Oswaldo González
*19 April 1956
Works by Oswaldo González
Biography
Born in 1956, Oswaldo González is a Venezuelan composer. From 1978 to 1980 he studied composition with Brian Kelly, John Lambert and Lawrence Casserley at the Royal College of Music in London. In 1980, Max Deutsch – who was student and later assistant of Arnold Schönberg – accepted him to attend composition and analysis courses at the École Normale de Musique de Paris. Max Deutsch was decisive for his technical, musical and ethical development. He won several national composition prizes in Venezuela and conducted premiere performances of some of his works. He obtained scholarships from Venezuela and France. The Arditti string quartet premiered in 1992 'Willows', for soprano and string trio, based on a poem by James Joyce. 'Willows' was commissioned by the Royaumont Festival, France. Brian Ferneyhough invited him to speak about "Willows" at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse in 1996. In 2010, he completed a PhD thesis in Arts and Sciences of the Art at Paris1 University, the Sorbonne.
Oswaldo González acquired the French citizenship in 2022.
About the music
González principal interest is to find ways to make works sound material as wide and renewed as possible. Some of his representative works are: Mass for mixed choir, Sexteto Nº3 for strings and wind instruments, Amor América for voice and brass ensemble, Trilce for orchestra, Calligrammes for piano trio, Metaphone for chamber orchestra with prepared piano, Journal, opera that uses -apart voices and the orchestra- electronic sounds. González focuses his compositional activity to establish a balance between rich sonic spectrum and form. The works forms can be related to morphological schemes coming from poetry, nature and from the computer. As an example, the formal structure of his work Calligrammes is based directly from 'Calligrammes' poem-drawings created by Guillaume Apollinaire’s eponymous poems book. In the last 4 years, González created the Escalador, an electronic music application with which he plans to compose mixed works to extend his compositional possibilities.
Composing with the Escalador
The Escalador is a music platform recently created in 2021 by Oswaldo González, consisting in a scale -of any type- constructor and a sound synthesizer named: Escalador Audio. The Escalador Audio uses the scales made with the constructor module to produce sounds from those scales in combination with other sound production devices of Escalador Audio. Oswaldo González is exploring and composing mixed works for this new musical environment with traditional music instruments, violoncello, for example.
You can hear and experience the capabilities of Escalador at its website.
