2ND INTERNATIONAL MUSICAL ITINERARIES FORUM: MUSIC AND GESTURE (Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisbon)

62 ----HELENA FIGUEIREDO Helena Figueiredo is a lecturer at the Portuguese Catholic University’s School of Arts, PhD student associated to INET-MD: Institute of Ethnomusicology – Center for Music and Dance of Universidade Nova de Lisboa, and a guest researcher at CITAR: Research Center for Science and Technology of the Arts Portuguese Catholic University. She is a PhD Researcher on Dance & Technology at the Dance department of the FMH Technical University of Lisbon. -----


INTRODUCTION
The 2nd International Musical Itineraries Forum was organized by the CESEM -Center for the Study of Musical Aesthetics and Sociology of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa's Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities.The event took place from 28 to 30 of October 2011, at Centro Cultural de Belém Conference Centre in Lisbon, Portugal.
The Musical Itineraries Forum was established in 2010 and provides a meeting opportunity for interdisciplinary debate, which encourages public presentation of work in progress and the dissemination of ideas, statements and scientific projects, encouraging the engagement between researchers, performers, students and creative artists.Furthermore, this Forum promotes comprehensive critical reflection on multiple current topics in the field of artistic practices and discourses on music and its relationship with other disciplines.Under the theme "Music and Gesture", the 2011 edition of the Forum focused on the study of the interactions between sound, music, gesture, performing arts and technologies.Its main purpose was to promote the reflection on identity, culture, power and knowledge in the field of artistic expression trough body gestures.
The event was sponsored by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, by Centro Cultural de Belém, and by CESEM -Center for the Study of Musical Aesthetics and Sociology of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa.Paula Gomes Pinto (CESEM -UNL) and Isabel Pires (CESEM -UNL) were the coordination teem elements of the Forum.They were also part of the Scientific Committee along with Carlos Sena Caires (EA / UCP), Luís Correia de Sousa (CESEM -UNL) and Isabel Valverde (IHSIS).
There were 33 presentations during 3 intensive days where the key words were dance, music, technology, sound, gestures, opera, dramaturgy, theater, performative practices, music performance, music composition and analysis and symbolic power discourses.
It was a 3 language event (Portuguese, French and English) including 16 projects from international institutions, which provided a very culturally diverse audience.Many distinctive areas of study, research and different artistic practices, were represented amongst the local and the international delegates that attended the event.
The word "gesture" was the transversal link between all presentations, although it became clear that it is a non-consensual concept in different research areas represented in the Forum.

Paulo Ferreira de Castro
Paulo Ferreira de Castro presented the first Keynote speech of the Forum.He is a lecturer at Universidade Nova de Lisboa and a researcher at CESEM, FCSH, on the topics of Ideologies in musical modernism and an expert on the history and aesthetics of 19th and 20th century Portuguese music.
In his lecture entitled "From musical gesture to invisible theatre, and back -some notes on the Wagnerian project", Paulo F. de Castro presented a discussion on the role of the gestural element in Wagner's music, with special emphasis on the music of Der Ring des Nibelungen, and of the critique of gesture as an aesthetic and socio-political category in Nietzsche and Adorno, as well as an evaluation of the relevance of that critique for a post-Wagnerian conception of musical theatre, as a theatre of non-redemption predicated on the rejection of the metaphysics of presence and totality.

Atau Tanaka
Atau Tanaka's keynote speech was one of the highest points of the third day at the Forum.He is Head of Digital Media at Newcastle University and Director of Culture Lab.Tanaka is a researcher, a media artist and an experimental musician.The last communication of the morning, "The intrinsic duality of movement and sound: Investigating the intersections of dance and music through Bach" was presented by Josephine Amber Kao (Univ. of Michigan).Kao focused on the notations of the violin score translated into movements of the bow arm and fingering of the left hand, which then conveys intentions and emotions.The score does not merely imply the music to be played, but instead describes how a body moves in order to play the music and, thus, in the case of Bach, express emotion.In her research Kao examines the musical score of J. S. Bach's first violin partita as a text where these interactions exist.She is a musician and a dancer, which led her to discover an intrinsic duality of music and movement that has led her to explore the embodiment of sound.Her research intends to demonstrate several ways in which she employs Bach's text as the point of origin and basis to inform her choreography.
