal quirk, but even the pick attack seems complicated to fit, and that’s why I often disguise it with the volume pedal.
Your music is very structural and organized; this is not only audible but can also be read in the titles of your compositions, like some we have already mentioned, but also in Kaolinite [Al2Si2O5(OH)4] quartet (2012) or Code is poetry (2020). Explain your aesthetic ideas and how you understand this “structuralist” aspect.
Curiously, I don’t usually think in those terms, but I find it interesting that my music can be heard that way. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that I care about clarity, and that makes seams, parts, and processes visible. Or rather: it doesn’t hide them.
Regarding structure or organization, I don’t use graph paper plans or similar methods; decision-making is based on imagining or trying different scenarios. I am interested in choosing based on real consequences, not personal mythologies. This does not at all exclude an analytical attitude nor imply the typical anti-rational prejudice. On the contrary: I always try to process, analyze, and articulate the reasons behind each decision (I couldn’t do it any other way), but that doesn’t remove the need to imagine at all times what is happening and decide accordingly. I don’t experience them as separate processes (not even in life).
An important aspect of your work has been as curator and organizer, both of the CrossginLines Ensemble and the OUT·SIDE concert series, among others. Explain why these aspects are interesting for you, beyond your work strictly as a composer or musician.
I left both projects years ago. They made possible many initiatives and the music of several colleagues. Without denying that programming, for me, involves choosing and making decisions according to one’s own criteria, I believe this work is mostly about paying attention to others, listening to others’ music. Understanding this is very useful for a composer: we usually work in solitary dynamics, and egocentrism is certainly not an exception in this field. Learning to listen to the other (that is: listening) and approaching other ways of making music is extremely fruitful.
Currently, my management work is limited to a more technical profile, assisting the (fantastic) Barcelona group FRAMES Percussion.
A very original feature of your profile is that, in addition to everything you already do, you are also a synthesizer performer in many formats, whether solo, with an ensemble, or even with an orchestra, as in MUR#03 premiered by the OBC (Barcelona Symphony Orchestra and National Orchestra of Catalonia) in 2023. Tell us about The Synthesizer in My Life (paraphrasing Morton Feldman’s The Viola in My Life), why it interests you, and what your musical ideas are with this original instrument.
The modular synthesizer has allowed me to conceive musical creation in a completely different way, opening a world that has nothing to do with what I knew. It took me many years to learn how to use it until I felt ready to integrate it into my music. It’s a huge universe, highly customizable, and unfortunately too often exploited in its most superficial and seemingly “cool” aspect. The orientation I have given it through module selection is focused on performativity, which, although it may seem obvious on an instrument, is not necessarily so in this field. Like with the guitar, I can barely do 1% of everything that would be possible with my instrument; my interest is in exploring that 1% deeply.
What influences and references are present in your music and work in general? The recurring use of electric guitar and synthesizer is significant in your profile, which hybridizes your work with electronic music and contemporary popular music, even though your studies are within the classical tradition. Tell us about all of this.
Reflection on the traditions we are immersed in matters a lot to me. The inclusion of popular elements is increasingly common in our current classical music scene. I have nothing against it—they are elements present more or less visibly in my music—but while many interesting proposals come from our scene and approach popular music, others surprise me by showing almost no knowledge of sound, EQ, compression, mixing, or mastering. I regret being harsh, but I don’t understand how people capable of showing some skill in the classical field can then make such a spectacular failure in popular music and barely notice it. There is something elitist in the idea that classical music requires a lifetime of study while popular music can be learned in a few months. They probably think they are fighting that elitism, but in reality, they confirm it. Being aware of this situation makes me fear that the same could happen in projects where I also venture into those realms. One must stay alert.
In relation to the previous question and from your position as a versatile musician, curator, programmer, and author of several writings highlighting your theoretical work, could you frame your music within some current trends or genres, or do you prefer not to, finding it more independent and personal? And in relation to that, how do you see the situation of new music today? Are you interested in what is being developed at this moment, or do you prefer music from different eras or styles?
I read a book from Ediciones Contrechamps with interviews of prominent composers from the second half of the 20th century, and I was surprised that many said they did not identify with their scene, even though they were highly recognized composers. Also, it is often the most easily classifiable artists who try to sell us the idea that they cannot be classified. I think we should be wary of these delusions that we belong to nothing and are unique.
For my part, I try to be influenced as much as possible; I neither fear nor feel my freedom threatened. Knowing what we belong to gives us more possibilities to develop singular and individual traits. Curiously, of all that influences me, the most decisive thing has been listening to music attentively. Some listening experiences have been far more decisive than most of the individual lessons I have received.
Initially, I was more attracted to a Germanic pole in music, though this has gradually faded. In recent years, my music has oriented towards clarity, avoiding superpositions or accumulations, seeking nakedness; I believe that American minimalism, as well as the music of several colleagues like Chilean composer Pedro Álvarez, has influenced this process of “de-ornamentation.” This process is also influenced by music containing elements that provoke rejection in me—“anti-influences,” so to speak: I dislike contemporary music of confusion, accumulation without a plan, filling measures, and attending concerts without understanding the purpose or why that music is necessary. This rejection has led me to pursue a certain nakedness, perhaps a little exaggerated, which time will likely temper.
Regarding current creation, I would advise caution toward a composer who begins a negative critique with the phrase “today’s music is…” They often speak of their own frustrations and their always-unsatisfied ambition. Personally, I am mostly concerned with not knowing enough of the music being made; I am also concerned about the decrease in public support we are currently experiencing, an essential issue for our scene.
I am extremely interested in listening to my colleagues, especially live. If something is not entirely close to me—which is not unusual—I do my best to try to find meaning in what I hear, to try to learn and extract something from it, something as pedagogical, by the way, as being relentlessly critical, which, on the other hand, never fully “turns off.” After attending concerts, my mind is a whirlpool. There is something enormously fertile in listening.
Finally, if you can, tell us about your future projects.
I have just secured funding for a multichannel electronic piece, which will be performed in the coming months in a forest in the Sierra de Huesca (and will later have a version with the forest prerecorded). I will also make an eight-channel version of my piece Splendor. In the coming months, I will also create a new piece for piano, modular synthesizer, sampler, and electronic devices, and another for oboe and sampler. I will also be busy revising—eternally—pieces and recording them. Soon, the recordings of SUMMA#01 and SUMMA#02, two duos that were recorded this past summer in an extraordinary way by the fantastic Duo Signal and Duet 2.26, will be published. In parallel, I will continue performing some concerts in Spain and France with my solo synthesizer program Las enumeraciones.
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