here some pieces i have been composing since 2002, using only computer. i don't know if they are actually playable by real musicians, but here they are! hope you fully enjoy your time here!
i am an amateur composer. i used to play violin for some years back in my youth. i was taught by Gabriella Coletti, an adorable old woman from Italy, who came to Brazil with her husband, another skilled violinist and also luthier, called Eugenio Coletti. They lived in Caxias do Sul, were both played with the local symphonic orchestra, an institution attached to the local university. they are dead now, but with them i was introduced into the practice of music. i am grateful for that. because music is wonder and miracle.
for their shame i was very poor a student, and never got proficiency beyond the basics. not talented at all for playing, but obstinated. before starting learning, in one day i suddenly decided, out of thin air, that i would play violin.
and i did, at least a little. enough to play with an iconic rock band called Aristóteles de Ananias Jr. we lived in Porto Alegre, then a wonderful city, now plagued by a series of reprochable politicians and quickly degrading. anywhay, in that time Porto Alegre thrived with art of all sorts.
two of us, myself and Chico Machado, were to got a degree in visual arts in the best school in the whole state, the Art Institut of the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, which in that time was gaining a big momentum as some teachers returned from their european superior studies. Marcelo Birck was the band leader, was to graduate in composition. a musical genius, and also a keen lover of visual arts. he was the main composer, and in fact he composed almost everything. a new, strange, outrageous and sophisticated blend of rock, regionalism and erudite avant-garde. he is now professor at an university, and a doctor in visual arts! still making the ground shake in many ways.
well, Aristóteles caused the ground shake here in Porto Alegre, breaking all rules of any music which could claim to be minimally pop. so, we never got a full stadium of fans, but the band created a big debate in its prime and now it's work is acknowledged - by many researchers, respected journalists, other important musicians and a little team of persistent lovers - as a landmark in the history of popular music and rock in Rio Grande do Sul, becoming cult. so, there is reason to be proud of. but my share in its achievements is little. i did little, basically giving support, and sometimes having some good ideas, since as a player i was a disaster - always have. all we knew, but they did'nt care, the music we're doing didn't require perfection or virtuosity, and the errors indeed helped it in some ways, because humour was a key element. however, we didn't do comic music, it was very much an erudite comment about tradition. we were really serious about art and did selfconscious creation. but we laught a lot upon mine and our failures and shortcomings, nobody there was really a divine virtuose in his instrument, and then we did a lot of mistakes, all them so frequently musically useful, and that added joy. making music with them was sort o miracle in my life. we recorded a CD, and a tape, along with some videos and clips.
then, after all that passed, i suddenly - again - started composing on my computer, a fine way to surmount all practical disabilities i have. and the pieces started flowing. for the first years the results were - to say it gently - confused, chaotic, horrible, nonsense, ugly. but then, i believe, i understood composing, started to distinguish what worked musically from what didn't, and fortunately i was inflamed by ideas very abundantly, and my pieces became better, and better - at least i hope so! anyway, now they fully satisfy me.
i never took lessons of composition, but i listened eagerly tons of music from middle ages to today. I was introduced to listening by my late uncle Milton Frantz, a sober and learned man who acted as a cultural mentor on classical tradition. but i was very curious about everything, and expanded the sphere of interests where he lived in. i got intensely attracted towards ars antiqua, ars nova, ars subtilior, the first renaissance and baroque, specially Corelli, Haendel & Bach, plus C.Ph. E, Bach, Mozart very much, then some romantics like Brahms and Bruckner and some modernists like Schoenberg, Webern, Stockhausen and Berio. i studied also a bit of music from China, India and Japan and some brazilian folklore. so i had a good background of information and taste/style education. also i knew to write notes and create a score, had a feeling for graphic art, and in many ways i simply "drawed" music, not really was hearing anything in my head, in fact i never ever "heard" anything. i can't tell which note it is if you play one. if you write two notes one upon the other, i can't even imagine which sound the chord will produce. only after writing down the notes and making the computer play them that i can listen and know what is going on and "manage" its development. the process is, in sum, a cumulative series of minuscule tests and choices made ad hoc, like sculpting a block of marble piece by piece to unveil the form inside. i knew that something, a FORM, was there, waiting to be sculpted out into reality. St. Cecily got a bad material with me, a deaf disciple! but i think she was trying an exotic telepatic experiment, maybe in partnership with Apollo, my personal saint of visual arts! sorts of... well, YES, for without the Gods there is no beauty.
another thing is that i never learned how to do harmonic progressions. the tonal system is a puzzle for me. i mean, i fully understand it, but can't reproduce it. i don't know how to change tonality, just in very rare occasions i did something similar, and always by chance. i guess my love forr medieval music has something to do with that. it's my confort zone and i don't feel the urge to change it, i have a feeling for textures, counterpoint and color, and know how to change from C major to G major and go back, but subtle and purposed handling of tonality making a tonal discourse, is an alien thing for me and is beyond my abilities. if you expect to find tonal music here you will be disappointed. i see my music as harmonically late medieval-prebaroque, rhetorically baroque and structurally a great deal contemporary, but also it is very much naïve. actually much of it is a deliberate attempt to emulate those standards settled by the composers i love most.
here you will find pieces from the first decent beginnings to the most recent ones. i would enjoy if some of them could please someone else and give the same joy i feel with them.
i use Encore for writting music and SoundForge for editions.
all pieces by Ricardo André Longhi Frantz, a.k.a. Lovizol*Mvsik, are copyrighted. you may download, copy and distribute them for free - as they are. you can not alter a thing to the files or the music and can not use any one for profit. AND you have to give due credit to me, Ricardo Frantz, as the composer. ok? ok.
this is the same as a Creative Commons License Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
thanks!
enjoy!
links to music by Aristóteles de Ananias Jr.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSOp3Y7HjZo&list=PLN3ibYufDssbTzSs2Ad3szgaCuOqggGvT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6wuyeNB7ak&list=PLN3ibYufDssbwj74weGdciTG4WbPqyJhd
