Time in Music as a Psychoanalytic Concern – Sybille Yeats (1935)

Some Aspects of Time Difficulties and their Relation to Music. Sybille Yeats (London). International Journal of Psyco-Analysis 16, pp. 341-354, 1935.

1. Time can be measured exactly by clocks and sundials, but human beings can rarely measure time accurately, for the feeling of the passage of time varies in each human being, and even then is not constant but varies for each one of us with moods and events (…) One does not remember time during great enjoyment, either sensous or mental… Also in work, one talks of being absorbed that one forgets all about time;

2. The small child’s appreciation of time differs in some respects from that of the adult; the chief way being, that small children live more in the sensations and wants of the present and find it very hard indeed to appreciate a future. A future can only be envisaged as differing from the present by remembering at the same time a past which differes from the present. It takes time before childrenn are able to do this (…) The fact that the present only is appreciated by small children, makes their idea of the passage of time quite different from that of adults;

3. Time is marked for the infant by the recognition of things which gradually becomes known… The first kind of time that is recognized is that ‘my body feels that it is time for food’; It is only when outside time or parental time and inside time or bodily time clash that time becomes a factor of importance and stress for the baby;

[What kind of time is musical time? How does it relate to this first bodily experience?]

4. In times of waiting, a new repetition comes in – the cries of rage on the child’s part… These repetitive cries may work up to a climax when they get completely out of the infant’s control… When this state of exhaustion is acute and prolonged it gives the child its earliest experience of annihilation: not only of the annihilation of the self but of all the people around.. Time is put out of joint and all subsequent satisfaction is too late.

[5. Several distinct mechanisms used by children in order to avoid or escape this anxiety are then described, such as “putting oneself temporarily outside of time”, or through “phantasies of having the parents as its slaves, obedient all the time to its will”…

And now something very interesting:

6. “The child who has adopted  this means of drawing attention to itself as a means of controlling its parent’s time and as a defence against its own aggression, often takes up an artistic career, but this is constantly hampered by the fear of repetition lest it bring about a climax of uncontrol”.

7. The article then proceeds to report a case in which “time has played a large part throughout the whole of one year’s analysis (…) the patient is a musician – a pianist and teacher of music – the sublimation has broken down”.]

The Challenge of Conceptualization in Music Composition: Roger Reynolds (2007)

The challenge of giving names to compositional processes, situations, attitudes – taking his own creative experiments as references:

(1)      aesthetic consistency: always a function of the presence of constraints.

[comment: this is such an important formulation – aesthetic consistency and constraints]

(2)      coherence: measure of completeness — within the web of subjective implications.

(3)      impetus: a small generative source or seed; the concentrated, radiant essence out of which the whole can spring and to which, once composition has begun, the evolving whole is continuously made responsive, even responsible.

(4)      integrity: measure of completeness — the pattern of objective relationships.

(5)      intent: it is the intent of the work that successful form must satisfy.

(6)      processual models: focus on unbroken evolution of premises such that suddenness of change, distinctive demarcation is subordinated to an unbroken unfolding, a continuous aggregation of implication.

(7)      sense of belonging: the persuasiveness — in the presence of the work’s elements; the local event anticipates the macro level in some way, just as the overall form invites its detail.

(8)      sensitive adjustement: within a world of constraint, the adjustment or modification of these limiting conditions in applica

(9)      structural models: involve the relationships of portions of the whole to one another – individually distinct.

(10) surprise: surprising turns are essential to deepening engagement, eliciting wonder; but must not themselves be the seeds of a conflicting conventionality of dissociation.

Highly Emotional Reality and Highest Degree of Unreality – Isador Coriat (1945)

CORIAT, Isador H. [1945]. “Some Aspects of a PSychoanalytic Interpretation of Music”. Psychoanal. Rev. 32, p. 408-418.

1. While the aesthetic appreciation of music has produced considerable psychological descriptive literature, the psychoanalytic approach to this problem has been rather limited;

2. Pfeifer invoked: Music is a means of escape from reality through rhythm which, through the process of psychic economy, provides pleasure through compulsive repetition, thereby releasing unconscious fantasies untrammelled by the limitations of language. The pleasure principle replaces the reality principle;

3. The content of music is pure libido symbolism; it lacks objetive content because the libidinal aspect of music has not reached the object level of development [comment: again the idea of music as an objectless art]; consequently, music is the only mental creation in which these libidinal processes can be found in pure culture;

4. The aesthetic effect of music is the result of three factors: compulsive repetition, pleasure in economy and the force fo attraction exerted by the unconscious. The peculiar effect of music consists in the induction of narcissistic and erotogenic pleasures;

5. Chijs invoked: music often symbolizes the identification of the listener with the composer, at times depicting in sound both ejaculation and orgasm [this is just a dream of early interpreters?]

6. Mosonyii invoked: Analogy between composition and dream work, music and day dream;

7. The pleasure experienced in music is synonimous with the pleasure of falling in love; music is the imagination of love in sound;

8. Eryximachus invoked (Plato’s Symposium): Music is the science of erotics applied to harmony and rhythm;

9. Inspiration (incubation of unconscious material) as a relationship between composer and superego;

10. Certain coprophilic elements may enter into music and musical composition as a sublimation fo these interests; Ferenczi – the infantile interest in sound accompanying flatus may be transferred later in life to the subject of music [again the anal erotic connection];

Based on Anal and Narcissistic Foundations, Music is an Objectless Art – Richard Sterba (1939)

RICHARD STERBA. “Zur Problematik des musikalischen Geschehens”. Internationale Zeitschrift und Imago [1939]. Translated in [1946], “Toward the Problem of the Musical Process”, Psychoanal. Rev. 33, p. 37-43:

Goethe’s letter to Zelter (about Johann Sebastian Bach): “I said to myself, it is as though the eternal harmonies were conversing with one another, as it might have been in God’s bosom just before creation of the world. It moved within me and it was myself, and it seemed that I neither had nor required ears, certainly not eyes, nor any other senses” [comment: who could have said it better?]

1. In psychoanalytic literature one can find very little that has been written about music, and what has been said on the subject is not very enlightening;

2. It is considered proven that music is based on anal and narcissistic instinctual foundations, but analytical investigation has not gone further than this;

3. …But to apply this method of investigation [finding the latent content of a work of art] to music is impossible, since in music the conscious and unconscious emotions are not expressed in the form of images of the outside world. Music is what we may call an objectless art [comment: this is a variation of an idea proposed by Frieda Teller, inspired in Hegel, to be sure];

4. I am concerned here exclusively with the investigation and speculative consideration of occidental music, and even then not with this music as a total phenomenon, but only with its formal element of theme, which is the germ cell of musical forms;

5. Music and hypnagogic hallucination [the unifying factor between musical and visual processes is movement], the experience of music and the experience of movement; [comment: such an importan connection here];

6. According to Aristotle: the movements of melody imitate the movements of the psyche;

7. Another reference: Hanslick and the “sounding, moving forms”;

8. Cosmic motility: It is brought about through a profound regression to an early stage of Ego development, where Ego and outside world are identical. Pleasure in motion. Music and oceanic feeling. Dissolution: Identifies the mastery of one’s own body with the ideal motoric mastery of the whole cosmos, and lets them be experienced as one (see Goethe’s letter above).

Composition Defined: Composition is…

            We are manly against all and every asserted principle –  Group of Composers of Bahia, 1966.

1.To compose is to invent a music in accordance with the rules of the art. Rousseau, Dictionaire de musique (1768).

2. Komponieren ist: denken in Tönen und Rhythmen (Composition is: thinking in tones and rhythms). Every piece is the presentation of a musical idea. Musical thinking is subject to the laws and conditions of all our other thinking, and beyond that must take into consideration the conditions resulting from the material. All thinking consists essentially in bringing things (concepts, etc.) into relationship with each other. An idea is the production of a relationship between things otherwise having no relationship to one another… Each composition raises a question, puts up a problem which in the course of the piece has to be answered, resolved, carried through. It has to be carried through many contradictory situations; it has to be developed by drawing conclusions from what it postulates… and all this might lead to a conclusion, a pronunciamento…  But every relation that has been used too often, no matter how extensively modified, must finally be regarded as exhausted; but ceases to have power to convey a thought worthy of expression. Therefore every composer is obliged to invent, to invent new things, to present new tone relations for discussion and to work out their consequences. (Arnold Schönberg, The Musical Idea, 1934)

3. [What is composition? Not it at all]: When is “composition”?: I use the word “composition” whenever I wish to speak of the composer’s activity and the traces left by it. The composer is motivated by a wish to bring about that which without him and human intent would not happen. In particular, the composer’s activity consists in constructing contents, systems, stipulated universes, wherein objects and statements, selected by the composer, not only manifest more than there mere existence, but have a function or value or sense or meaning which without his construction they would not have. (Herbert Brün, my wrods and where i want them, princelet editions, aphorism 49, 1986).

4. Organicity and Relativization: The first law has to do with the creative act, which encompasses the following phases: to conceive, to give birth to, to make it grow, to make it develop, to make it bloom and to mature – thus a really organic process from which results the form and which also implies in constantly trimming and criticizing. But it also implies that it is not the teacher’s criticism that should prevail, but his gift of being able to awaken the critical spirit in the student: the self-criticism… The second law is based on the relativity of things, of points of view. Since Einstein’s discovery we need to rethink. We must admit that we do not deal with dualisms anymore like ‘Either this or that’, as Cecília Meireles says [to us and] to the children, but with paradoxical reality of ‘this and that’. Inclusivity instead of exclusivity (Ernst Widmer, The formation of contemporary composers… Ms, 1988).

