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 and the National Orchestra of Spain. 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. 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.

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.

References

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