The third and forth sessions of the first day, were dedicated to Sound, gesture, new technologies.In this session Steve Gibson (Northumbria Univ.) gave a presentation, with the title "Advanced media control through drawing: using a graphic table to control complex audio and video data in a live context", a demonstration of his Wacom tablet MIDI user interface.An application that enables user's drawing actions on a graphics tablet, to control audio and video parameters in real-time.Gibson defended that the use of a dynamic and physical real-time media interface re-inserts body actions into live media performances in a compelling manner.
In the second communication by Miguel Azguime (Miso Music), entitled "The presence of the absence of the author has a sound-gesture!" Azguime presented us with his New Op-Era "Salt Itinerary".He defines it as an example of the intermedia hybridity made possible by current digital technology allowing the bringing together the materiality of sound and image (in multiple forms) with the performing action of the body of the actor.A very original presentation where Azguime defends that this work stages the phenomenon of textuality as a sensual and semiotic object, shaping new grounds in music and breaking boundaries between music, theatre, opera.
In the third communication, by Koray Tahiroglu, (Aalto Univ.), entitled "Gesture and body in enacting sonic interaction", Tahiroglu presented his current research that aims to understand more about gesture-based, embodied interaction in participative music experience through multimo-dal input/output mechanisms and broaden our of enaction to the social domain.The research "The Notion of Participatory and Enacting Sonic Interaction" (PESI), aims to facilitate multi-user participation by providing finely balanced mechanisms for dynamic social interaction in participatory music experiences.These include accessible and easy use / easy control mobile devices that give inexperienced users control over creative acts and allow them to explore musical experience throughout their natural type of interactions and perceptually guided actions.
In the fourth session, under the same topic, Ernesto Donoso (CESEM, FCSH/ Univ.Nova de Lisboa) opened with the first presentation, entitled "O gesto visual como elemento activo e constitutivo no discurso musical de obras não cénicas".It attended the integration of the visual gesture in a "pure" musical context as a practice used by some composers that have intended to experience non conventional forms of transmission of the musical purpose.means by significant aspects of the inclusion process of visual gesture in "pure" music, contributing by adding complementary information to the judgment and scientific reflation on this practice.
Nancy Lee Harper (Univ.Aveiro; CESEM/FCSH/UNL) presented the second lecture of this session, entitled "VITALGesture: Electrocardiogram measurement and gesture in music performance".The research explores the relationship between physical gesture and heart rate in live music performances in two case studies through new technologies and psychological evaluation.
Objectives of the research and the methods chosen to record results were presented.Amongst the objectives of the study was to ascertain the relationship of physical gesture with heart rate under stress; to consider the psychological profile of two case-study musicians in order to draw conclusions about gesture in different performance environments and a final objective to determine if there is a difference between professional and non-professional musicians under the stress of perform-ance and how this relates to musical and physical gesture.

2ND DAY
The first session of the day was on the topic of Dramaturgy, visuality, space and gesture in opera practice.Nuno Fidalgo (FCSH, Univ.Nova de Lisboa) opened this three presentation session with a talk entitled "Discussing theatrical communication: W. A. Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro at Teatro da Trindade (Lisbon, 2006)".In this presentation Fidalgo considers the strategies adopted by recent staging whose communication model is intended to make accessible the music-theatrical text for the spectator.
Olga Jerusum and Vincenza Busseti (Univ.degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza) made a presentation entitled "The visual aspect in contemporary operatic mise en scène: the case of Rigoletto".In their presentation Jerusum and Busseti demonstrate how the visual aspects, such as costumes, props and settings in general, in the contemporary mise en scène of nineteenth-century operas, are of preeminent relevance.These issues have been pivotal in their proposal of a mise en scène of Rigoletto.In this presentation, musical samples and set designs were presented and discussed, with focus on the stage directions conceived by Olga Jesurum, and on the costumes created by Vincenza Busseti.
