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Musica Eletroacústica: Histórias e Estéticas

Article · June 1997

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Musica Eletroacústica: Histórias e Estéticas

(Electroacoustic Music: Histories and Aesthetics)
edited by
Florivaldo Menezes
Sao Paulo, EDUSP, 1996.

review by
Carlos Palombini
Rockefeller Fellow at the Institute of Philosophy and Human
Sciences
of the Campinas State-University (UNICAMP)

PAL@TURING.UNICAMP.BR

Having set sails as a sound-effects man at the French Radio, the

French intellectual Pierre Schaeffer spent some of the most
critical years of Western Art Music prospecting the mysterious
world of sound perception. His target was befitting of a true
Enlightenment gentleman: that universal language of music of
which Western Tradition had lost sight. In 1966 he published
Traité des objets musicaux (Paris: Seuil), the logbook of over
twenty years of experiments with sounds. The Gaudiesque beauty
of the book's architecture has generally gone unnoticed. Insight
scattered across its luxuriant prose has sprouted up nicely on
some kinds of ground: Claude Cadoz, François Delalande and
Alistair Riddell immediately come to mind. Long before
Schaeffer's body had been buried, his text was already
suffocating under layer upon layer of unsympathetic footnotes
and laudatory prose.

As if to celebrate the book's thirtieth anniversary Menezes

re-heats an all time favourite, not very comfortably, in scholarly
attire. Indeed, his analysis demonstrates that you can prove
anything you like with a well chosen quote. An excerpt from the
early writings presents 'signification' as associated with sound
shape and incompatible with music, which would rely on
variations of matter. 'Signification', as Schaeffer construes it here,
means sound source identification, generally associated with the
attack transient, which contains in embryo the overall shape of
the sound. Hence shape, meaning (by synecdoche) the attack,
must be cut off so that relations of matter (and musical form

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therewith) replace what otherwise would be a succession of

literary episodes: a train, an alarm-clock, a whirligig. Menezes
reads that excerpt as follows: (1) only form signifies, (2) only
matter is important for Schaeffer, (3) musique concrète knows
no form and does not signify. In reality, matter without shape is
only to be found in the world of primary techniques of synthesis.
Being by definition shapeless, matter is clearly an abstraction, an
analytic device. But then, abstractions are precisely what readings
like this would wish us to believe Schaeffer was uncapable of.
Furthermore, because Schaeffer's concept of material is not
exactly his own, Menezes feels free to state that the thinker who
spent well over one thousand pages and the best of his years
mapping out the sonic territory does not have a clue as to what
music material is. These two findings -- that musique concrète
knows no form and does not signify, and that Schaeffer cares not
a whit for the material -- are repeated over and over again
whenever the author's critical apetite demands a footnote.
Predictably enough, the second half of Menezes' 'Retrospective
Look upon the History of Electroacoustic Music' sings the glories
of Cologne and Milan. This is all old hat.

Electroacoustic Music: History and Aesthetics opens and

concludes with essays by Menezes. In between, he and his wife,
Regina Johas, have translated nineteen historic texts, from
Russolo to an already historic Menezes himself. Translations are
often unreliable. An English 'ear', meaning the organ of hearing,
would translate into Portuguese as 'ouvido' but Menezes selects
'orelha' (external ear); a French 'corde pincée' would translate
into Portuguese as 'corda pinçada' (plucked string) but Menezes
prefers 'corda pincelada' (brushed string); the French 'herbe'
would translate into Portuguese as 'grama' (grass), but Menezes
turns it into a 'lira'(lyre); a German 'interplanetarisch
Untertasse' would translate into Portuguese as 'disco
interplanetário' (flying saucer), but Menezes makes it a 'pires
interplanetário' (flying disk); the French 'mode' may translate
into Portuguese as 'moda' (fashion) or 'modo' (mode): Menezes
chooses the latter and gets it wrong; Schaeffer's 'allure' is
probably untranslatable: Menezes goes for 'andamento' (tempo).
But it is when George Armitage Miller, whom Schaeffer cites
from a French edition, is translated into Portuguese from the
French, that the worst may happen: the English 'herd', whose
correct Portuguese form is 'gado bovino', when translated from
its nearest French synonym, 'gros bétail', becomes 'gado grosso'
(thick cattle); the English 'flock', whose correct Portuguese form
is 'gado ovino', when translated from 'menu bétail' becomes
'gado miúdo' (minute cattle); the English 'coupé', a closed
two-door motor car, usually with two seats, translates into
Portuguese as 'cupê', but Menezes turns the French 'coupé' into a

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'trem' (train); the English 'sedan', a type of motor car with a

closed body for four or more passengers, translates into
Portuguese as 'sedã', but Menezes turns the French 'conduite
intérieure' into a 'metrô' (the British'tube').

The reader is constantly reminded (sometimes quite

inappropriately: see note 5, p. 159) that Schaeffer means analysis
and Cologne means synthesis. But when it comes to his own
'Chronology of Electroacoustic Music', the author develops a
more catholic taste: for Brazilian pioneers such as Reginaldo de
Carvalho, Conrado Silva and Jorge Antunes, radical filtering; for
Menezes himself, extended analytical techniques: '1986:
Cologne: Flo Menezes gets into the Cologne Studio and proposes
to develop what he will term pronunciation-form: derivation of
musical form from the word's phonological structure, made
possible by electroacoustic manipulations. His first composition
in Cologne, Phantom-Wortquelle, Words in Transgress
(1986-87), will be considered in Germany the most radical work
to come out of the Cologne studio for years. The
pronunciation-form is seen by Pousseur, in comparison with
timbre melody, as Klangfarbendauernproportion (proportion
of timbre durations) (p. 257) etc...

The man who likes to introduce himself as 'The Greatest

Composer of the Americas' has also set to music 'one of the most
significant representatives of the newest Brazilian poetry' (p.
216), Menezes, his sibling. What does he think of his previous
book? 'Sparing myself from any eventual faint modesty, this book
is a cornerstone, a landmark in the analysis of twentieth century
music' (p. 12). He is deeply concerned with the 'exacerbated
individualism which prevails in Brazilian public institutions' (p.
13), full of 'parasites', of individuals who 'rely on their
professional incapacity and are not seldom devoid of a total lack
of talent' (sic). The Brazilian electroacoustic community is
concerned too. We take this opportunity to thank Menezes and
wish him every possible success in his future undertakings.

The book offers the Brazilian student, not generally conversant

with foreign languages, the only available translations of
important texts. Technical comments are always precise but
self-reference and self-praise have spoiled the cake. Critical it is
not. A CD containing a selection of historic pieces is attached.
Into it someone has shoved -- surprise, surprise -- something by
Menezes himself.

MikroP 3.01 Contents

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