5. Composition is an act, and human acts are designed sequences of steps making sense of some chosen task environment in the service of an Idea or plan… It is the activity of an organism in the world in pursuit of creating its own world… Listening as well as Composition, when not abstracted out of this ‘Lebenswelt’, are activities of an organism that, by way of reason, creates its own world. It is quite another matter to ‘reason about’ this activity scientifically, than to follow one’s reason in accomplishing actions such as listening and composing. (Otto Laske. “Toward an epistemology of Composition, Interface, 1991, p. 235.)

6. Sometimes composing is like chasing butterflies. You try to capture moments and articulate them as clearly as possible. You help them become inevitable. (Eric Stokes, In: The Muse that Sings, p. 5, 1999)

7. I have been saying all the time that composition for me is a challenge. Not in the sense that it is difficult, but rather the challenge to present and resolve compositional problems, and as someone interested in the study of music, to identify problems and solutions. It is precisely in this presentation and solution of problems that I identify creation.  (Jamary Oliveira, “A respeito do compor”. Revista ART 019, p. 59-63, 1992)

8. Five components or dimensions of the compositional act: 1) a field of choices (top-down and bottom-up strategies); 2) ‘music is something that we do’ (inseparability between theory and practice, they operate more like a continuum); 3) creation of worlds (imagination and causality); 4) critique (composition as an act of interpretation); 5. reciprocity: ‘the design creates the designer as much as the designer creates the design (see Laske 1992). All the five components are involved in defining the quality of that which is composed. (Paulo Costa Lima, Teoria e prática do compor I, Edufba, 2012, p. 24-27).

9. Drei Grundbeobachtungen möchte ich ansprechen (three basic observations about composition): 1. Komponieren heißt: über die Mittel nachdenken (to think about the means; intellectually, intuitively, spontaneously or strictly calculating… by analysis, by experiments. by training of the ear, by education in the widest sense, by watchful life – quite indeed by composition); 2. Komponieren heißt: ein Instrument bauen (to build an instrument, in other words: sound as a structural experience); 3. Komponieren heißt: nicht sich gehen, sondern sich kommen lassen (not to go, but to let yourself arrive instead; do not trust the composer that knows exactly what he wants…). LACHENMANN, Helmut, 1996. Über das Komponieren. In: Musik als existentielle. Erfahrung: Schriften 1966-1995. Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel. p. 73–82. (via José Henrique Padovani). 

10. Composition, for spectral composers, is the act of sculpting sound using time as the framework that enables the perception of various sonic structures… Spectralism is an attitude towards composition rather than a specified set of technical and aesthetic guidelines… After denouncing the word ‘spectral’ as an inappropriate label, Grisey lists certain ‘consequences’ of the spectral attitude. These consequences are grouped into three categories: harmonic and timbral, temporal,  formal. (Gainey, Christopher J. University of Iowa, Attitudes of Spectralism, 2009).

Anthropophagy as Cultural Perspective: Silviano Santiago and Eneida Leal Cunha (2006)

A bundle of important formulations:

1. The “Letter” of Pero Vaz de Caminha describes, in addition to the men and lands discovered, the first days and first portuguese actions in the New World. It is possible to ‘read’ Caminha’s mass (the description of the first mass in Brazil) as the original scene of brazilian historic and cultural identity. It portrays all the instituent elements of the colonial history: the portuguese authorities taking possession of the new land through an Act of State, congregating both political and religious rule, the Faith and the Empire.

2. The disclosure of this first document written about the country, giving formal existence to the Colony (Caminha’s Letter), simultaneous with the romantic  engagement for the institution of nacionality, is an ironic historic coincidence. The first act of colonization exposed to the XIXth Century and to the builders of nationality a dignified immage of colonization, entirely justified by its historic and religious circumstances. The romantic production corrects the initial representation, gives it another form, alters the rules of composition and the elements of the scene, without damaging the imaginary that produced it (romantic correction).

3. In the XIXth Century, in parallel to the institution of nacionality, it is also created the dilemma of the brazilian intelectual when contemplating the scene of the first mass, be it in its original version of the “Letter”, or in the innumerable forms of the symbolic which have reproduced it: to know himself as a non-european, to know himself as non-indian, to compose his own ascendancy.

4. The modernist version of the first mass takes a route which is the inverse of the romantic construction. It does not propose the substitution of the circumstances of the encounter in order to maintain the imaginary forces that have produced it. Inverts the romantic process maintaining the ritual nature of the encounter, but transfering to the indian all the activity. The pale catholic communion is replaced by the efffective devouring of the bodies. Anthropophagy is proposed as a representation that neutralizes the discontentedness with the colonial experience and colonized attitude (anthropophagic reversion).

5.  Taking as a departing point the ethical and political interpretation of the violence involved in the colonization process, the indication of the mechanisms involved in the suppression of alterity –  and the differences of the many cultures that have faced the european ethnocentric and expansionist impulse, Silviano Santiago tries to change the emphasis of the discussion, from the idea of imitation and copy to the attribution of value. For him (reading Oswald de Andrade), anthropophagy represents the possibility of guiltless appropriation of the spectacles of art and thought produced in places away from colonized countries and cultures, away from the experience of periphery. Santiago is interested in the possibility of ‘de-colonizing’ the dependent culture, by proposing that the sense of indigence, the precariousness of what is considered second-hand,  be replaced by an affirmative posture capable of recognizing itself as differential value.

CUNHA, Eneida Leal. Estampas do Imaginário: literatura, história e identidade cultural. Editora UFMG, 2006. (a ‘free’ translation of some important ideas)

Didier-Weill: Music and the Invocatory Drive (1995)

Some important thematic ideas:

1. What happens when you listen to music? At first you feel, as a listener, that you are just listening to the music. But, the more the music “touches” you, as they say, the more you will discover that, in fact, it is not you that is listening, quite the other way, it is the music that is listening to you, it is the music that listens a presence which existence you have forgotten, making it possible to revive it and to receive it back. Well, this presence is given to you, it means that you can not give it to yourself; it is not at your disposal. It is at the disposal of the Other, the only one capable of liberating it from its hiding place, the only one which is able to reveal it.

[My comment: This is no doubt, so far, the best available distinguishing description of the Unconscious in music, or should we say, the Unconscious as music?]

2. I can not escape saying ‘yes’ to the music [that touches]. The simplicity of this ‘yes’ does not mean that it is easy to understand. Quite the contrary, it is incomprehensible . To what do  I say ‘yes’, then? What does the music listen in me? The music listens that I have listened in its sounds an appeal to which I have said ‘yes’. A simple and enigmatic ‘yes’. I only know that through this ‘yes’ an articulation is produced between a receiver that in me received the appeal of the music, and the appearance of something that emits a call to the music. Through this ‘yes’, I am at the same time the one who says: “Yes I am called by you” and “Yes, I call you”.

3. It is in this mutation, by which an invoked subject becomes an invoking subject, in this very pressure of saying ‘yes’, that we indicate the invocatory drive.

Le trois temps de la loi. Éditions Seuil, 1995.

Teaching Composition: Mark Enslin and the power of the respondent (1995)

General considerations of the social situation of contemporary experimental composers allows a positive view of the necessity of teaching. Comparison of the concert and the classroom as foruns for the dissemination of the composer’s ideas shows that the respondent in both situations wields more power than is usually recognized. If the composer’s activity is seen as including not only writing pieces but also everything a composer does to give those pieces an intended social context, including speaking, discussing, and writing prose, then teaching can be seen as a compositional activity. This entails (1) examination of the role of discourse in determining the fate of any statement (referred to in this paper as ‘the power of the respondent’; (2) questioning traditional images of teacher and composer and the accompanying arguments; (3) looking at teaching as a performance that can be composed; (4) relating the content of teaching to eliciting compositional activity; (5) examining the circumstances under which one might learn from a composition.

Thesis – University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1995)

Heinrich Racker and a theory based on Melanie Klein’s concepts (1951)

1. Music represents a defense against the paranoid situation; song emerges in the face of the persecution by the bad objects;

2. Music at the same time represents a defense against the situation of melancholia. It appears as a means of denying one’s own guilt, and of recuperating the lost object;

3. The defense technique contained in music is the one of ‘driving out the Devil with Beelzebub’ (identification with the aggressor). Through music the bad objects (super-ego) are magically dominated… Summarizing, it can be said, that the technique of musical defense is the manic technique;

4. This triumph over the superego is possible above all, because music itself represents the good object. Union with music, therefore, gives the power to overcome the bad object, and identification with music converts the subject itself into a good one, i.e., a guiltless one. The manic fusion between ego and superego which is thus produced is equivalent to the erotic union with the primary objects;

5. On the one hand, through sound the ‘bad’ impulses (song is scream, i.e., respiratory oral, erotic and aggressive expression in the face of frustation) are expressed; on the other hand, sound expresses the denial of these same impulses (to sing is not to scream). In this sense, sound is a compromise between the id, the ego, and superego. At the same time it represents a defense against the loss of the object by submitting to the demands of the superego (defense against melancholia), and a defense against destruction by the bad objects by reversing the roles; (the attacked changes into the agressor by screaming: expression of the instincts).

Observation: This synthesis was presented by Richard Sterba in his 1965 Review Article for the American Imago.

Open Circuit: Composing a Serial Article (1983)

The year: 1983. Revista ART 008. The goal and desire: to write a serial article. In other words: to question the “natural” fluency of academic language. After all, language is also a variable of composition. Such article would highlight this, even if it ended up showing the huge distance between these two modes of composition – serial music and serial text:

Abstract: This is an article which follows a chart of instructions created in order to diversify the directions of development of a given text fragment (premisse=pre).

1. pre _ 2. spe_ 3. neg. _ 4. gen _ 5. neg. _ 6. spe_ 7. par_ 8. imp

2.1         3.1              4.1           5.1            6.1          7.1          8.1

2.2         3.2             4.2            5.2            6.2         7.2          8.2

2.3         3.3             4. 3           5.3            6.3         7.3          8.3

pre= premisse. Operations: spe= specification;  neg= negation; gen= generalization; par=particularization; imp=implication.