The last communication of the session was presented by Hervé Lacombe (Univ.Rennes 2), under the title "Écriture musicale et espace scénique dans l'opéra-comique".
Lacombe explored the music writing and performative space in comic opera.He concentrated his analyses on Lyric theatre history, specifically on French comic-opera in the XVIII and XIX centuries.The usually "anti-realistic" musical logic of the ensembles found, by knotting space and music, gesture and structure, body materiality and immateriality of sound, a powerful artistic theater.
The session that followed was on the subject of Gesture ontologies and performative practices.Dilmar Miranda (Univ.do Ceará) produced a communication entitled "Pulsating syncopation and transgression gesture".Miranda aims to investigate the strong presence of syncope in modern Brazilian Popular Music, especially in modern urban samba, as an expression of a "transgressing" gesture.In order to be able to better "visualize" its disruptive nature, Miranda confronted the notion of syncope with an event in which it cannot occur -the military march.This confrontation emphasized the contrast between the predictable movement of a military parade and the pulsing rhythm of the dancing body in popular carnival samba, with all its unpredictable movements.
João Pedo Cachopo (CESEM, FCSH/ Univ.Nova de Lisboa) closed the session with a presentation entitled "That we listen to speaks back to us.Notes on the politics of musical gesture".In a very eloquent way Cachopo started by critically reckoning the consensual interest in musical gesture as a widely debated subject today.His aim was to prove the homogeneity to be apparent, recognizing two tendencies in it -related, on one hand to new technologies and, on the other hand, to musical interpretation -and to grasp their shared views.He confronts the possibility of a certain trivialization of what one understand by gesture, as a conceivable result of this multifaceted interest, with brief notes on politics of music gesture, sustaining that these issues are not supposed to be unthought-of.
The Last session of the 2nd day of the Forum was dedicated to Visual and formal aspects in music performance.It was a four-presentation session opened by Rui Magno Pinto (CESEM, FCSH/UNL) with a presentation entitled "Visual aspects on instrumental music practice in nineteenth century in Portugal".The presenter addressed the creation of interpretive gestures in associated instrumental music as well as the perpetuation of certain gestures in the eighteenth-century's operatic interpretation and its transmutation into the world of instrumental practice.Magno Pinto also addressed the relationships between the abandonment of the visual aspects of performance (classified as charlatanism) and the changing ways of listening, as well as of the repertoire played in Portuguese concert life.
"Gesture narrative in contemporary music for percussion: a preliminary study" is the title of the presentation that followed, by Nuno Aroso (CITAR/Portuguese Catholic University).The central issue of Rui Araújo (CESEM, FCSH/Univ.Nova de Lisboa) carried out a presentation entitled "Gestual parody of music performance in Warner Bros. Cartoons: classical music vs. popular music" which automatically changed the atmosphere of the room.Araújo showed some clips of cartoons made by the Warner Bros studios between the 1930s and 1950s, where the characters impersonate singers, players and dancers, illustrating the original use of the term "parody" in ancient Greece.These characters imitate, not only known performers, but also they use very specific gestural movements that relate (with obvious limitations) to real musical performance.
In certain movements we can identify and relate to some ideas on what the values could be behind the parody.Such as notions that classical music is artificial, formal, rigid and popular music is natural, spontaneous and alive.

3RD DAY
The third day of the Forum opened with a sessions on Expression, space, form codes in movement and sound invention.Daniel Tércio and Teresa Simas (FMH/Univ.Técnica de Lisboa) gave a presentation entitled "Plans of intensification in the work of Gilles Jobin".Throughout his career, Gilles Jobin has been stripping the performer's gestures of mannerism, amplifying their intelligent decisions in real-time, thus striving to reach new terrain in the intensification of the body.The presentation followed a dialog between the two presenters exploring theoretical approaches and analysis of the choreographer's workflow.Tércio and Simas analyzed the process of transmission -from the choreographer towards dancers and back to the choreographer -which they have observed throughout several rehearsals and performances, such as in Moebius Strip and Delicado.
