Espelho

 

 

 

Epilogue

“In ESPELHO, his fourth CD, the ANIMA Group shows ... the mutual reflections between musical repertoires of the old European music, especially those of modal language and the music of Brazilian oral tradition. Here, however, some of the themes of the songs participate in this specular game ... the interpretation of the ANIMA is what makes MIRROR reflect in such a striking and clear way to our present ears this music of origins, produced by an ancestral man . A song that already carries in itself a special power to reflect the world, sharing the same properties of the optical instrument”. (FCD bibl. 4) 

"Mirror, from the ancients, is an attribute of Wisdom, but Carnality also holds it in the hands; nor need I say that it is a Virtue and an Addiction. " (FCD bibl. 4)

MIRROR is a musical allegory that assumes that music is also a powerful mirror capable of reflecting cultures and distant worlds, messages written long ago and captured today - reflected by their interpreters - not faithfully, but with loyalty and also distortions, the rust of time, the filter of cultures and the impurities of one, among the infinite possible interpretations of the past, in the present. We knew, beforehand, that it was impossible to deal with the dimension of a theme of this depth - for example, in the Muslim mystic, the mirror constitutes the very symbol of symbolism. Nor would it be our intention, mere "practical" musicians that we are. As such, we share the principle that music is made from the "concreteness" of sounds - considering that it is only a "half-truth", or rather a third of truth. Contradictingly, however, the sea of ​​creation, a symbol of creative freedom itself, has created the need for security anchors, or rather, support points for the organization of "chaos."


The first point of organization, or support, is the very poetics of anonymous artists, spread over time and mirrored in contemporary Brazil, engendering art that overpowers the material poverty of potential victims of all forgetfulness. This man, originated in an anonymous, illiterate culture that conveys his art and knowledge through orality, is an example of a great set of mirrors, reflecting knowledge from generation to generation, with multiple looks generated by the porosity of borders and memory

A second point of support will be, as a consequence, the work done by researchers and musicologists who patiently recorded, in their journeys and collections, immense musical material, making it available to future interpreters like us. In this context, reverence is always the figure of Mário de Andrade. Not least, we also support a great deal of ANIMA's work over those of artists who, at different times and places, both renowned luthiers and anonymous craftsmen have made our musical instruments - our guides from which, by an initially blinded path , we constructed a musical architecture supported by the very diversity of origin of these same instruments.


Another important issue for us is the "reflection" about the musical performance on the stage, the musical performance. This is a relatively new issue in the art of sounds, especially in the question of the transposition of musical practices linked to rituals (boi-bumbá, reisados, songs of devotion or linked to some liturgy, medieval dances, etc.) for the environment of concert, molded to receive more appropriately the "pure music" than a "hybrid music". Here too the mirror offers us a beautiful metaphor, as Fernando Carvalhaes has shown us: "this musical piece reflects in a special way the world to which it opens, because the listener in it also recognizes itself, acting in each listening. We, the spectators - listeners of a musical interpretation - are, in turn, a mirror for the portrait - a work of art reflecting reality, lending it sensibility and meaning". (FCD, 4). After fifteen years treading this path, we realized that the transforming moment of the stage should not be imposed on us as a closed question, but on the contrary, susceptible to diverse readings, just as are arrangements and compositions written for or by the group. To do so, we seek help from other glances sensitive to such realities and we find in LUME Theater, in the scenic direction of Jesser de Souza and Raquel Scotti Hirson, a warm welcome that helps us to take this music to the stage also as a scenic language.

In MIRROR we especially counted on the fundamental participation of the medievalist, musicologist, composer, arranger, singer and friend Fernando Carvalhaes Duarte, who elaborated three arrangements especially for this project, and guided us by lending his musical sensitivity with invaluable exchanges of correspondence, essays and advice on interpretation. We dedicate this work to him in memoriam.

 

SPECULUM MUNDI (encyclopedia)

“Etymologically it comes from Speculum that gave name to speculation: originally, to speculate was to observe the sky and the relative movements of the stars, with the aid of a mirror. In Muslim mysticism it is considered the very symbol of symbolism. The Neoplatonic notion of the two faces of the soul, which would have a lower side, facing the body and an upper side, turned to intelligence exerted a great influence among the Sufis. Attar says that the body is in its obscurity as well as the back of the mirror; the soul is the clear side of the mirror. About these two faces of the mirror, Rumi explains that God created this world, which is obscurity, so that its light could manifest itself. Similarly, according to the theory of the microcosm as an image of the macrocosm, man and the universe are in the respective positions of two mirrors. In the same way individual essences are reflected in the divine Being, according to Ibn'Arabi, and the divine Being is reflected in the individual essences. Being the heart symbolized by a mirror - of metal, formerly -, the rust symbolizes the sin and the polishing of the mirror, its purification.” (DS bibl. 5, p. 393;396)