The choice of this structure meets the desire to obtain a maximum of distinct consequences from pre. The coherence of this work – its theme – depends precisely on the amplitude and relevance of raised questions. The same instructions used to generate the horizontal direction (pre / 1 /2/ 3,,,) are applied to the vertical one (1 / 1.1 / 1.2 / 1.3 …), but in retrograde non-strict order.

A list of topics and pathways: Drabkin’s statement about themes. Sonata-form theory as an anatomy of musical discourse. Czerny’s pisitivist account of sonata-form. A language used to describe a composition must reflect upon itself. Thematic ideas about Beethoven’s op. 2 n. 1/I. The way Dahlhaus speaks of A. B. Marx. Thomas Mann and the production of evidence to support a thesis. How to develop a critique of music theory. The concept of climax. Form and time processes. Thematic blindness and Tovey’s definition of theme. Prediction and retroactive-correction revisited. Melodic ambiguity presented by the beginning of Brahms sonata for cello and piano op. 38.

2013: Was it fun? Yes.

The History of Music and Psychoanalysis: Chronological References

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TELLER, Frieda. [1917-1919] “Musikgenuss und Phantasie”, Imago 5, p. 8-15.

EGGAR, K. [1920-21] “The Subconscious Mind and the Music Faculty”, Proceedings of the Musical Association XLVII, p. 23-38.

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ROWELL, Lewis. [1979]. “The Subconscious Language of Musical Time”. Music Theory Spectrum 1, p. 96-106.

SABBETH, Daniel. [1979]. “Freud’s Theory of Jokes and the Linear-Analytic Approach to Music: A Few Points in Common”. Internat. Rev. Psycho-Anal. 6, p. 231-237.

SPENDER, Natashia. [1980]. “Psychology of Music” in The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. London, Macmillan.

WITTENBERG, Rudolph. [1980]. “Aspects of the Creative Process in Music: A Case Report”. J. Amer. Psychoanal. Ass. 28, p. 439-459.

MAGNO, MD. [1982]. A Música. Rio de Janeiro, Aoutra Ed., 2a ed.

CIARDELLO, Jean A. [1985]. “Beethoven: Modern Analytic Views of the Man and His Music”. Psychoanal. Rev. 72, p. 129-147.

ARLOW, Jacob A. [1984]. “Disturbances of the Sense of TIme, with Special Reference to the Experience of Timelessness”. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 53, p. 13-37.

ARLOW, Jacob A. [1986] “Time as Emotion”. Invited paper read to the International Society for the Study of Time. Dartington Hall, England, 5. July.

SEKEFF, Maria de Lourdes. [1986-88]. “O chiste e a Música”. ARTEunesp, São Paulo 2/4, p. 123-129.

CHNAIDERMAN, Miriam. [1989]. “Música e Psicanálise”. In: Ensaios de Psicanálise e Semiótica. São Paulo, Editora Escuta, p. 91-104.

RAUCHFLEISH, Udo. [1990]. “Psychoanalytische Betrachtungen zur musikalischen Kreativität”. Psyche 44, p. 1113-1140.

HAESLER, Ludwig.  [1992]. “Music as a Transitional Object”. Bulletin of the British Psychoanalytic Society, pp. 16-20.

BOESMANS, P. [1994] “La musique et l’indicible”. Quarto – Revue de l’école de la cause freudienne – ACF – en Belgique. Bruxelas, jun. p. 83-87.

UCHITEL, M. [1994]. “As origens do Tango”. Percurso n. 13-2, São Paulo Instituto Sedes Sapientiae.

VEREECKEN, Ch. [1994]. “La voix, le silence, la musique”. Quarto – Revue de l’école de la cause freudienne -ACF – in Belgique, Bruxelas, jun., p. 88-90.

LIMA, Paulo Costa. [1995] “Música, um paraíso familiar e inacessível: uma serenata em 8 movimentos”, Percurso n. 15 – 2, São Paulo, Instituto Sedes Sapientiae p. 55-64.

LIMA, Paulo Costa [1995]. “Música e Psicanálise: uma possível interface”. Cadernos de Estudos – Análise Musical, Atravez, Belo Horizonte, dez.

DIDIER-WEILL, Alain. [1995]. Les trois temps de la loi (Le commandement sidérant, l’injonction du surmoi et l’invocation musicale). Paris, Éditions du Seuil.

Rudolph Wittenberg and the Creative Process in Music : A Case Report (1980)

(i)

The literature on the creative process is based largely on reconstructions of gifted people’s lives and work or writing by artists (Sessions, 1941; Hindemith, 1952; Kris, 1952; Greenacre, 1957; Kohut, 1957; Eissler, 1967), to mention but some of the oustanding contributions. We seldon have the opportunity to observe the process in statu nascendi. When one of my musically gifted patients began to compose during his analysis, I kept detailed notes in the hope of glimpsing some insight into the complexities of creativity. The nature of the creative process seemed to be illuminated by the patient’s particular style of free association, by his unusual use of dreams as key themes, which he treated the same way musical ideas are treated, and finally by the alternation of dream and musical productions….

(ii)

The patient, who I shall call Karl, was a slight, balding man in his early thirties. He opened the first interview by stating that he functioned ‘in a low key’. He complained of mild depression, anxiety in situations that required self-assertion, hesitation in involving himself with women, and an almost crippling uncertainty about the choice of meaningful work…

(iii)

After two and a half years of analysis, when he had started to compose seriously, there was an obvious alternation between dream production and musical production. Dream production would go down as musical production increased, a pattern that became more and more pronounced as time went on. The more seriously he worked on his compositions, the less was he interested in dreams. When he later returned to one of the key dreams he did so with a sense of detachment, as though he were reffering to a museum visit.

J Am Psychoanal Assoc April 1980 28: 439-459,

Analytical Notes on Brahms (1)

Grundgestalten are such gestalten as possibly occur repeatedly within a whole piece and to which derived gestalten can be traced back. (Formerly, this was called the motive; but that is a very superficial designation, for gestalten and grundgestalten are usually composed of several motive forms; but the motive is at any one time the smallest part).  

                                                                                                             Schönberg. June 11, 1934.

1. Let’s call it a game. Brahms leaves traces that make it possible to identify connections among thematic formations of a composition. It is a game of analysis and it exposes one of the most characteristics pleasures of this human activity — a curious interplay between what is presented as direct experience and subjacent levels of signification and reference. The whole process points to the realms of another game, composition itself, imagined from the traces left by the compositional process, insofar as analysis is able to recreate them. Both processes involve interpretive activity.

2. We shall follow the path established by Schönberg in this 1934 fragment: the study of the processes involved in the derivation of gestalten in a piece, and also the integration of motive forms into these composed wholes, taking J. Brahms Sextet op. 18 in B flat as reference and departing point.

Accurate description and understanding of these processes will make it possible to pose other questions concerning motivic work, taking it as a significant process not only in relation to the study of structures but also in the broader perspective of musical meaning formation.   Brahms music is particularly suitable for these concerns, and it has always puzzled its best interpreters as a fascinating but also disconcerting blend of emotional impact and strict compositional planning.

Ex. 1

3. The first gesture of the piece — the neighbor-note figure of mm. 1-2 — is already a complex integration of four motive forms:

Ex. 1a

Our analysis will show that these four motive forms remain significant throughout the piece, and that they will be involved in several thematic constructions, leading to transformations and generating new materials.

It should be noted that motive forms (i) and (ii) are neighbor-note figures, (iii) is an arpeggio and (iv) a passing-note figure. There is no real voice projecting this last motive form, it is a kind of voice leading effect, but rather audible and effective as a compositional material  – the so called transition theme, on A, will project it (a – b- c# – e…), m. 61, and we will discuss this in detail later.

The repetition of the initial phrase (m. 11), now with a full texture, gives us an opportunity to reevaluate the analysis. The results are quite similar, although motive form (ii) is absent and motive form (iv) is represented by its retrograde form (R-iv: d – c – b flat).

Ex. 2

4. But what is really interesting and thought provoking in this initial gesture is the fact that it points to the construction of something which transcends the motive forms. This reinforces Schönberg’s statement that a Grundgestalt is composed of several motive forms.

The following example presents a composed motivic formation that certainly deserves such denomination and that also projects a traditional counterpoint figure — the ‘horn fifths’.

Our analysis will show how this complex formation, the Grundgestalt, is present in several distinct contexts offered by the piece.

Ex. 3

5.  Examples 4 and 4a present the same motivic configuration in a minor context (d minor), the beginning of the second movement, the celebrated Andante. It should be noted that the neighbor-note motive (i) has been displaced to the bass (d – c# – d). Ex. 4a shows how motive (ii) is elaborated in the soprano voice (f – e – f), as part of the larger motive iv, now in a minor context (d – e – f). The horn fifths is presented here in its ascending form (sixth, fifth, third).

Ex. 4

Ex. 4a

6. This same ascending form appears in the next examples (the beginning of the Scherzo), composed by motive forms (iv) and (R-iii) – superior and inferior voices. The note of the Dominant (c) has been included as part of the melodic game, expanding the initial melodic space to a sixth (c – a), an important analytic detail to be commented later.

But what should be said in relation to the neighbor-note motive forms, are they absent from the beginning of the Scherzo? No they are not. Pay attention to the important melodic relationship (a – b flat) mm. 3-4, transforming the contour of motive form (i) from (-1,+1) to (+1,-1), an inversion (Ii). Ex. 5b shows the complementarity between motive form (i) now appearing in F (f – e – f) and its inversion,  and also the presence of motive form (ii) as emphasized by the trill,  m. 2.

