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5 Foreword The role of the composer in society has gone through many transformations over the past 1500 years or so. In his De Institutione Musica, the sixthcentury philosopher Boethius perceived three distinctive types of musician, arranged in descending order of importance: the critic, the composer, and the performer. But composers have seldom been confined to a single category of musical activity. Throughout the Middle Ages, they were often responsible for important breakthroughs in theoretical (i.e., critical) knowledge, e.g., Philippe de Vitry’s seminal advances in rhythmic notation, meter, and isorhythm (talea and color), which laid the foundation for the Ars Nova of the 1300s. Prominent among later composers who contributed greatly to our critical understanding of musical practice was the eighteenth-century theorist Jean-Philippe Rameau. However, it was in the nineteenth century that composers frequently undertook to write about the role of music in society, as well as about themselves. Schumann and Berlioz were renowned as writers about as well as of music, but most notable—and notorious—in this regard was Wagner, who racialized musical thinking and projected his imaginings about stylistic evolution into the future. The phenomenon of the literary composer persisted into the twentieth century, with writings by Schoenberg, Hindemith, Messiaen, and Cage, among many others, dealing not only with their approach to composition but their personal worldview and philosophy as well. Paulo Chagas is one of those remarkable composers well versed not only in the methods and means of musical creation but also in theoretical issues of aesthetics, semiotics, mathematics, and philology. This book displays an exceptional grasp of a wide range of complex theoretical and philosophical issues, all of them nonetheless directly connected to the act of composing music. Indeed, it is precisely because of his passionate intellectual engagement that Chagas’s music always exhibits emotional immediacy as well as technical Unsayable Music 6 sophistication. Both his works and his ideas draw their inspiration from the wellspring of daily life and its frequently harsh realities. Chagas was a victim of political violence when, at age 17, he was arrested and tortured by the military dictatorship in Brazil in 1971 for collaborating with opposition groups fighting for democracy. He has described to me his ordeal in the following way: I was put in the “fridge,” a small room, refrigerated and acoustically isolated, and completely dark and cold. Various noises and sounds— howling oscillators, rumbling generators, distorted radio signals, motorcycles, etc.—shot from loudspeakers hidden behind the walls. Incessantly, the electronic sounds filled the dark space and overwhelmed my body for three long days. After a time, I lost consciousness. This auditory and acoustic torture was then a recent development, partially replacing traditional methods of physical coercion that killed thousands in Latin American prisons between the 1960s and 1990s. Such sounds injure the body without leaving any visible trace of damage. The immersive space of the torture cell, soundproofed and deprived of light, resonates in my memory as the perfect environment for experiencing the power of sound embodiment. He was freed from prison only after the intervention of a military officer who was a friend of his parents. His works continue to explore themes of power, violence, and control, using the latest technology and theoretical approaches. Thus, Chagas’s music emanates from a place within himself that is not only highly personal but also something he shares in common with the rest of us. The human condition and the relationship between music and society are recurring themes in his music. His philosophical writings are not arid speculations written in abstruse academies from the lofty heights of an ivory tower; rather, they exhibit the same immediacy and involvement with the world of ideas that his compositions do with the world of sound. Thus, theoreticians, composers, and lovers of music will all benefit from the insights and wisdom contained within the covers of this book, which is the product of nearly fifty years of asking questions, seeking answers, and creating expressive sound. Walter Aaron Clark Professor of Musicology Director, Center for Iberian and Latin American Music University of California, Riverside ...

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