Karlheinz Stockhausen Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

This thesis aims to discuss some contemporary approaches about form in music. It starts from a general problem: how to deal with the issue of form (time and space organization of materials and ideias) in musical works, when relations between parameters (duration, timbre, frequency, etc.) is not based on a system, more or less, pre-delineated. Thus, we propose a reflection on the problem of form in three axes, taking the perspective of the compositional and creative acts. At first, we seek to conceptually discuss the idea of form, starting with the very common sense of the term that refers to the Aristotelian hylemorphism and its later unfoldings. Then, in the context of the aesthetic debate about form in the twentieth century, Adorno's critique of the formal outputs adopted by contemporary currents. We also brought the fundamental contribution of Umberto Eco and the concept of Open Work and its relation to open forms in music. Yet in the field of conceptual debate, we deal with form as a musical category, based on the attempt of a taxonomy outlined by Wennerstrom and the also the proposal of a general classification on form made by Stockhausen.
Secondly, we analyze works by composers who, for didactic purposes, we
separate in two groups. In the first, we deal with certain approaches around the idea of non-sequential forms, starting from the sectional forms of the early twentieth century and coming to a climax with the proposition of Stockhausen, the Momentform. The second group consists of works with open forms experiences. To address these formal outputs, we chose to discuss works in the context of the New York School, which explored different modes of openness, from micro to macroforms, from minimal openness to indeterminacy, and improvisation. To a certain extent, these two groups, although dialoguing and influencing each other, took opposite ways of dealing with the degree of control the composer can exercise over the musical work. Thereafter, we bring the reflections to the present, presenting works and discussions about the form in the compositional process of three Brazilian composers: Flo Menezes, Rodolfo Caesar and Tatiana Catanzaro. Finally, in chapter 5, we discuss two of our compositional experiences in dealing with issues related to form, the first for guitar and live electronics called Gest'Ação I, which exposes precisely this dilemma, amplified with the inclusion of the synthesis in real time universe. The second work also for guitar, but solo, One Night in Rio, sought to deal with the idea of Momentform, experiencing the limits of the proposal of total discontinuity, starting from the opposite direction of the first work, from macro to microform.