Ex. 5

Ex. 5a

Ex. 5b

7. The theme of the last movement, the Rondo, displays the same elements. Its first gesture projects the neighbor-note motive form (i: bflat- a – bflat), combined with its inversion  transposed a third up (Ii: d – eflat- d), in fact, resembling (ii). After that, the horn fifths is presented in a deliciously disguised form, the fifth appears only in the last eigth-note  of the third measure.

Ex. 6

Ex. 6a

8. But did Brahms really think about all these hidden similarities? This is a kind of inevitable question posed to analysts as they expose their ideas about how the music works in terms of subjacent relationships. “No, it’s a coincidence…”, says the annoyed analyst.

Well, after demonstrating the presence of the same figure in the themes of all the four movements, the discussion about intentionality needs to be rephrased. The real question seems to be the tension between hiding and revealing, a significant part of the musical experience proposed by Brahms. And, therefore, the need to include motivic analysis as an important interpretive tool. 

Music Theory and its Cartographies I (2012)

One of my favorite sports: Cartographies of the general field of Music Theory (and Music Analysis). In the last decades we have witnessed an amazing process of diversification of approaches. Just think about the 27 thematic horizons below. 

I call them ‘horizons’ because they are not closed disciplinary territories — they are more like open spaces. And they tend to mix and to transform limits in opportunities for new developments. Several distinct lists could be produced depending on the criteria of ‘segmentation’ of the field.

What is the explanation for such intense diversification? It certainly has to do with the critique of the notion of structure as independent from context (and vice-versa). In a broader perspective it has to do with a renewed epistemological attitude, a post-modern attitude.

Some themes are more specific in nature, others are more fluid — phrase segmentation for instance, it may appear at least in three different horizons: in the theory of rhythm, in cognition or in set theory.

Are we going to achieve a new balance around some consensual synthesis in the near future, reducing considerably the number of thematic horizons or not at all?

Thematic Horizons

1. Schenkerian Analysis
2. Post-Tonal Theory (GIS, Contour Theory, atonal voice-leading etc.)
3. Cognition (and more recently Neuromusicology)
4. Theory of Rhythm
5. Motivic Analysis
6. Theory of Composition
7. Narrativity, Semiotics/Semiology, Music and Text
8. Post-Modernism (new musicology, post-structuralism, feminism)
9. Music Analysis and Ethnomusicology (oral traditions, style)
10. Sociology of Music
11. Applied Phenomenology
12. Gesture, Music and Movement, Energetics
13. Neo-Riemannian Analysis (triadic post-tonality)
14. Analysis of Electronic Music, Analysis of Timbre, Acoustics
15. Analysis and Interpretation
16. Computational Analysis
17. Music Analysis and Philosophy
18. Music Analysis and Historic Musicology
19. Music for Film
20. Analysis of Popular Genres
21. Analysis of Counterpoint
22. Music and Psychoanalysis
23. History of Music Theory
24. Texture and Orchestration
25. Emergent and/or Hybrid approaches
26. Meta-Analysis (analysis of the available analytical approaches)
27. Harmonic Analysis, Form, Counterpoint, Music History (as usually taught)

 TAGS / NAMES / REFERENCES

1. Schenkerian Analysis – tags: Reduction, Ursatz, Urlinie, Stufen; names: H. Schenker, F. Salzer, A. Forte, D. Beach; References:

2. Post-Tonal Theory – tags: pitch-class set, set-class, operations, transposition, inversion twelve-tone areas, contour, space, GIS,   ; names: M. Babbitt, A. Forte, R. Morris, D. Lewin, J. Straus; References:

3. Cognition (and Neuromusicology) – tags: names: Aristoxenus, D. Deutsch, F. Lerdahl and R. Jackendoff, C. Brower; References:

4. Theory of Rhythm – tags: accent, grouping, proportion, temporality, linearity versus non-linearity; names: L. Meyer, F. Lerdahl and R. Jackendoff, J. Kramer, C. Hasty; References:

5. Motivic Analysis – tags: motive, Grundgestalt (basic shape), developing variation, ‘motivic harmony’, organicism; names: A. Schönberg, R. Reti, D. Epstein, P. Carpenter, S. Neff, J. Dunsby, N. Dudeque; References:

6. Theory of Composition – tags: compositional problem, design, cycle (idea, material, implementation, work), process versus structure, impetus, bottom up versus top down strategies; names: A. Schönberg, O. Laske, R. Reynolds; References:

7. Narrativity, Semiotics/Semiology, Music and Text – tags: topics, tripartite model, agent, metaphor, narrative, hermeneutics; names: N. Ruwet, J.J. Nattiez, E. Tarasti, B. Almén; References:

8. Post-Modernism (new musicology, post-structuralism, feminism, queer theory) – tags: context, interpretation, deconstruction, gender, patriarchalism; names: S. McClary, L. Kramer, P. Brett, E. Wood; References:

9. Music Analysis and Ethnomusicology (oral traditions, style, comparative approaches) – tags: culture, context, transcription, cantometrics, emic/ethic; names: Lomax, B. Nettl; References:

10. Sociology of Music – tags: disenchantment, truth-content,  ; names: Weber, Adorno, ; References:

11. Applied Phenomenology – tags: time, space, play, feeling; names: T. Clifton; References:

12. Gesture, Music and Movement, Energetics – tags: gesture, musical forces (gravity, inertia, magnetism), body shcemas; names: R. Hatten, E. King, A. Gritten, C. Monelle, J. London; References:

13. Neo-Riemannian Analysis (triadic post-tonality) – tags: parsimony relations, togglings; names: D, Lewin, R. Cohn, Weitzmann; References:

14. Analysis of Electronic Music, Analysis of Timbre, Acoustics – tags: sound sources, spacialization, layers,  spectral envelopes, music signal; names: M. Simoni, N. Adams, M. CHion, J. Beauchamp, T. Murail, G. Grisey, J. Brown; References:

15. Analysis and Interpretation – tags: performance, mental images,  ; names: W. Berry, N. Cook; References:

16. Computational Analysis (Computational Musicology)- tags: analytic systems (that assist analysis), score representations, comparative approaches; names: L. Hiller, B. Alphonse, O. Laske; References:

17. Music Analysis and Philosophy – tags: music and platonism, music and nominalism, representation, ritornello ((Deleuze); names: L. Goehr, P. Kivy; R. Subotnik; References:

18. Music Analysis and Historic Musicology – tags: music and historiography; genres and styles; forms; names: C. Rosen; P. H. Lang; M. Bukofzer; References:

19. Music for Film – tags: diegesis and non-diegesis, situational meaning, apparent reality, change, closure; names: C. Austin, R. Pendergast, J. Tobias, G. Burt; References:

20. Analysis of Popular Genres – tags; names: Middleton,

21. Analysis of Counterpoint

22. Music and Psychoanalysis – tags: the unconscious, sublimation, phantasy, identification, transitional object, Das Ding; names: F. Teller, R. Sterba, D. Anzieu, Didier-Weill,

23. History of Music Theory – tags/examples: the notion of accent in the XVIIIth Century, Aristoxenus on Rhythm, Boethius; References:

24. Texture and Orchestration – tags: density, textural rhythm, progression and recession; names: W. Berry, L. Ott, R. DeLone

25. Emergent and/or Hybrid approaches

26. Meta-Analysis (analysis of the available analytical approaches) – tags: analytic families, eclectic method, analysis and epistemology; names: J.J. Nattiez, K. Dahlhaus, N. Cook, A. Ferrara; References:

27. Harmonic Analysis, Form, Counterpoint, Music History (as usually taught in Conservatories and Universities at the undergraduate level); names: Kostka, Green, Fux, Grout.

Culture/Composition and Perversion I – (2013)

What is the central idea? Well, that we are moving from a culture of neurosis to a culture of perversion. So what? The object in the first one acquires meaning from what it represents. It acquires meaning from a ‘background of absence’, because the original object (of satisfaction) has been lost, because primal repression has taken place (Verdrängung) and also interdiction (by the Other, the metaphor of the Father etc.). This background of absence is the context in which desire will be possible, acquisition of symbolic means of representation of the real (language) and phantasy — and, of course, all the neurotic insignia.

In the culture of perversion, the object is less and less involved in the representation of referential meanings, it is evaluated by its uses and functions. The economic “progress” and expansion throughout the globe requires that these “outmoded” ways of representation (references, narratives, affiliations and causes) make way for the organization of communities of consumers in a direct relationship with the objects (much more profitable than the former situation). Addition is definitely a plausible horizon in this new culture. Perversion entails a mechanism of denying the interdiction of the original object (of satisfaction). To be more precise: dennies and accepts at the same time (Verleugnung). Fetishism is its best model. The psychic economy of perversion requires a constant proximity to the object.

In this new culture, subjectivity is drastically transformed. Subjects (just like objects) also tend to be evaluated in relation to their success and efficacy — in the social and economic realms, their “use”. A high performance is expected from everybody. Those who fail to respond to this requirement are left behind. Depression and phobias or panic attacks, which have become extremely common, are a natural reaction to this situation.  Without interdiction the subject will not depend on ideals and references for the construction of identity, he will have to do that for himself, or among his equals. The reference is no longer an ideal, it’s an object, and it requires constant satisfaction (remember, no causes or teleologies to postpone jouissance).

In this new psychic economy the variety of incredible objects available, ready to convey satisfaction, is amazing. The celebrity is certainly one of its best examples. It inherits from the romantic/modernist hero several features, but the celebrity is no longer involved with any ’causes’ as the hero was — unless he invents one as a plus to his image. As a global phenomenon celebrities interfere (and even destroy) the network of traditional regional or local references and meanings.

The main question can thus be revisited: how the friction between these two cultures and modes of existence impact the critical tradition of contemporary music? How does it impact the modes of composition? The postponement of satisfaction being such an important feature of modernism — Who cares if you listen? — will inevitably clash with the urgency of satisfaction, and the appeal to the exhibition of jouissance.  The appeal of the object has greatly simplified language. What will happen (or perhaps better, what has happened) to the structuralist drive so characteristic of the modernist enterprise, with its high investment in the critique of representation?

