{"id":241321,"date":"2017-06-29T18:31:31","date_gmt":"2017-06-29T21:31:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=241321\/"},"modified":"2017-07-04T19:26:16","modified_gmt":"2017-07-04T22:26:16","slug":"the-sound-of-near-chaos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/the-sound-of-near-chaos\/","title":{"rendered":"The sound of near chaos"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Reproduction of the musical score by Cornelius Cardew<\/span><\/a> In the musical score for the play Treatise<\/em>, Cornelius Cardew made a few general suggestions for the musicians to generate their own interpretationReproduction of the musical score by Cornelius Cardew<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Anyone on a university campus today might have been in the audience of a unique production, one not usually experienced in the traditional theaters of Brazilian cities. It is called free improvisation, a type of experimental music that hit the scene about 50 years ago in the United States and Europe and which has been studied and played by Brazilian groups. A recent indication of interest in this area was the November 2016 publication of a book called M\u00fasica errante \u2013 O jogo da improvisa\u00e7\u00e3o livre <\/em>[Music that wanders \u2013 the game of free improvisation] (Editora Perspectiva, 2016), which provides an overview of 25 years of research conducted by Rog\u00e9rio Costa, saxophone player and professor in the Department of Music at the University of S\u00e3o Paulo School of Communications and Arts (ECA-USP).<\/p>\n

Supported by the cutting-edge conceptual theories of musicians and musical theorists like John Cage (1912-1992) in the United States, Cornelius Cardew (1936-1981) and Derek Bailey (1930-2005) in England, free improvisation derives from what is known today as idiomatic improvisation \u2013 a musical production strategy that gives the musician some creative freedom, emphasizes harmony and melody and builds on styles that are already defined, like jazz and choro<\/em> \u2013 but follows even fewer rules.<\/p>\n

Free improvisation challenges the conventional separation between the creator and performer of a musical composition and leaves behind the pre-established scripts and classical rules related to composition and performance like melody and harmony. It also challenges the hierarchy, since any musician in a group can start it off, and it allows for a flexible interpretation of time because the musical composition itself can last as long as the performers decide. Finally, it explores the properties of sound rather than focusing on musical notes with the intensity and duration normally prescribed.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Patr\u00edcia Santos\/Folhapress <\/span><\/a> A multi-instrumentalist, Hermeto Pascoal is one of free improvisation\u2019s proponents in BrazilPatr\u00edcia Santos\/Folhapress <\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cRehearsals are an exercise in collective creativity, with each musician finding his own space while at the same time seeking to achieve balance with the other musicians,\u201d says Costa. When his USP students ask what to play, his answer is simple: anything. And who starts it off? Another simple answer: \u201cWhoever is ready to begin,\u201d he suggests. \u201cThe idea is to create a coherent flow of sound and to seek new answers. Free improvisation is the antidote to repetition.\u201d This strategy, however, results in compositions that are performed only one time, as other musicians cannot recreate them since they emerge and expire at the moment they are performed.<\/p>\n

Sax, violin and computer<\/strong>
\nCosta runs the Orquestra Errante<\/em> [The Wandering Orchestra], consisting of 13 students, which gave six performances in 2016, including two at the S\u00e3o Paulo Cultural Center. His previous group, Akronon<\/em>, favored electronic music. S\u00edlvio Ferraz, his former doctoral advisor who also teaches at ECA-USP, piloted an approach using a computer that ran a program called Pure Data. The program captured the sounds from the saxophone or flute played by Costa and the violin played by Edson Ezequiel, another member of the group, and played them back immediately in electronic form while the musicians continued to play.<\/p>\n

To demonstrate the potential of computer use in free improvisation, Costa performed a duet with himself in his own home studio near USP. He began by playing the saxophone and a few seconds later started \u00a0pumping the pedals connected to a computer running Pure Data and an acoustic device that incorporated special effects and then reproduced excerpts of what he was playing. It sounds like an orchestra, but there is only one musician performing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Bogaerts, Rob\/Anefo\u2002<\/span><\/a> John Cage (1912-1992): innovating musicianBogaerts, Rob\/Anefo\u2002<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

