Abstract:
The problematic current situation of music can be detected in its propensity to generate misnomers. “Classical music” is at best a metonymy, the part for the whole; “erudite,” a falsification; “serious,” a neutralization; “popular,” the greatest untruth. Perhaps only “folk” music corresponds to a minimally accurate denomination, but this may be because its referent, unmediated collective composition/singing, no longer really exists – for its “living” counterpart the infamous “ethnic” was coined. This difficulty to name is also present in the single instance where it should actually obtain, namely in mixed artifacts, whose origins include apparently incompatible, often contradictory, trends or traditions. This is exactly the case of Brazilian “popular” composer Arrigo Barnanbé, the most formally-oriented member of the so-called Vanguarda Paulista (São Paulo Avant-Garde), a term that, taken rigorously, represents another misconceptualization. What is unique to the movement is that the exchange here between the popular and the erudite takes the opposite direction of what normally happens. |