How many different positions could be registered in face of the statement – “Language used is language dead”? You can confirm or deny it, but can you possibly confirm and deny it at the same time? How many degrees of confirmation or denial could be recognized?

So, what is in the horizon? Well, the discussion of perversion in the realm of a theory of culture, and composition as a form of resistance against the destruction of our critical tradition, with a renewed political perspective for the superego.

Fine, but now tell me how!

See, Charles Melman (2003) – O homem sem gravidade, Companhia de Freud.

“Who cares if you listen” – is obviously a citation of Babbitt’s discourse, and “Language used is language dead” is a construction used by Herbert Brün in the piece Futility 1964.

GRADUATE COMPOSITION SEMINAR: Top-Down and Bottom-Up Strategies (2010)

Abstract

Let us discuss how small-scale specifics relate to global topography in music, from the perspective of the composer. What is the nature of this articulation? What are the concepts, theories, strategies and metaphors usually invoked to deal with such a broad question? Participants of the Seminars are expected to develop ideas related to this topic — which will be posted in the blog of the Seminars — and to produce at least one composition as a response to the discussions. Pre-compositional work will also be posted (wanderings) so as to establish a link between the ideas discussed and the compositional processes being developed.

A List of Significant Issues:

1. The process of composition: how to compose it?
2. Compositional knowledge: How should one conceive the field of music composition?
3. Composition and its theories
4. Composition and values: how to evaluate composition?
5. Top-down and bottom-up articulation in the writings of Roger Reynolds;
6. Composition and the administration of attention/expectancy: a) the dictatorship of the material; b) the construction of musical logics; c) processes of intensification;
7. Continuity versus contiguity: a) Schenker; b) segmentation in atonal music;
8. Organicism and compositional strategies: a) Grundgestalt; b) the concept of Form;
9. Hybridism and the cultural perspective;
10. Movement and Music: the concepts of compositional design and gesture
11. Symbolism and narrativity: a) music and language; b) Form
12. Humor and music: local or global strategy?
13. Indeterminacy and musical games
14. Creative styles
15. Analytic approaches to popular songs

GRADUATE COMPOSITION SEMINAR: Cycles (2009)

In 2009, faced with the challenge of preparing a graduate Seminars in Music Composition for a bundle of talented student-composers I proposed (and they accepted) the idea of taking the notion of ‘cycle’ as a departing point for compositional investigation. The result of this process was carefully registered and it involved texts, pre-texts (attempts that could lead to a formal proposition or not), ‘compositional wanderings’ (by the same token, temptative musical ideas that could develop in a full piece or not) and complete pieces. We read articles, singled out ideas contained in them, discussed these ideas (and even argued sometimes), transformed them in compositional proposals, commented the whole process. The Seminars ended with the realization of a concert with some of the pieces prepared during the semester, with the GIMBA, a remarkable group of performers from our University (Federal University of Bahia – Brazil) – flute (Lucas Robatto), clarinet (Pedro Robatto), trumpet (Heinz Schwebel), violin (Alexandre Casado), cello (Suzana Kato) and piano (Eduardo Torres).

Composers:
Claudio Seixas, Guilherme Bertissolo, Marcos da Silva Sampaio, Paulo Rios Filho, Pedro Amorim, Reinaldo Maia, Tulio Augusto.

Please find some of the results here:

http://composicaoecultura.com/ciclo/

Some trends:

1. ‘Cycles’ seems to be an appropriate proposal for a graduate Seminars since (as a theme) it stimulates dialogues between specific ideas and the all embracing context in which they appear. It also favors dialogues between structural and hermeneutic approaches to music;
2. Straus (2003, MTS, p. 305). Theories of atonal music are better for the description and classification of harmonies than in the capacity to show how each harmony moves in the direction of the next one. How could the idea of ‘cycle’ be used both in tonal and atonal contexts? Could ‘atonal voice-leading’ be a significant direction of inquire? See also togglings, Siciliano (2005, JMT, p. 221);
3. Laske and the proposition of a life Cycle for Compositions: Idea, Material, Implementation, Work. Composition as the activity of an organism ‘by way of reason’. Quite different from another activity: ‘to reason about something’;
4. The idea of cycle vis a vis the idea of Space in music. For instance:  David Lewin and the Generalized Interval Systems;
5. Cycles and hybridization: the idea of approaching and moving away from a cultural reference (this idea is further developed by Paulo Rios Filho in his Thesis); avant-garde and kitsch;
6. Cycle and algorythm;
7. Cycle and pleasure (musical gratification);
8. Cycle and musical motion;

Two pieces that resulted from the Seminars: Espiral op. 7 by Marcos da Silva Sampaio, and Catexia op. 25 by Guilherme Bertissolo.

(We thank Michael Kowalski, a New York based composer and a friend, for his valuable comments)

Music and Speech according to Alex Pochat (2012)

The ‘Concertante’ Speech of Salvador

Abstract
This study, by revising the existing analytical and musical literature on the subject, aims to investigate strategies involving the use of speech as material for compositional purposes. It encompasses the universe of sound and oral recording and manipulation techniques, taking as a starting point the musical richness of the traditional Feira de São Joaquim (Salvador, Bahia) from the perspective of its speech styles and complex sonorities, thus producing a work and an analytical-descriptive memorial which summarizes the steps taken by the investigation.

My comment:

In addition to the piece composed for this Thesis, Alex Pochat has other works which take the relationship between speech and music (music and speech) as their departing point. In the piece ‘TODO’ he collected language samples from the participants of my Composition Seminars dedicated to ‘Top-Down and Bottom-Up compositional strategies’ in 2010, and used them to highlight the humorous would-be dialogue between the speaker-singer and seven frenetic snare-drums. Check the video-score here:     

 

 

TODO – Alex Pochat

Atotô do L’homme armé (1993): A Program Note by Gerard Béhague

Gerard Béhague/Paulo Costa Lima: A Program note for the Festival Sonidos de las Americas, New York, Carnegie Hall, April 1996.

Atotô do L’homme armé is the second in a series of pieces named Atotô (the Yoruba greeting word meaning ‘listen, silence!’ for the Afro-Brazilian god/orixá Omolu or Obaluaiê) in which the composer seeks simultaneous reflection on and celebration of some perennial questions. He states: ‘It is quite possible that ethnomusicology and composition are capable of exchanging respecful looks at each other, shying away from the easy paradises of our past’. Costa lima wrote this piece as he was working on his essay Music and Psychoanalysis: A Possible Interface, in which he investigates the production of pleasure in music from structural identification with a supposed divine enjoyment, present in the mechanisms of tonal organization, or even in the formal conceptions.

‘Surely for this reason’, he writes, ‘I went to the Alujá of Xangô (The Yoruba god of thunder and fire) with its characteristic rhythms of Afro-Bahian ecstasy, that, combined with another war-like ancestry (the medieval song of L’homme armé) provides the initial gesture of the piece. The object of compositional attention comes from the proportions of the Alujá in confrontation with the motives of the original melody. The latter appear with the proportions of 5/7 of the Alujá of Xangô, something announcing the set of metric modulations that must occupy the entire first part of the piece. After a slow central part, with traits of improvisation, the festive tempo of the ALuxjá returns and the texture becomes more and more polyphonic from motives strictly derived from the interaction of the original elements. Let the ancestral be new! I say rather euphorically to my listeners!

Compositionality as Theory/Practice Unity (2010)

In this Conference discourse will be structured around four notions – diversification, limits, ‘compositionality’ and totality – and the force field that regulates the circulation of meanings among them. Diversification refers to the proliferation of approaches in music theory, no doubt a visible process, with its characteristic dynamics. How should one understand it? Well, diversification ends up favoring limits as opportunities for creativity, not only the limits between concepts, methods and disciplinary territories, but also between cultural attitudes or between theory and practice. Compositionality or ‘compositional reason’ refers to the theory/practice unity in the compositional process, understood as a sequence of activities that, by way of reason, creates its own world, Laske (1991) – as opposed to another possibility, to ‘reason about’ compositional activities, taking them as objects. Some important formulations of the bahian composer Fernando Cerqueira (2009) will be taken into account along these lines. Diversification, limits and ‘compositional reason’ do affect the notion of a disciplinary, cognitive and experiential whole, and this seems to be happening not only in the realm of music. It points to something broader: present times. The challenge of choosing the best synthesis for describing that which is being lived touches the discussion about totality -, something which usually means facing tough questions such as ‘what can we know’ (epistemology), ‘what should we do (ethics and politics) and ‘what attract us’ (the esthetic-libidinal dimension – Eagleton (1992).

Compositionality as the inseparability of theory and practice links:

1. Composition and Ethnomethodology: music is something that we do;
2. Composition and the creation of worlds (in the general direction of Heidegger)
3. Composition and critique (Brün 1986); composition as an act of interpretation;
4. Composition and reciprocity: the design creates the designer as much as the designer creates the design (see Laske 1992); the ‘mutual possession’ of Thomas Clifton and his applied phenomenology of music.
5. Composition and the field of choices, top-down and bottom-up movements (discussing Reynold’s concepts)

(Presented at the Second UFRJ International Symposium of Musicology, 17/08/2011, Rio de Janeiro)

Composition and Power (2012)

 

How should one understand compositional acts in their relationship with power? More precisely, fields of power, some of which precede such acts and do interfere with them, but also those generated precisely by the choices that a composition proposes and presents. What are the powers of a composition? The theme is less discussed than it should, at least in this explicit formulation — and it requires the consolidation of a musicology which is capable of moving freely between structural and hermeneutic approaches. The role played by power in many distinct contexts is exemplified by the list below:

1. the dialectics between power as the ability to dominate and power as the construction of autonomy, the inner conflict (in a work of art) between the inherited dynamics of fashion, always with new features, and the resistance against it;
2. attributes of power within the structural-organicist paradigm;
3. the role of narrative archetypes such as the hero, the visionary, representing the historical consciousness, inventing systems and constantly bringing the form into a crisis;
4. but also the hero as an expression of patriarchalism, the name of the Father, the role of the phallus as organizing the signification process — what should we say about Chua’s (1999: 126) provocative remark about absolute music: “if it were to be given a phallus it would have to be constructed as a discourse”?;
5. Herbert Brün and his proposition that there is no point in asking ‘what is composition?’, only ‘when is composition?’ — time, composition and  power as an indivisible entity;
6. the discourses about what is center and what is periphery, the mainstream and the resistance of many distinct contexts around the world;
7. the role played by historicity in the realm of memory preservation;
8. the power of music as described by recent cognitive approaches;
9. the presence of all these themes in the teaching of composition;
10. the formation of subjects in an era of partial objects, theory being by nature opposed to power, opposed to totalities.