In his book, Costa weaves together his research on this method of creating music: \u201cFree improvisation is possible only in a context that transcends the idiomatic, systematized, controlled, predictable, static, identified and hierarchical frameworks,\u201d he wrote. S\u00edlvio Ferraz commented in the preface: \u201cThe mood of free improvisation can be captured in the phrase \u2018it\u2019s like life itself,\u2019 in which bodies of sound intersect on equal footing. No one is a \u2018backup musician\u2019 or a lead singer \u2013 no one is indispensable and everyone is indispensable.\u201d Ferraz believes there is room for opposing ideas; that \u201csomeone who stops playing\u201d is as significant as \u201csomeone who plays without stopping.\u201d<\/p>\n

A good example of a unique work that derives from free improvisation was the performance of Treatise<\/em>, a three-hour play presented by music professor Manuel Falleiros and his students to an audience of about 150 in a concert hall at the University of Campinas (Unicamp) on the evening of June 9, 2016. The work\u2019s author, Cardew, made general suggestions on the 193-page musical score rather than the customary precise instructions for performing the piece, so that the musicians felt comfortable coming up with their own interpretations.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe practiced only the possible interaction between the musicians because the outcome of free improvisation is unpredictable, like in a game. The music is created in real time as a result of moment-to-moment decisions,\u201d says Falleiros, supervisor of the Free School of Music at Unicamp. Since he knows that it is not always simple to bypass the rules and delve into this near chaos, he gives his students several exercises to do: \u201cIn one of the exercises, I say to them, \u2018Let\u2019s play something like fire.\u2019 Some of them musically explore the idea of heat; others explore the crackle of wood. They create some really beautiful music.\u201d<\/p>\n

Freedom in learning guitar \u00a0<\/strong>
\nUnder Costa\u2019s direction, guitarist Andr\u00e9 Campos Machado completed his doctorate at USP in 2014 on the use of this strategy in teaching guitar and other string instruments played by strumming. A professor at the Federal University of Uberl\u00e2ndia (UFU) in the state of Minas Gerais, he intends to bring his free improvisation frameworks to the marketplace in 2017 \u2013 developed during his doctoral work and published by UFU \u2013 for use with students at the state conservatories of music in the Minas Gerais cities of Ituiutaba, Araguari, Uberaba and Uberl\u00e2ndia.<\/p>\n

\u201cFree improvisation is an excellent pedagogical tool for beginners at any musical instrument, but it needs to be disseminated further,\u201d says Machado. This approach might lighten the burden of musicians in training. \u201cI began to study guitar when I was 7, and I had to follow the classical methods of learning: how to hold the instrument, play the notes and then the solfeggio<\/em>, and no one ever said I could be creative and make my own music,\u201d Costa recalls.
\nFree improvisation, although more frequently performed in places open to experimental music, has already gained some representatives well known to the public at large. Percussionist Nan\u00e1 Vasconcelos from Pernambuco (1944-2016) and performers of multiple instruments like Hermeto Pascoal from Alagoas, Egberto\u00a0Gismonti from Rio de Janeiro, Sivuca from Bahia (1930-2006) and Paulo Moura from S\u00e3o Paulo (1932-2010) have exercised and continue to exercise complete freedom in their performances, even though they are identified with certain musical styles. The shows that run far afield from traditional notions of music leave the public at once pleased and uncomfortable. Little by little, however, they are finding broader audiences in cities like S\u00e3o Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Belo Horizonte.<\/p>\n

This way of producing experimental music is still developing, and it continues to define itself. At a music conference held in 2013 in Natal, Rio Grande do Norte, Falleiros of Unicamp proposed the term hyperimprovisation. \u201cIf we call it only free improvisation, students associate it with the protest music of the 1970s and try to recreate that,\u201d he argues. \u201cBut this perspective is the opposite of free improvisation, which offers a way to escape the rules, fads and stagnation of set musical styles.\u201d He believes that anyone engaging in free improvisation must find the courage to risk creating new creative frameworks without giving in to the fear of losing the way.<\/p>\n

Project<\/strong>
\nMusical Improvisation and its connections (n\u00ba 2011\/07678-7<\/a>); Grant Mechanism<\/strong>\u00a0Regular Research Grant; Principal Investigator <\/strong>Rog\u00e9rio Luiz Moraes Costa (ECA-USP); Investment<\/strong>\u00a0R$23,587.12.<\/p>\n

Book<\/strong>
\nCOSTA, R. L. M. M\u00fasica errante: O jogo da improvisa\u00e7\u00e3o livre<\/strong>. S\u00e3o Paulo: Perspectiva, 2016, 280 p.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Free improvisation is further studied and gets a foothold on stage","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[165],"tags":[248],"coauthors":[5968],"class_list":["post-241321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humanities","tag-music"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241321\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241321"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=241321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}