Opus (Dec 2008)
A ideia de corpo e a configuração do ambiente da improvisação musical
Abstract
The aim of this text is to highlight the importance of the idea of body to the debate about the musical improvisation environment. This type of real-time practice, which arises as a result of a direct relationship of the musicians with their instruments without the mediation of a score, has inevitably, as its starting point, the body of the musicians involved. The body works as much as a factor for reproduction of possibilities - reflecting the limits of the body (repetition) - and as an enhanced production of virtualities – reasoned on an expansion of these limits (difference). This article then examines how the body can be understood as holding that double dynamism in the flow of improvisation, and in this context, what kind of relationship can be established with regard to sonorous material. We shall also establish the role of ideas of desire and pleasure in this dynamic setting and relate this discussion with the proposals of free and idiomatic improvisation. This discussion will use some concepts by Gilles Deleuze, such as territory and line of flight, Paul Zumthor’s reflections on body, orality and performance, and the epistemological discussions of Edgar Morin on knowledge and culture.