To re-think the relationship between composition and power requires the construction of a complex net of connectivity between many distinct fields of theory and practice, leading to new formulations concerning discourse, power and memory.

(Abstract of a Conference given in 2012 – at the School of Music of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro)

Music Analysis and its Ontologies (2005)

Who can refrain from thinking about the music, once it has finished?

The appeal of analytical activity in music, as well as its epistemological justification, have been frequently associated with the ability of understanding the world as a system, generating as such a strong commitment to a scientific (or “scientistic”) worldview, especially after the appearance of Musikwissenschaft in the second half of the nineteenth century. This trend has developed naturally into what is being described nowadays as the structural-organicist paradigm – which includes several tendencies ranging from Schenkerian analysis to set theory and motivic oriented approaches, a theoretical perspective that dominated most of twentieth century analytical efforts and whose formalism and autonomy are now object of frequent critique.

The explanative power of analytical systems has indeed occupied the front stage, tending to overshadow its other dimensions, including what could be called its aesthetic purpose, a dimension that should be considered foundational in relation to the whole process. There is, in fact, a special beauty in the challenge of connecting sounds and ideas, and this beauty – far from being a consequence of the traditional way of conceiving aesthetics, centered around the notion of pleasure and reception, as may be inferred from Heidegger’s contribution to the topic – is not some kind of periphery of the artistic phenomenon, a mere rationalization. On the contrary, it is its kernel, the place where truth manifests itself, through art. It could be said then, that thinking about music is as beautiful as listening to it. Sometimes, even more. The pleasure of analysis, and this is quite a justification, is the pleasure of approaching this beauty that results from the confrontation and dialogue between that which is listened to and the thoughts it provokes.

In fact, what is commonly described as ‘listening’ to music involves, above all, a thinking activity. More than art-ars, implying ability, in the sense of being able to make something-music is basically a mode of thought, asserts Hans Keller (1979). It is by thinking music that one listens to it. To think/listen and to think about music, i.e., to bring music to memory, evoking it, making sense with it, are correlate activities, equally legitimate phases of the same process, or, in other words, dimensions of the aural and speculative life that characterizes us as a species as well as cultures.

The teaching of Composition in Bahia, according to Eric Barreto (2012)

This study presents research focused on the pedagogy of music composition, undergraduate level, at the Federal University of Bahia, aiming at the identification of its essential elements: the guiding principles and/or philosophies, the organization of the curriculum, the main methodological solutions, the cultural nature of the experience as described by students and professors. The course was analyzed from two distinct perspectives: quantitative data concerning some of its basic features and qualitative data produced through interviews and questionnaires. The observations and analysis produced led to a synthesis containing positive and negative aspects of the course, and a thorough description of the experience. Results point to evasion as the biggest problem of the course, in spite of several other remarkable achievements. The teaching of composition at the Federal University of Bahia takes several of its main features from the ideal of a cultural movement, emphasizing the role of the student-composer as someone responsible for changes in music and in society.

Defense: 06.28.2012

Thesis Committee: Paulo Costa Lima (UFBA, advisor), Jusamara Vieira Souza (Music Education, UFRGS), Wellington Gomes (Composition, UFBA)

Hybridization as a methodological horizon for Composition according to Paulo Rios Filho (2010)

This work results from a research process in musical composition focused on the study of cultural hybridization as a methodological horizon for contemporary music creation. Aiming at the investigation of creative processes resulting from intercultural dialogues in music, it is divided in four basic parts: the first involves a considerable review of the existing literature on the subject; the second is an elaboration of the methodological horizon itself; the third presents descriptions of four pieces insofar as they relate do the theme; and the last one consists of a discussion about the results achieved and possible perspectives in the realm of the theory of composition. Two of its most significant results – the Typological Table of Cultural Hybridization in Musical Composition and the descriptions of compositional processes present in four works – involve the identification of hybridization strategies and procedures and do represent a continuum between analytical and practical levels of the compositional challenge.

Downloadable at http://cl.ly/0W0p0t3w0O2h

Defense: 12.26.2010 – Paulo Rios Filho (standing) and Guilherme Bertissolo

Thesis Committee: Paulo Costa Lima (UFBA, advisor), Jose Augusto Mannis (UNICAMP), Wellington Gomes (UFBA)

Meu Caro Amigo: an ode to Chico and Francis Hime

What is it so special in that song?

From one perspective there’s a tone of tenderness — is there anything gentler than ‘meu caro amigo’? And it goes further: ‘me perdoe por favor, se não lhe faço uma visita…’ (‘please forgive me if I don’t pay you a visit…’) Chico intensifies and projects – almost humorously – his balmy language (You may watch the video at Youtube).

In a different point of view underlies a tone of lament which builds up a scenery of hardships to be revealed right after the sentence ‘a coisa aqui ta preta’ (‘these are dark times’), followed by ‘muita mutreta pra levar a situação’ (‘this situation needs many tricks to be solved’), and in the same line words like: careta, pirueta, sarro, sapo, cachaça (literally: face, pirouette, mockery, frog, cachaça)… The result is inevitable: ‘ninguém segura esse rojão’ (‘nobody can restrain this rocket’).

Anyone who lived the 70’s in Brazil knows how intolerable was the massacre of the media on the outcry ‘ninguém segura esse país’ (‘no one can restrain this country’) – the dictatorship persisted as if it was a national desire. Chico’s song has the taste of a payback, with a vengeful, small dose of irony and prank: it is not a country, but a rocket. The verse may have been prophetic: coincidently, a rocket broke out at Rio Centro a few years later.

The rest is sea: the tone of Tom Jobim

The song I will analyze is wavy like the ocean and its author character sticks to this shape. In the English version, he warns the audience: ‘Don’t try to fight the rising sea’. From the author’s own hands, the translated song states the central theme of the whole project which is, not by chance, named ‘Wave’: all over the world, one of the most played song amongst the set of popular Brazilian songs.

The figure above shows the first gesture of ‘Wave’. As we may observe, the tiny wave of ‘vou te contar’ (‘So close your eyes’, in the English version) is followed by the larger, inexorable wave. By singing this part one may realize that, in the song, the wave movement is as fundamental as love. Or rather, that this love is combined in a back and forth movement with wave-related elements: the sea, the breeze, the piers, the night, the stars, the city, the indescribable eternity which will altogether perform a true anthem… and ‘anthem’ seems to be the only word that makes sense to me now.  But what kind of anthem does ‘Wave’ represent?

Afro-bahian candomblé House invites for Catholic Mass

The Zoogodô Bogum Malê Rundó is one of the most prestigious candomblé houses of Salvador (Jeje Mahin tradition, éwé language, fon people) and this invitation for the annual Mass dedicated to the worship of Saint Bartholomew also lists the cycle of feasts to the Voduns promoted by the House in the month of August. This is a bi-secular tradition and it helps understand why the interpenetration of cultures (and religions) is such a strong phenomenon in Bahia.

The Rest Is Noise — Listening to the 20th Century, by Alex Ross

I have in my hand The Rest is Noise—Listening to the 20th Century, by Alex Ross, music critic of The New Yorker, published in Brazil by the Companhia das Letras with great fanfare, in a technically perfect translation guaranteed to earn a place in the Flip awards² this year.

It’s a curious case, editorially speaking: a plunge into a musical tradition usually considered hermetic and avant-garde. To the extent that it renders its subject attractive it performs an important service. But at the same time, and in spite its having been a finalist for the Pulitzer, we have to state that, if it were a pack of cigarettes, it would have to carry the warning: “Culture alert: prejudicial to the image of your country.”

In 568 pages, in prose both modern and florid, Ross follows the careers of several dozen composers and describes several hundred works. He creates a meticulously elaborated tapestry, informing us of the escapades of Alma Mahler, the sexuality of Copland and Partch, Schoenberg’s suicide attempts, and the jealousies and rivalries of dozens of others. But there’s just two sentences about Villa-Lobos—they make an appearance in the story merely as a footnote to the artistic trajectory of Milhaud—and nothing else concerning other Brazilian composers.

Read the full article

Composition and Culture Identity in Bahia, Brazil (2001)

Author: Paulo Costa Lima,  SONUS, Volume 21, N. 2 (Spring 2001)

The Landscape and the Problem

As incredible as it may seem, Cantos dos Lusíadas by Luis de Camões, a work widely considered the cornerstone of Portuguese literature, written in the sixteenth century as a celebration of the brave accomplishments of Portuguese sailors in Africa, America, and India, had to undergo inspection by a censor of the Inquisition before its publication. The censor, Father Bartolomeu Ferreira recommended its publication based on the understanding that the references made by the writer to the gods of the native populations of those places were solely fictional and poetic. Even so, Father Ferreira insisted in proclaiming once again the truth “of our holy faith, according to which the gods of the heathens are devils”.

