Arranjo ou composição? Usos e abusos do idealismo na pesquisa musicológica e na educação musical

ResumoEste artigo sugere que a hipótese idealista, às vezes dita, parâmetros arbitrários, ignora a riqueza da diversidade. Proponho uma visão materialista que possa contribuir para uma abordagem musicológica e pedagógica na direção de uma crítica do senso comum. Além das hegemonias, e através da proposição de seis categorias-chave da concepção idealista, sugiro um conceito de composição musical que abranja todo trabalho de invenção a partir de elementos conhecidos – inclusive a paródia – e um questionamento da robustez (resiliência à mudança diante da diversidade) do conceito de música e suas implicações na educação musical, a partir do que chamei de “nostalgia do Quadrivium”. Essa discussão é ilustrada pela análise do estudo de Camargo (2010) sobre arranjos e composições corais, com o objetivo de legitimar os assim chamados “arranjos corais” que brotam das necessidades do dia a dia das práticas amadoras, coordenadas por músicos profissionais, recuperando assim uma antiga noção dos tempos de Josquin.AbstractThis article suggests that the idealism sometimes, as an hegemonic thought, dictates arbitrary parameters and ignores the richness of diversity. I present a materialistic vision that can contribute to a musicological and pedagogical approach, differently from current standards and toward a renewal of common sense. Beyond the hegemonies, and through a proposition of six key categories of the idealism thought, I propose, in the light of the materialistic hypothesis, a conception of musical composition as an invention from known elements – including parody – and questioning the robustness (resilience to change in face of diversity) of the concept of music and its implications on musical education, starting from what I called “nostalgia of the Quadrivium”. This discussion is illustrated by the analysis of Camargo’s study (2010) on arrangements and choral compositions, in order to legitimize these so- called “choral arrangements” that spring from the necessities of day-to-day amateur practices, coordinated by professional musicians and, in so doing, recovering an ancient notion from the Josquin’s times.

A Singer-Composer Learns His Craft

This chapter examines Harry T. Burleigh's work as a composer during the period 1896–1913. Burleigh's 200-plus vocal and instrumental works brought him national and international renown in the first half of the twentieth century. Burleigh's songs reflected his thorough knowledge of the prevailing forms and musical idioms of the European and American art song, both as a singer and as a composer. All his songs were written for the recital or concert stage, and they often set the same lyrics. Two of Burleigh's compositional output are choral arrangements of spirituals—“Deep River” and “Dig My Grave”—that were written for Kurt Schindler's Schola Cantorum. Also, it was not unusual for Burleigh himself to appear in concert or recital with other song composers. This chapter considers Burleigh's compositions published from 1896 to 1903 and from 1904 to 1913, including art songs, plantation songs, piano sketches, and sacred songs.

Beckett's Watt and Monastic Tradition

The enigmatic setting of Beckett's novel Watt has been compared to places as diverse as an insane asylum, a boarding school, a womb, and a concentration camp. Watt's experience at Knott's house does seem suggestive of all of these, and yet it may more readily conform to the setting of a monastery. The novel is filled with chants, meditations, choral arrangements, hierarchical classifications, and even silence, all highly evocative of a monastic lifestyle. Some of Watt's dialogue (such as his requests for forgiveness or reflections on the nature of mankind) further echoes various Catholic liturgies. Watt finds little solace in these activities, however. He feels that they are largely rote and purposeless as they are focused on Knott, a figure who in many ways defies linguistic description and physical know-ability. Watt's meditations and rituals become, then, empty catechisms without answers, something that is reflected in the extreme difficulty that Watt has communicating. In the face of linguistic and liturgical instability, the Watt notebooks present a counter reading that can be found in the thousand plus doodles that line its pages. The drawings reinforce as well as subvert their textual counterpart, and they function in many ways as the images in medieval illuminated manuscripts. The doodles in Watt often take the form of decorative letters, elaborate marginal drawings, and depictions of a variety of people and animals, and many of its doodles offer uncanny resemblances in form or theme to those in illuminated manuscripts like The Book of Kells. Doodles of saints, monks, crosses, and scribes even give an occasional pictorial nod to the monastic setting in which illuminated manuscripts were usually produced (and remind us of the monastic conditions in which Beckett found himself writing much of Watt). Beckett's doodles not only channel this medium of illuminated manuscripts, they also modernize its application. Instead of neat geometric shapes extending down the page, his geometric doodle sequences are often abstracted, fragmented, and nonlinear. Beckett also occasionally modernized the content of illuminated manuscripts: instead of the traditional sacramental communion table filled with candles, bread and wine, Beckett doodles a science lab table where Bunsen burners replaces candles and wine glasses function as beakers. It is through these modernized images that Watt attempts to draw contemporary relevance from a classic art form and to restore (at least partial) meaning to rote traditions.

Whatever Happened to William Dawson's Negro Folk Symphony?

William Levi Dawson (1899–1990) is remembered chiefly for his masterful choral arrangements of Negro spirituals and for his multi-decade leadership of the Tuskegee Institute Choir. In 1934, however, his career seemed to be headed in a very different direction: Leopold Stokowski programmed Dawson's Negro Folk Symphony on four Philadelphia Orchestra concerts that met with acclaim from critics and audiences alike. The broadcast of one of these concerts on the Columbia Broadcasting System had a particularly powerful impact on the many African Americans in the radio audience. Materials in the William Levi Dawson Collection at Emory University illuminate both the momentousness of the symphony's debut and its provocatively minor impact on the trajectory of its composer's career. This article examines the premiere of the Negro Folk Symphony as a groundbreaking event both public and personal, offers an explanation for the symphony's startlingly rapid descent into obscurity, and argues that this effective and fascinating work merits renewed attention from conductors and scholars today.