The Experimental Music of Hermeto Pascoal and Group, 1981–1993: Conception and Language by Luiz Costa-Lima Neto (review)

The Experimental Music of Hermeto Pascoal and Group, 1981–1993: Conception and Language is a book that immerses the reader in the music world of Hermeto Pascoal. Full of polyrhythmic and dissonant sounds, as well as animal noises, this world is complex and hard to label, as the author and musicologist Luiz Costa-Lima Neto shows.

This is the first book published in English about Hermeto Pascoal. Its author focuses on the records made by Pascoal from 1981 to 1993 in a very close and collaborative relationship with his group. The core of the book is the interrelation between the way he listens to sounds and his compositional style, which makes it a must-read for scholars and specialists on Pascoal's music.

The musicologist departs from the hypothesis that the singularity of Pascoal's music closely relates to his perfect ear. This rare human feature would have allowed Pascoal to identify defined pitches on sounds that most people acknowledge as noise, such as human speech or the acoustic result of clashing metal pieces. In his analysis of Hermeto Pascoal and Group recordings and scores, Costa-Lima Neto finds out that the music the composer perceives on noises is translated in his work through the usage of polychords and other nonconventional harmonic constructions.

From the beginning of the book, one notes formatting and other editing issues that continue to appear in almost every chapter. The book contains phrases that are not completely clear, which indicates the need for further revision of the translation from Portuguese to English.

The above-mentioned connection between Pascoal's listening and his compositional style is summed up in chapter 1. Chapter 2 offers a reexamination of Pascoal's work and an analysis of two Brazilian master's degree theses. Costa-Lima Neto argues that the theses' authors fail in their attempt to comprehend the innovative and complex style created by Pascoal—both explain Pascoal's compositional procedures and improvisation processes in a reductionist way, comparing them with former avant-garde and jazz musicians such as Luigi Russolo, Pierre Schaeffer, and Ornette Coleman.

Chapter 3 departs from short biographies of Pascoal and of each of the five group members, ending with a detailed examination of their dynamics of rehearsing and creating music. Based on interviews with these members, this exploration shows that Pascoal used to ask them to improvise during recording sessions and make suggestions regarding music forms and arrangements. Therefore, these performers were more than reproducers of Pascoal's ideas. They were effective collaborators in the composition process.

Chapter 4 presents a discussion on acoustics and psychoacoustics, particular foundational concepts, to help readers understand the music analysis that comes afterward. Here, the author presents a general differentiation between harmonic and inharmonic sounds, showing how the former were translated into complex chords that give singularity to the music the book focuses on.

Chapter 5, the longest chapter, delivers analysis of selected recordings by Hermeto Pascoal and Group. In all of them, the harmonic sounds of pianos, guitars, flutes, saxophones, and other musical instruments are in dialogue with the inharmonic sounds of human voices and cicada, dog, and other animal sounds, which contributes to making Pascoal recordings so remarkable.

Costa-Lima Neto leads us to comprehend some of the features that singularize the Pascoal compositional style, ranging from polyrhythmic patterns to polymodal harmonies, atonality, and the polychords that make musical instruments sound much like the noisy animals and voices that are also part of the musical textures of all the recording selected by the musicologist.

In addition to exposing some of the main aspects of Pascoal's compositional style, the book builds a convincing connection between his style and his perfect ear. In the end, readers are driven to conclude that his compositions and recordings are ways in which Pascoal expresses the soundscapes of...