This astonishing remark is perhaps one of the best illustrations of the prevailing ideology regarding Latin America during its colonization – a land where mixed gods and devils reflexted the extremely difficult process of negotiation among distinct cultural groups. It also points to the long historic process related to these interactions, and the many tragedies, dilemmas, and confrontations, as well as solutions conceived by the peoples of Latin America, striving to move away from this initial conflict.

These processes maintained a close relationship with the universe of cultural phenomena and manifestations, especially music, a field usually associated with the divine and the transcendental. The use of musical instruments made from human bones and flutes in which a human skull was attached as a resonator were extremely shocking to Jean de Lery, a French visitor involved in the attempt to build a colony in Brazil, and to the Portuguese-oriented Jesuit missionaries in the sixteenth century (Mariz, 2000).

The transition between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries brings forth two new developments in the field of music: there is a growing tendency among composers to address local themes, progressing from Italian-style opera featuring native heroes to the gradual discovery of folklore, leading inevitably to the question of national identity, not only through the late international Romantic trend in this direction, but also through the outburst of Modernism in Brazil by 1922, and in parallel motion with this tendency, we observe the gradual but steady development of anthropology, folklore and ethnomusicology as important tools for the study of Brazilian cultural roots…

What will happen to a composer trained to explore and advance the complexities of the European tradition after discovering other possible complexities in non-European contexts?

for the complete text see SONUS Journal http://www.sonicdesign.org/sonus.htm)

Surface and Structure in the Music of Ernst Widmer (2000)

Author: Lima, Paulo C. (Abstract published by Music Theory Online, 2001 – Dissertation Index)
Title: Surface and Structure in the Music of Ernst Widmer: Octatonic Compositional Strategies
Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP – Brasil)
Completed: October 2000

Abstract:
This thesis presents research focused on the analysis of octatonic oriented compositions by Ernst Widmer (1927-1990) through analytical procedures derived from the areas of post-tonal and Grundgestalt theories, aiming at the identification of decision making systems involved in the motivic-melodic constructions and other dimensions related to them such as harmonic and spatial planning, texture and form, leading to an understanding of the relationships established between surface and structural levels.

The investigation took as its departing point the Sonata op. 122, Monte Pascoal, for piano solo, and the analytical problems generated by its inspection, which in turn were projected, along with possible answers, to a number of compositions written in the last decade of Widmer’s compositional activity. The set of procedures developed in this phase represent an organic outgrowth of former perspectives, which can be traced back to the fifties and the favored trichords (014) and (025).

The elements of Widmer’s compositional theory recovered through these analyses may represent an important step towards the development of an specific compositional identity, resulting from the interaction of his Swiss background with more than thirty years of immersion in brazilian culture, alongside with the continuos interest in compositional premises such as organicism and relativity.

Ernst Widmer and His Octatonic Strategies (2001)

Originally published on Latin American Music Review

The distinctive role of Ernst Widmer (1927– 90) in the realm of Brazilian musical creation during the second half of the twentieth century is supported by the broad perspectives of a project that encompasses both teaching composition and creating music. In fact, according to Widmer (1988, 5), teaching composition and composing are similar processes, rooted in a set of common principles. These perspectives include the projection of a discourse about composition and teaching, the concrete development of pedagogical practices, the creation of musical works, and the elaboration of a compositional theory underlying these pieces, as well as the construction of cultural and institutional leadership both locally and nationally. (…)

Full paper – Download

Freud on Music: The Moses of Michelangelo (1914)

I may say at once that I am no connoisseur in art, but simply a layman. I have often observed that the subject matter of works of art has a stronger attraction for me than their formal and technical qualities, though to the artist their value lies first and foremost in these latter. I am unable rightly to appreciate many of the methods used and the effects obtained in art. I state this as to secure the readers indulgence for the attempt I propose to make here.

Nevertheless, works of art do exercise a powerful effect on me, especially those of literature and sculpture, less often of painting. This has occasioned me, when I have been contemplating such things, to spend a long time before them trying to apprehend them in my own way, i.e., to explain to myself what their effect is due to. Whenever I cannot do this, as for instance with music, I am almost incapable of obtaining any pleasure. Some rationalistic, or perhaps analytic, turn of mind in me rebels against being moved by a thing without knowing why I am thus  affected and what it is that affects me.

[Wo ich das nicht kann, z. B., in der Musik, bin ich fast genussunfähig. Eine rationalistiche oder vielleicht analytische  Anlage sträubt sich in mir dagegen, dass ich ergriffen sein und dabei nicht wissen solle, warum ich es bin und was mich ergreift]

So: in the original the verb used conveys a rather stronger formulation – ‘was mich ergreift’ (that which holds me, which takes me…). This is an important distinction that connects Freud directly to recent ideas on music and  psychoanalysis such as the approach proposed by Didier-Weill concerning the Other.

Music and Movement according to Guilherme Bertissolo (2013)

CAPOEIRA AND COMPOSITION: COMPOSITIONAL DYNAMICS INVOLVING MUSIC AND MOVEMENT

Abstract: This dissertation focuses on the complex interaction between music and movement, and specially its uses and functions in the creation of compositional processes, taking as reference a context in which it is not possible to establish a clear distinction between them: the Capoeira Regional. The combination of field work and a critique of existing literature on the interaction between music and movement led to the proposition of four concepts which are not mutually exclusive: Ciclicity, Sharpness, Circularity and Surpriseness.

In the first chapter several theoretical avenues are discussed concerning the relationship between music and movement, with special emphasis on conceptual metaphors and image schema based on bodily experience. Chapter two describes the imersion into the context of Capoeira Regional and presents a series of dialogues  with its personae and ideas. Chapter three focuses on the construction of the four concepts and the multiple possibilities they offer as keys to the understanding and exploration of the interface music and movement. Chapter four emphasizes the compositional processes and their articulation in two series of compositions which offer themselves as result and response to the whole experience. A succint description of their construction is offered, highlighting specifi points of interaction.

Dissertation Committee: Prof. Dr. Paulo Costa Lima (Advisor) ; Prof. Dr. Paulo C. Chagas (University of California, Riverside/EUA); Prof. Dr. Marcos Nogueira (UFRJ); Prof. Dr. Lucas Robatto (UFBA); Prof. Dra. Flávia Candusso (UFBA)

Defense: 04/15/2013 – 14h – School of Music , Federal University of Bahia

Frieda Teller (1917-19): Enjoyment of Music and Phantasy

The first attempt at a psychoanalytic approach to the field of music was made by Frieda Teller and appeared in the Imago (1917-19) under the title: Musikgenuss und Phantasie (Enjoyment of Music and Phantasy).

Her thesis is that music has a double effect on the listener. The emotional effect of the musical sounds consists in their ability to stimulate the formation of pleasurable erotic phantasies. But besides this, music has a more elementary impact on our mind. Hegel meant this effect when he objected to music: “(Music) captures our conscience which does not find itself opposite an object, and due to this loss of liberty it is carried away by the flowing current of tones” (Vorlesung der Aesthetik). This emotional surrender to the tones abolishes the flow of intentional processes and leads to an abandonment of the outside world and a submission to a hallucinatory regression in form of phantasies and memories. Music thus brings about an overcoming of the repressive forces and a cathartic experience. This is why the ancient Greeks put music in the service of the healing arts. Music like dreams, slip actions and neurotic symptoms are expressions of the mentally supressed.

(from Richard Sterba’s revision article “Music and Psychoanalysis”, published in Imago v. 22, Spring-Summer 1965).

Well, well, well… Thus begins the story of music as an objectless art…

Herbert Brün in Brazil (1992)

According to Brün, the music of Phillip Glass is garbage (Sept. 04 – 1992) A TARDE, Salvador – Bahia

This interview was given during Herbert’s visit to Brazil in 1992 as an invited Professor of the X International Seminars of Music – held by the School of Music of the Federal University of Bahia.

The Brazilian Musical Libido (1996)

Charles Melman has recently pointed out the long-lasting consequences of the social trauma embodied in the colonization of Brazil by the Portuguese (Melman 93). One of these consequences, strongly associated with the violence involved in the annihilation of the native cultures, is a difficulty in the implementation of the function of the symbolic father, which results in problems concerning agreed-upon rules and procedures, something that affects the organization of social relationships as a whole.

The lack of a firmly established symbolic father-function in this type of society would seem to generate a strong demand for a real father to appear and solve all the problems. It has been argued that one consequence of this demand is the tendency to welcome dictatorship in Brazilian political life.

It would also appear that this psychological structure would affect not only members of the native cultures but also members of the Portuguese culture, who in such a structure would be in a subjective position vulnerable to the unlimited jouissancethat assails subjects who have inadequate anchoring points in the symbolic order. Paulo Freire, in Pedagogy of the Opressed has described with great accuracy how an oppressed people develops an identification with the oppressor. As a result of such identification, this proximity with unlimited jouissance became a model for the whole society, as can be seen in a character like Vadinho in Jorge Amado’s novel Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos. Vadinho, who represents in many respects the ideal Brazilian (he doesn’t work, has many women, plays cards every evening, and is very good at sex) dies on the last day of Carnival, in the middle of an orgasm.

With the arrival of the African slaved population, the situation became even more complex. The slaves, in becoming part of the production system, supported the possibility of unlimited jouissance for the Portuguese. On the other hand, they also became a source of symbolic references: living on farms, but forming communities of up to a hundred members (something that did not happen in the United States, where the farms required a much smaller number of workers), they succeeded in maintaining their traditions.

The permanence of an African symbolic reference system in a society that could not keep unaltered its inherited Portuguese symbolic order indicates the degree of ambivalence connecting these two populations. The African symbolic order has to be taken into account if one wants to understand the mixture of races, cultural traits, and religions that is so typical of many Brazilian cultural phenomena today.

