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wrote so many beautiful songs and choral works that I consider him equally
talented in both instrumental and vocal music; again, when I listen to him, all
I hear is fantastic music.
In other words, I am inspired by great music, whether for guitar, film, voice,
or orchestra. In this sense, a vocal passage could be influenced by a work
for marimba, and a piece for piano might be influenced by a work involving
electronics. When we talk about a composer’s initial inspiration, the actual
physical vehicle (i.e. the instrument) doesn’t matter because, before
we write it down, music exists in an abstract place devoid of all material
associations. Obviously, once we decide to write it down, we must choose
the sound vehicle so that we can write idiomatically for it, but that is only one
of the stages of the compositional process, and certainly not the first.
We can even go beyond this and say that a composer can be influenced by
any artistic manifestation like film, painting, poetry, or sculpture. Even math,
physics, and philosophy have sparked ideas in me! My sources of inspiration
are so broad and diverse that I can confidently say that when writing an
opera—or any other kind of musical piece for that matter—I pour all my
accumulated knowledge and experience into the score, and not only that
knowledge which is directly related to the work I’m writing.
MM:
The hostage incident that inspired
Bel Canto
took place when you were
18. What do you remember about it? What impression did it leave on you as
a young person, especially since a number of the guerrillas were teenagers
themselves?
JL:
I remember almost everything about it quite vividly. It was the center
of attention for a long time, and it was in the headlines for weeks, both in
the national and international news, so there was hardly a day without a
new development or breaking story. At the time the crisis was unfolding,
the general public didn’t really know any specific details about the identity
of the terrorists, except perhaps for the commanders who were leading
the operation. The details emerged much later, and it took years to get a
complete picture of what had really happened in there. What I felt, and
what many other Peruvians felt at the time, was a sense of dismay.
We thought that terrorism had been defeated in the early nineties, and here
we were, in the middle of an international crisis, getting exactly the sort of
publicity that we didn’t want. After the liberation, however, both terrorist
organizations were irretrievably weakened, and with the exception of a
few isolated incidents, Peru has enjoyed a relative period of peace and
economic prosperity ever since.
An Exchange with
Jimmy López
Photo: Andrew Cioffi
Jimmy López