In musical environments, the human voice is entangled in a number of structural, conceptual and cultural frameworks that enable it to convey a multiplicity of meanings. In the discussion of musical globalisation, vocal music takes a particularly important role, since this versatility allows for both cultural rapprochement or hybridity as well as the reinforcement of local, regional, and national identities. This article introduces a first approach to an analytical framework for an intercultural history and analytical methodology of vocal music based on comparative studies of both traditional and contemporary works and genres and their construction of musical meaning. The articulation of the voice, conceived here as a multifarious passage between speech and song, is discussed in three major sections: »mapping«, »fragmentation and montage«, and »aesthetics of presence«. First, the plausibility and limitations of classification systems for spoken/ sung vocal styles (as developed by George List and Kenji Hirano, among others) and their application as tools for a comparison of culturally and historically diverse »voices« are examined. A closer analysis of the vocal style gidayū-bushi reveals a highly »fragmented« vocal microstructure based on a minute theoretical conception of delivery techniques, held together by the unique timbre of the recitor. Connections between Chinese jingju (Peking Opera) and Tan Dun’s »vocal calligraphy« as well as the controversial discussions on the vocal part in Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire are reviewed to imply that these vocal styles, too, can be conceived of as multiply fragmented, as microstructural »montages« that (intentionally or not) place much responsibility on the agency of the vocal performer. A comparable influence of the performer can be observed in recent Japanese vocal music that evokes the archaic power of single words or phonems (Hifumi Shimoyama, Y şji Takahashi). The high degree of articulatory differentiation closely connected to unique features of the Japanese language (including specific regional forms) found in these works is finally connected to the theory of recitative around 1600 based on a similar conception of the Italian language (Jacopo Peri, Giulio Caccini) and to its reception in Salvatore Sciarrino’s unique form of vocal writing that the composer has termed »sillabazione scivolata« [gliding syllable articulation]. These diverse case studies suggest that intercultural history and analysis of vocal music must take into account the major role of the vocal performer and its complex interaction with musical texts and aural traditions in both contemporary and traditional contexts. It can be further argued that vocal music generally tends to represent Roland Barthes’ concept of »genosong«, a kind of singing that originates from the »materiality of language«. A comprehensive theory of vocal music, finally, can neither be reduced to the discussion of its encoding by notation, nor to its performative act, but rather has to consider cultural memory and reception processes as key contexts of a cultural »codification« that produces meaning. Such a broad perspective has to consider prominently intercultural passages such as those introduced in this essay.

SAMPAIO, Abrahão Antônio Braga. Propedêutica à categoria do despertar histórico nas passagens de Walter Benjamin. 2010. 121f. – Dissertação (Mestrado) – Universidade Federal do Ceará, Programa de Pós-graduação em Filosofia, Fortaleza (CE), 2010. / Submitted by Márcia Araújo (marcia_m_bezerra@yahoo.com.br) on 2013-11-07T14:28:51Z No. of bitstreams: 1 2010-DIS-AABSAMPAIO.pdf: 842803 bytes, checksum: c5b2dad1380b340f94b291b6b9c4c54b (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Márcia Araújo(marcia_m_bezerra@yahoo.com.br) on 2013-11-07T17:37:40Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 2010-DIS-AABSAMPAIO.pdf: 842803 bytes, checksum: c5b2dad1380b340f94b291b6b9c4c54b (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2013-11-07T17:37:40Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 2010-DIS-AABSAMPAIO.pdf: 842803 bytes, checksum: c5b2dad1380b340f94b291b6b9c4c54b (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010 / The Arcades Project (Das Passagen-Werk, 1927-1940), an unfinished study conducted by Walter Benjamin (1892-1940), composed of a series of fragments and quotations, is related to the unfolding – in the conditions of the high capitalism – of the concept of the good’s fetish character, in order to debate a critical social theory. The basis of his research is the interpretation of the visible phenomenon of Paris, the Capital of the Nineteenth Century: passageways, iron buildings, the kinds of illumination, sceneries, the interior of bourgeois abodes, fashion and the Jugendstil, feuilletons, stockade fights deriving from the social movements, the Haussmann urban reforms, social types as flâneur, the collector and the player, the technical productions of Saint-Simon and Fourier’s utopian socialism, also Baudelaire’s poetics in particular, and etc. The German Author focuses especially on the contradiction between the development of the production forces and the use of these forces by the society in the capitalistic relations of production. This contradiction expresses itself in the symbolic space of oniric images, which interpenetrates the old and the new, and configures all buildings in modern society. The methodological picture sketched in the paper on the Parisian commercial galleries has as a basis the analogy proposed between the psychoanalytical interpretation of dreams and the interpretation of collective phenomena seen as oniric forms. The problem of the reified social appearance acquires whole elaboration in the constitution of the methodological statute of the dialectical image, based on the suspension of ambiguous elements in the fetish cultural phenomena. We present in this paper the master lines of historical awakening’s political category that, while interpretation process and history critique, operates a conceptual summary (constellation) that dialectically interrelates the complex group of theoretical categories: the good’s fetish character, the expression concept, the distinction between oniric and dialectic image, as well as the awakening itself. Thus, Benjamin sets the basis for a critical social theory and of a new understanding of the historical knowledge in the landmarks of a materialistic historiography. / O projeto das Passagens (Das Passagen-Werk, 1927-1940), estudo inacabado de Walter Benjamin (1892-1940), pois composto de uma série de fragmentos e citações, trata do desdobramento – nas condições do “alto capitalismo” – do conceito do caráter fetiche da mercadoria, no intuito de articular uma teoria social crítica. A base de sua pesquisa situa-se na interpretação dos fenômenos visíveis da Paris, capital do século XIX: as passagens, as construções de ferro e os tipos de iluminação, os panoramas, o interior das moradias burguesas, a moda e o Jugendstil, os folhetins, as lutas de barricadas decorrentes dos movimentos sociais, as reformas urbanas de Haussmann, tipos sociais como o flâneur, o colecionador e o jogador, as produções teóricas do socialismo utópico de Saint-Simon e Fourier, bem como a poética de Baudelaire em especial etc. O autor alemão enfoca especificamente a contradição entre o desenvolvimento das forças produtivas e o uso delas por parte do coletivo nas relações capitalistas de produção. Essa contradição se expressa no espaço simbólico das imagens oníricas, as quais interpenetram o antigo e o novo, e configuram todas as construções da sociabilidade moderna. O quadro metodológico esboçado no trabalho sobre as galerias comerciais parisienses tem por base a analogia proposta entre a interpretação dos sonhos psicanalítica e a interpretação dos fenômenos coletivos compreendidos enquanto formas oníricas. O problema desta aparência social reificada ganha plena elaboração na constituição do estatuto metodológico da imagem dialética,com base na suspensão dos elementos ambíguos dos fenômenos da cultura do fetiche. No presente trabalho são apresentadas as linhas mestras da categoria política do despertar histórico que, enquanto processo de interpretação e crítica da história, opera uma síntese conceitual (constelação) que inter-relaciona dialeticamente o conjunto complexo das categorias teóricas: o caráter fetiche da mercadoria, o conceito de expressão, a distinção entre imagem onírica e imagem dialética, bem como do próprio despertar. Desse modo, Benjamin lança as bases para uma teoria social crítica e para uma nova escrita da história nos marcos de uma historiografia materialista.