The historical function of music in the African symbolic order is particularly noteworthy in relation to the psychological function of music in Brazilian culture today. During the second half of the eighteenth century, some Brazilian administrators wanted to forbid drumming as a way of exhibiting control over the African population. The attempt failed. The farmers wanted the drumming to continue, because it helped to increase the slave population, dancing, singing, and sex were all part of the same activity.

A psychoanalytic approach to music should help us understand its function as part of the symbolic order.

(published in 1996, JPCS v. 1, n. 1, p. 140-142)

(to be continued…)

Ludwig Haesler: Music as a transitional object (1992)

(i)

“Thus, music may acquire the specific function of a ‘transitional’ object‘, of an object that is, by its specific acoustic qualities, dynamical features and structure, representing, in an illusionary space and manner, the ‘object’ that is absent or frustating by its being or having to be recognized and acknowledged as separate and different. This musical transitional object may then be ‘used’ within the realms and boundaries of intermediary space in just the same manner as any other transitional object may be used on any other sensual quality. The lullaby, the humming, the reproduction of a sound or a sequence of sound having acquired a specific ‘meaning’ will then be used to represent the absent. This ‘transitional’ representation of the absent has a unique quality between reality and not-reality, in a simultaneous is and is not.”

(ii)

Thus, the conceptualization of ‘music as an objectless art’ that if often found in the not very extensive psychoanalytical literature on music, fails to grasp the specificity of the ‘object’ character that music in fact does have.

(iii)

Affects 

… aside from the well-known categorial affects like joy, sadness, anxiety, anger, disgust, surprise and interest that are probably inborn,,, there are other forms of affective interchange that are just as or even more important in the process of formation of self and object representations in development. These vitality affects as they were termed by D. Stern are dynamic-kinetic processes of a specific kind including movement, expressive and gestural patterns like upsurging, fading, ‘Klang’ and change of ‘Klang’, the dialogue with differing ‘Klang’ and colouring of ‘Klang’, exploding, crescendo, decrescendo etc. Such bodily enactec and represented dynamic processes tendo to be connected and related to each other in manners like short-long, up-down, rhythmically discontinuos-continuos, flowing, slowing down and accelerating, etc.

(iv)

Musical and affective semantics are thus, being born from the same matrix, intimately related to each other so that, music may well acquire, by its specific sensual structure and quality, the dynamic quality and function of an ‘object’, by representing within and through its specific semantic structures of ikonical, indexical and symbolical qualities the specific affective semantical structures and qualities of the dynamical mutual interchange between the evolving self and object.

My comment: All these aspects make the approach of Ludwig Haesler extremely important for the research of music as an aesthetic/libidinal/cognitive object. Recent research on mental schemas or imagetic schemas in music (for instance, Candace Brower) confirms the importance of what Haesler described more than twenty years ago.

 

(Ludwig Haesler, Bulletin of the British Psychoanalytic Society, 1992, pp. 16-20)

Works

• Manteiga for sax solo op. 101 (2013)
• The real thing for would-be clarinet and piano op. 100 (2013) see Youtube
• A Bahia tá viva ? op. 99 for soprano and chamber group (2012)
• Bahia Concerto 2012 op. 98  for piano and string orchestra (2012) National Prize, MINC-FUNARTE.
• Yêlêlá Song op. 97 for voice, clarinet and piano (2012)
•  Apertadinho op. 96 for clarinet quartet (2012)
• Januário op. 95 for percussion duo (2012) (in memoriam Luiz Gonzaga)
• Aboio II op. 94 for solo flute solo (2012) (see Youtube)
• Estudo op. 93 for piano solo (2011)
• Ibejis n. 2 op. 92 for flaute and clarinet (see Youtube) (2011)
• Calcinha Stück op. 91 for 3 sopranos and percussion group (2010)
• Paisagem Baiana op. 90 for clarinet quintet (2010) (see Youtube)
• Só…  op. 89 for fl, cl, tp, vn, vc (recorded by GIMBA-UFBA) (2009)
• Yêlelá Twendê for 2 sop, electric bx, pc e Orchestra op. 87 (prize SECULT-Ba, recorded) (2009) (see Youtube)
• Trio de louça for Marimba (3 percussionists) op. 86  (2008)
  
• Aboio para flauta e violão op. 85 (based on op. 73) (2008)
• Divertimento Mineral for fl, cl, tp, vn, vc, pn  op. 84 (2007)
• Fantasia for strings op. 83 (2007)
• Ziriguidum for percussion group op. 82 (2007) (see Youtube)
• Ponteio for flute and violin op. 81 (2007)
• Caipirosla for violin and piano op. 80 (2006)
• Partita for violoncelo solo op. 79 (2006)
• Concertino for clarinet and strings op. 78 (2006)
• Aboio-Alufã for solo horn op. 77 (2005)
• Serenata Ayó for Symphonic orchestra op. 76 (2005)
• Eine Kleine Atotô Musik for Chamber Orchestra op. 75 (2005)
• Brincando com a louça  op. 74, for fl, cl, vn, vla, vc, pn (2004)
• Aboio for guitar solo op. 73 (2004)
• Aboio for bassoon solo op. 72 (2004)
• Got it for trumpet duo op. 71 (2004)
• Cosita Linda for flute and piano op. 70 (2004)
• Vamos chamar o tempo for trumpet duo op. 69 (2003)
• Eis Aqui! for piano solo op. 68 (2003)
• Arroubos for flute solo, duo, trio and/or quartet p. 67 (2003)
• Bori for trumpet and trombone op. 66 (2003)
• Aboio for flute solo op. 65 (2003) (see Youtube)
• Ponteio n. 2 para piano solo op. 64 (2002)
• Duo de violões op. 63 (não concluído)
• Pau de Jurema for 2 clarinets and piano op. 62
• Duo-Chorinho for flutes op. 61 (2001)
• Ciclo de Orikis op. 60: Xangô, Exu e Oxossi (sop, fl, pn, pc) (2001)
• Trio-Fanfarra for trumpets op. 59 (2001)
• Pau de Jurema for fl, cl and strings op. 58
• 3 Ponteios em miniatura for flute and piano op. 57 (2000)
• Peripécias for solo clarinet  op. 56 (2000)
• Duo de violinos op. 55 (2000)
• Serenata Kabila for Symphonic Orchestra op. 54 (2000)
• Divertimento *op. 53* for Symphonic Orchestra (1999)
• Oriki de Erinlê for voice and guitar op. 52 (text by Verger) (1997)
• Oriki II for trumpet solo op. 51 (1997)
• Canção da UFBA, lyrics by José Carlos Capinam op. 50 (1997)
• Lembrando e esquecendo Pixinguinha for fl and guitar op. 49 (1997)
• Divertimento para uma noite de Natal for fl, cl, guitar, op. 48 (1997)
• Roda Pião for flute and clarinet op. 47 (1996)
• Vassourinhas um frevo-estudo for piano solo op. 46 (1996)
• Kabila for wind quartet op. 45 (1996)
• Atotô dos Ibeji para wind sextet op. 44 (1995)
• Oriki for trumpet and piano op. 43 (1995)
• Apanhe o Jegue for flute and guitar op. 42 (1995)
• Ibeji for flute and clarinet op. 41 (1995)
• Xiré for percussion group and piano op. 40 (1994)
• Atotô do L’homme armé for Chamber Orchestra op. 39 (1993)
• Kyrie de Nanã for Choir op. 38 (1993)
• Saruê de dois for 2 clarinets op. 37 (1993)
• Beleza nêga pega pura e chêra flute and Orchestraa op. 36 (1993)
• Ponteio for piano solo op. 35 (1992)
• Corrente de Xangô for violoncelo solo op. 34 (1992)
• Fandango for clarinet and piano op. 33 (não concluido)
• Imikaiá for piano solo op. 32 (1992)
• Via papua for voice and piano op. 31 (não concluído)
• Pescaria for piano solo op. 30 (1992)
• Imikaiá vídeo-clip for voice and keyboard op. 29 (1992)
• Pega essa nêga e chêra for piano solo op.28 (1991)
• Pega essa nêga e chêra for flute and piano op. 27 (1991)
• Vés for piano solo op. 26 (1990)
• Flux for violoncelo solo op. 25 (1989)
• Variáveis for piano solo op. 24 (1987)
• Fantasia for piano solo op. 23 (1986)
• Abertura Halley for Symphonic Orchestra op. 22 (1986)
• Ritorna Vivaldi e tutti!  for strings op. 21 (1985)
• Atotô balzare, Si, Si, como no! for 5 pc and piano op. 20 (1985)
• Cuncti-Serenata for piano solo op. 19 (1984)
• 1,2,3 Fantasia for piano (4 hands) op. 18 (1984)
• Iscô-Iô for brass quintet op. 17 (1983)
• Quarteto de Cordas n.2 ‘Brasiléia’ op. 16 (1983)
• Ubabá, o que diria Bach! for Chamber Orchestra op. 15 (1983)
• Rota e Desvio for mixed group op. 14 (1982)
• Suite Falada for a group of speakers op. 13 (1981)
• Iô-Iá for a group os speakers op. 12 (1981)
• Deslizes for mixed group op. 11 (1981)
• O povo e seus asseclas for narrator, speakers and strings op. 10 (1981)
• A Barca for a group of speakers op. 9 (1980)
• Trio for strings (vn,vla,vc) op. 8 (1978)
• 2 electronic pieces tape op. 7 (1977) (perdida)
• Quarteto de Cordas n.1 op. 6 (1977)
• Bundle (Tece) for flute solo op. 5 (1977)
• Two premises (Oscila) for piano solo op. 4 (1977)
• Two seconds of a dead hope fortenor, vn and vc op. 3 (1976)
• Isn’t it necessary? for voice and strings op. 2 (1976)
• Prodeo for fl, cl and strings op. 1 (1976)