According to medieval symbology, this polarity is represented by the "Mirror of Nature, which reveals to man his soul, according to a perfect truth. In the other source ... nothing is stable. It is a dangerous mirror ... No man can recognize his face in the dark waters ... this is the source that killed Narcissus: when one looks at its waters it does not see its soul, but simply the body, a transient image that it takes for its true self". (CDF 4)

"The celestial intelligence reflected by the mirror symbolically identifies itself with the Sun: this is why the mirror is often a solar symbol. But it is at the same time a lunar symbol, in the sense that the Moon, like a mirror, reflects the light of the Sun. The Wisdom of the great Mirror of Tibetan Buddhism teaches the supreme secret, namely, that the world of the forms which in it reflection is nothing but an aspect of shunyata, the vacuum. "(DSB, 5, p.394). In this regard, Guimarães Rosa, in the short story "The Mirror", has a permanent dialogue between the transcendent world of the mirror and the real world: "You, for example, who knows and studies, I suppose, and has no idea what it really is - a mirror? Moreover, of course, the notions of physics, with which he became familiar, the laws of optics. I refer to the transcendent. All, by the way, is the tip of a mystery. In fact, the facts. Or their absence. Doubt? When nothing happens, there is a miracle that we are not seeing." (ROSA, 1988, 65). As a reversal of enlightenment, the obscure face of the mirror is mentioned in this passage from Grande Sertão: Veredas: "I no longer thought of the whirlwind of wind, nor of the owner of it - which is said - dwelling within, who travels, the Dirty: what accepts the bad words and thoughts of the people, and that completes everything in the work; what we can see on a black mirror sheet; the Concealer".(ROSA, pp. 243-244, apud ARROYO, 1984, 148). Was he saying that Good and Evil are side by side within us?

 

Research Fonts / Bibliography

ALVARENGA, Oneyda – Melodias registradas por meios não-mecânicos, São Paulo, Arquivo Folclórico da Discoteca Pública Municipal, 1946.

ANDRADE, Mário – Os Cocos: preparação, ilustração e notas de Oneyda Alvarenga, São Paulo, Ed. Duas Cidades, 1984.

ARROYO, Leonardo – A Cultura popular em Grande sertão: Veredas, Rio de Janeiro, Ed. J. Olympio, 1984.

DUARTE Fernando J. Carvalhaes – Sobre Jogos e Júbilos: o percurso de uma invocação, in Arte e Cultura IV Estudos Interdisciplinares, São Paulo, Ed. Annablume, 2006.

GÓMEZ,  M. Carmen – El Llibre Vermell de Montserrat. Cantos y Danzas s. XIV, Barcelona, Los Libros de la Frontera,1990.

NÓBREGA, Ana Cristina P.  – A rabeca no cavalo marinho de Bayeux, Paraíba, Ed. UFPB, 2000.

RIBEIRO, M. de Lourdes Borges – Moçambique, Cadernos de Folclore, Rio de Janeiro, Funarte,1981.

ROSA, João Guimarães: A terceira margem do rio, in: Primeiras estórias, Rio de Janeiro, Ed. N. Fronteira, 1988 p. 32;32;35.
_________, O Espelho,  in: op. cit,  p. 65.

PINTO, Benedita C. - Nas Veredas da Sobrevivência: Memória, gênero e símbolo de poder feminino em povoados amazônicos, Belém, Ed. Paka-Tatu, 2004.

(1) Manuscrito Paris fr. 847  Biblioteca Nacional

(2)  Manuscrito London BM add 29987

(3)  Graduale Triplex, 34 , Abadia de Silos, Burgos, Espanha

(4)  FCD: fragmentos de textos escritos por Fernando C. Duarte para o Grupo ANIMA, julho de 2006.

(5)  DS: Dicionário de Símbolos – J. Chevalier, A. Gheerbrant, Rio de Janeiro, Ed. José Olympio, 1982.

 

Discography

    • Famaliá Sons do Urucuia - coleção Documentos Sonoros Brasileiros-acervo Cachuêra! Itaú Cultural, vol. 4.
    • Llibre Vermell de Montserrat – Cantigas de Santa Maria – Alla Francesca, voix et instruments du Moyen Age, Paris, selo Opus 11, 1995.
    • La musique dês Troubadours – Clemencic Consort – Itália, selo Harmonia mundi, 1977/ 1998.
    • Música popular do centro-oeste/sudeste vol. 2, São Paulo – Discos Marcus Pereira, 1974.
    • Bumbarqueira – Programa Raízes, Cametá, Pará, Fundação Curro Velho, 2005.
    • Música popular do centro-oeste/sudeste vol. 1, São Paulo, Discos Marcus Pereira, 1974.
    • Chominciamento di gioia: Virtuoso dance-music from the time of Boccaccio´s Decamerone - Ensemble Unicorn, Vienna, selo Naxos, 1994.
    • Cavalo Marinho da Paraíba, Brasil- série “a viagem dos sons”, Lisboa, selo Tradisom, 1998.
    • Alegrementes Cantano: Terno de Reis de Vitória da Conquista, Bahia,  selo independente, 2004.