Daniel Teruggi

Where are you now?

I’m in Paris, at home in the 14th district, with my wife, my daughter and her husband (and the cat).


Where would you like to be?

I’m good where I am. We could have left for our house in Spain, in the middle of nature and during one of the best seasons, but we preferred the Parisian context. We have family, lots of friends and we are in a nice neighbourhood, even if we barely see it.


What are you doing at the moment?

So, the time for getting things in order has come, getting my sounds in order. I've lived a very busy professional life, especially from the 2000s, and my work as a composer was achieved in parallel with my job responsibilities, which left me no time to organize my elements once a musical project was finished. So, I accumulated a significant quantity of sound material around my works, which needed to be digitally transferred, catalogued and described. Between 2000 and 2020 I composed 40 musical works, for concerts, dance, cinema; for each music I generate a very large amount of sounds, of which I use around 35 to 40% (I like this idea of having in a project a large amount of sounds intended only for that particular project). So, since my early days, I've accumulated and accumulated sounds and now the time has come to organize them.

In order to achieve this, it was necessary to transfer 260 magnetic tapes, 180 DATs and 200 CDs. For CDs it is relatively fast to transfer them to a hard drive. For DATs and tapes, it is in real-time. So the process is as follows;

First phase:

• I roughly organize the media by musical project,
• I transfer the media while listening to them at the same time,
• I write everything I do in an Excel file:

• I give a number to each entry in the Excel file,     
• I name each transferred file keeping the initial name on the medium,     
• Each Excel number matches a sound file number,     
• I start the name of the transferred file with this number,     
• I describe the content of the file (20 to 30 words) on the Excel file (this can be other elements already written on the medium),     
• I add a judgment of quality and interest;     - For example: On a medium where is written VM sound recording, the transferred sound file will become 39) VM Sound recording, VM is the abbreviation for my work Variations Morphologiques, (I have a glossary of initials associated),     
• I add documents or descriptions, including photos of the covers of the tapes or papers that may be inside with descriptions.

• I also write in parallel, on a Word file, information, memories, comments on the work, its context of creation, and any useful information to remember. It is true that when I listen I remember many things. It is also true that there are many sounds that I have forgotten.
• This makes a huge pack of sounds (I'm at 250 giga).
• Apart from the sounds there are other recordings: examples for lectures, recording of conferences, radio programs, interviews... I transfer and keep all those elements.

For the music itself, the notes and the scores, they were already organized, this is a complement to the ordering work that I have done over time.

Second phase:

• While keeping everything that has been transferred on several hard drives (3 different copies, the old rule of computer backup), I organize the material by compositions; for that:

• I created a structure that organizes my work by themes: acousmatic music, mixed music, theatre, films...
• In each category I put all the works that exist in alphabetical order,
• For each work I create subcategories: starting and processed sounds, the music itself, the notes, documents, program notes, scores, photos,
• I gradually fill in the subcategories from the digital transfers and from the already ordered materials,
• I fill in all this on a new Excel file including an image of the file structure.

Now, I'm in the middle of phase two. The method is personal and questionable, but it is based on my experience of searching for documents. The important thing is to know where each element you are looking for is, and then to find it quickly. I have been working for several months, not continuously but periodically, but the containment has initiated a long working session.

We could question the usefulness of all this work; why don’t I throw away directly sounds or items that I don’t find interesting? This operation will take place in a third phase, more musical, in which I will definitively destroy a large quantity of sounds, I take notes when listening to sounds and the selection will then be done quickly. But one of the great rules of archiving is that the person who archives does not evaluate the value of what he is archiving! So, soon I will take off my archivist cap to put on the composer one.

Otherwise I go shopping every two days, masked and gloved, and I cook every day.


What are you listening to right now?

Let's say I listen to my sounds, and sometimes to some music. I don't listen to anything else after several hours of listening a day. On the other hand, I watch movies late at night (because movies are better appreciated that way), in particular Fellini, Bergman and Tarkovski to start (it's time to watch “Stalker” again!). As I am not alone at home, there are other musics that resonate in a distance... Listening to my sounds is not a “musical” listening, it is rather descriptive and qualitative, then I will go fishing sounds and work with them.

I sometimes listen to the music of other composers who once gave me a CD (I have received so many in my professional life and I had so little time to listen to them!). I listen, focused, while trying to understand what moves the composers, and often I write to the composer to tell him what my reactions and thoughts are. I’ve surprised more than one...


Do you use this containment period to make music?

I had just completed a long music at the beginning of the containment, so I’ve been resting ever since, but I sometimes get myself to work on another project that I started some time ago. There's always something going on, the problem is that I don't like composing with headphones, so I'm waiting for better times to really get started. If it lasts too long, I’ll have to get over it.How will the world be after all this?

Funny question for which there is no answer. Will it change, will it be more human, closer to individuals? In any case, the cultural world is going through a terrible catastrophe beyond the epidemic itself. I think the consequences on the cultural world will be huge, consuming paradigms will change and not for the better. I was already thinking that our musical life was rather reduced, confined, and I do not think that the opening will come in the future, at least regarding the contact with the public and musical events.


How can we support the music community?

There are quite interesting initiatives through sharing, online concerts, collaborations between musicians, this opens up new perspectives; these are great reactions to isolation, in a world that is already quite isolated. So, to support it, it is necessary to go and look for (or rescue) musicians and audiences, it is necessary that the institutions that have the capacity to bring them together do it in a determined way, now and especially thereafter. For years I have said that musicians, composers in particular, do not speak to each other or too little; we keep on making music in isolation almost without exchange. Maybe we can imagine new forms of exchange, sharing of ideas, music.

Musical relationships and relationships with audiences must be constantly reinvented. Does online music consuming (I mean for our music) have a future? If it is the case it must be developed. Perhaps this containment helps to test new forms of exchange and sharing. It's interesting to follow. We will also have to see how audiences will react, after the containment, to physically attending a performance. Should we reinvent something there too? Rethinking the concert, shared listening?


Five music works to recommend?

Because of Fellini, some music by Nino Rota (“La Strada”), an unusual film by Fellini “Intervista” (it's not a music but...). The last fugue of Bach's “Art of Fugue”. My last work “Nova Puppis” which will be premiered some day. The silence in Paris streets…


A book?

There are several, “A Tale of Two Cities” by Dickens, “The Seagull” by Tchekhov, “A History of the Crusades” by Steven Runciman, “When Albert becomes Einstein” by Christian Bracco and a very old (1922) “New Illustrated History of France” by Albert Malet. Ah, and finally, and to have a wonderful time: “Baudolino” by Umberto Eco.


What will you do when you get out?

The same as now, except that I'll go for walks, have coffee in cafes (I'm a big fan of coffee in cafes), see friends, and talk about everything we did during the containment… Or not talk at all about it!

Link:

https://electrocd.com/fr/artiste/teruggi_da/Daniel_Teruggi

Photos : a photo with my little girl in Pals, Spain, and a photo from my office…