TeMA: A Landmark for the Future
Ilza Nogueira – [email protected]
Universidade Federal da Paraíba
The Brazilian Association for Music Theory and Analysis accomplishes the aspirations and the determination of Brazilian researchers in the theoretic-analytical study field, who foresaw in this organization an efficient agent for the invigoration of music theory studies and the consequent development of its specific literature in Brazil. Carefully projected since July 2012, it comes to light during this first conference, accomplished by the Music School of the Federal University of Bahia in collaboration with the COMPOMUS Laboratory of the Federal University of Paraíba and the Association Oficina de Composição Agora (OCA) of Bahian composers.
TeMA’s first conference represents a landmark for the future of music theory and analysis in Brazil. Here we start to sketch a political and intellectual program guided towards the cultural profile and educational concerns of our country.
The abbreviation “TeMA” doesn’t only represent the association of two interconnected disciplines (music theory and analysis). It also suggests a proposition to be developed, which is: the increment of theoretic-analytical research in Brazil, in broad and unlimited form, including the repertoires of all cultures, the formal and critical aspects in hermeneutic, cognitive, systematic and historical approaches, integrating the perspectives of the listener, the composer, the performer and the educator. In this broad context, TeMA should seek to establish a profitable dialogue between the diverse fields of knowledge, in agreement with the contemporary expectations of our globalized world.
Permanent exercise of dialogue, interaction and cooperation are indispensable strategies to reach such ambitious goals. We tried to suggest those determinations in the definition of our logo. Its design resembles a beehive in the geographical extension of Brazil. May organization, communication and exchange of experience persist in our functional performance, so that we can consolidate a socially significant and an individually rewarding production.
TeMA’s first conference, hosting 50 participants representing fifteen educational institutions, was made viable through the substantial support of state assistance agencies for research and graduate studies: The National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), CAPES Foundation and Bahia State Foudation for Reasrch Support (FAPESB). The theme of the conferecne – “The Creative Musical Thought and the Interpretative Challenges of Present Time” – is reflected in various perspectives, such as: Compositional processes and results in contemporary Brazil: concatenations and resonances; Criticism as basis of analytical thought: hermeneutic, cognitive, systematic and historic perspectives; Thought and language: the cultural dimension in the creation and transit of concepts; Composition Graduate Programs in Brazil: inclinations, legacies and perspectives.
Intending to stimulate a continuous peer dialogue, study groups have been conceived. The chosen themes aim at supplying identified needs in the Brazilian literature, so that it may accompany the international development in music theory and analysis. “The trajectory of theoretic-analytical production in Brazil”; “Technical-analytical vocabulary in Portuguese”; and “Narratological strategies in musical discourse” are the three vectors upon which we will dialogue in the upcoming years. They should conduce TeMA’s editorial program.
We hope that the seeds cultivated in this conference, in this blessed soil of Bahia, land of all saints and all gods, may in the near future give mature fruits of the engagement and determination which led us to found TeMA.
