The composer's muse as master.

• Author: Holston, Mark
• Position: Uruguayan composer Miguel del Aguila

"What I want doesn't matter. My music does not obey me!"

When Uruguayan composer Miguel del Aguila sets out to create a new work, the process literally takes on a life of its own, often leaving the composer as surprised at the outcome as his audiences are when they first hear one of his creations.

"I may have a psychological concept in mind," the 36-year- old native of Montevideo allows, "but the themes develop in a different way, going in another direction than I may wish to take them. I never decide what the direction of my music should be; it evolves and my style evolves in every piece. It's totally subconscious when I'm writing; I don't plan my pieces. In the end I have to do what they want!"

Such frank admissions come as naturally from del Aguila as do the brooding, rhythmically agile works his growing international reputation is thriving upon. A gifted pianist whose career has gradually shifted from performance to composition, del Aguila has stirred passionate interest among the traditionally conservative classical music media world. "The turbulent fantasy of the composer blazes unbeaten trails, delighting the listener with an infinite variety of thematic, rhythmic and harmonic surprises," reported a Ukranian newspaper after the Odessa Philharmonic Orchestra performed his work. "Del Aguilar's use of small thematic and rhythmic cells creates the effect of near to obsessive vitality," wrote an Austrian critic. "The gesture of his music seems to be inspired by the dramatic action of an imaginary stage." And his hometown newspaper, El Pais, termed him "a spontaneous creator who expresses himself with precision, fluency and an unusual assurance of ideas and form."

Before emigrating to the United States when he was 21 to study at the San Francisco Conservatory, del Aguilar had been strictly schooled in the European tradition by private teachers in Uruguay. "I only played Mozart," he says with some amusement today. "I wasn't allowed to play anything else! And it's like that in many places in the world, especially in Europe where they're very traditional."

But the budding talent was too curious about the abundance of music he discovered throughout the Western Hemisphere to allow himself to be limited by a rigid, Euro-oriented, traditional, classical music outlook. Soon after completing composition studies in Vienna, del Aguila began to express himself in ways that raised more than a few eyebrows.

"I've enjoyed shocking Europeans, especially...