Silvio Ferraz – [email protected]
Universidade Estadual de Campinas
1.
There is no way to answer the question proposed by this Forum without a consideration of the relationship between theory and practice from the perspective of European culture matrix. There are several images made ??to represent this relationship, from which I choose two: the image of D. H. Lawrence Chaos in poetry, quoted by Gilles Deleuze What is Philosophy?, and the image taken by Ezra Pound to describe the chain from invention to dilution in his ABC of Reading.
In a certain way both authors, Laurence and Pound, are talking about the same image:
Laurence image depicts a large umbrella, which protects the world. This umbrella protects the common man from chaos, which lives ‘out there’. There is an artist; this artist tears the umbrella and thus permits chaos to invade the world. As quickly as possible, a moral troop comes in and closes the hole made by the artist. But chaos is already there. It is thus the time of the “dissolvers”, which come to make false copies of chaos and in this way to make it less threatening.
A similar idea is proposed by Ezra Pound imagining a division between inventors, masters and “dissolvers”, in his ABC of Reading. It is thus the same idea that the proposals of Pound and Lawrence portray: that of the cycle which goes from invention to dilution via the stage of discipline. Within this framework, theory is always engaged in the control of fabulation, trying to discipline and even to replace it.
2.
It is not by coincidence that theory, as something that is created in a disciplinary society (in the sense given by Foucault), follows the use of manuals and treatises. Control is no longer just the regulation of bodies (as in the art of chivalry taught in the Renaissance, in the treatises on Good Manners, or in the books dedicated to the description of musical practices), but also the mechanism of disciplining thought through discourses that confront the object, and in this way make it dispensable.
Theory is also part of a change of episteme. And the episteme in which it is created is certainly different from the one that originated treatises and manuals, and also different from the episteme that now exposes its limits. But in a general way, treatises, manuals, theories and systems share a common place and function: that of establishing control over the free modes of fabulation. It is impossible to think about theory without reference to the society and cultural field in which it was created.
Specifically in the musical field, different ways of listening emerge in different cultures and epochs. And if we consider listening as an act of invention, as a creative act, the sole place reserved for theory is that of a mechanism of control or discipline. A way to avoid or postpone the emergence of new attitudes related to listening.
From this point of view, musical theory is in most cases a mechanism of domination. In other words, theory represents a way which stable and stratified states have, to discipline unstable and mobile collectivities. Any theory controls how to approach an object. It supposes a correct way of listening, reading, viewing etc., and certainly a mode of relation among people of a specific culture or society.
3.
Specifically concerning the Brazilian case on musical theory, it is important to notice that we are good consumers of foreign theories. It is the way we put ourselves in contact with foreigners. Any musical theory supposes a specific musical problem, which it wants to solve, and musical problems commonly have birth in societies where musical inventions are constantly requested. If a certain society produces no musical problem, or only a limited amount of them, it is possible to imagine that no theory is needed. I do not think that musical theories are imposed from Europe or USA to Brazil. They have a large quantity of musical problems to solve, and they “have to solve” them — that being the reason for a proliferation of theories, methods and manuals, which end up arriving in Brazil.
If each culture has its own way of thinking, perhaps music theory is not the Brazilian way. I think that “antropophagy” is, perhaps, the sole “theory” we have. As a matter of fact, not exactly a ‘theory’, a ‘method’, or ‘manual, but a changeable mode d’emploi.
Quite distinct from any theories or methods, anthropophagy is more like a free digestive mechanism processing artistic, philosophic and scientific strategies. It has a changeable modus operandi, and even the most fixed theories or methods will suffer some kind of metamorphosis after passing through this kind of filter. And even contradictory thoughts and approaches may be put together such as pitch class set theory applied to produce a better analytic understanding of spectral music.