Luís Xarez (FMH/ Univ.Técnica de Lisboa), presented: "The notation of movements in contemporaneity".The rigor, the objectivity and the impartiality are principles that guided the most serious attempts to create choreographic notation systems, but in most cases were based on misconceptions of the body and movement and not able to follow the changing needs and knowledge produced by the sciences of human movement.
Xarez presented an analysis of the existing systems and a proposal for resolving the problem using the OSMBD (observation system of mo-tor behavior in dance) with particular emphasis on the categorization of motor actions and in their organization in movement phrases.The systems of choreographic notation have evolved into systems of register, but also of observation and more complex analyses, using new technologies, and supporting a set of scientific research lines.
Carla Fernandes (CLUNL/ Univ.Nova de Lisboa) was the third speaker of the session with a presentation entitled "Multimodal metaphors, body movements and spaces in Rui Horta's contemporary dance creations".The research presented was framed by the recent studies on Multimodal Metaphor and specifically focused on the analysis of video material filmed during rehearsals of contemporary choreographer Rui Horta, namely for his performances SetUp, Lágrimas de Saladino and Local Geographic.
Building on the differences between conventional metaphors vs. Idiosyncratic ones, the research deals with metaphors in artistic narratives such as contemporary dance, while attempting to describe the more recurrent metaphors encountered in those rehearsal videos.Robert Davis (Univ.Huddersfield) made a presentation entitled "Who got the funk?Accounting for the strut, a study of groove".The aim of his research was to account for those kinetic gestures, which accompany listening to groove-based genres such as funk, disco and hip-hop.What followed was an examination of alternative strategies, which may help us, think about rhythm and movement and ideas of the body and the mind drawing on philosophy, psychology and some neurological research.To conclude, Davis suggested that, in order to account for the strut, we need to re-evaluate our approach to dance and music and develop a more consistent approach to an important musical phenomenon.
pattern-derived gestural improvisation of Cecil Taylor" was presented by, Ludovic Florin (Univ.Toulouse 2-le Mirail).Ludovic claimed that in traditional musicological analysis, a large part of free jazz still remains elusive.That is why Cecil Taylor's performances are seldom examined.However, one can certainly detect some recurring style-defining features in his playing through the seemingly paradoxical approach of pattern-derived improvisation as defined by Siron -"built upon a pool of melodic patterns that are transposed, combined and altered in various ways".Thus, when almost every jazz history book claims that free jazz is associated with free improvisation, Florian demonstrated that a fair amount of Taylor's solos rely on pre-practiced "patterns".
The second session of the day was dedicated to Gesture and form in music composition and analysis.
The first speaker of this session was Isabel Pires (CESEM, FCSH/ Univ.Nova de Lisboa) with a presentation entitled "The sound gesture composition in a virtual auditory space as a structural element on musical works".Pires presented some ideas developed by composers and researchers on the use of auditory space sound gesture that is virtual at the moment of musical composition.She supported her ideas by presenting musical examples, including some of her own compositions.
Pedro Patrício (CITAR/Univ.Católica Portuguesa) presented "MuDi -Multimedia digital instrument for composing and performing digital music for films".Patrício's musical proposal fits within the mobile music performance paradigm and in the new paradigms of musical compositions in real-time.The MuDI allows for the playing and composing of digital music, the recording of sound generated throughout the performance, watching film images and simultaneously following the relationship between the gestures performed and the music generated.Patrício presented us a short performative demonstration of MuDi's operating in real-time, where he used a Wi-Fi device with multitouch and accelerometer controllers (an iPod touch), an application that operates with OpenSound Control (OSCRemote) for communication and a multimedia-programming environment (Pure Data).Patrício demonstrated that MuDI can provide an effective control over the sound and consequently, achieve musical expressivity.
The third presentation of the session was conducted by Petra Bachratá (Univ.Aveiro/UniMeM) and entitled "Gesture based interactive musical models for analysis and composition of mixed music".In the novel context of modern world after 1950's the search of new compositional concepts and alternatives in complex electro-acoustic music and contemporary music in general, brought up the importance of other strategies in structuring musical material, such as gesture and texture.In her presentation Bachratá showed several aspects of how the phenomenon of musical gesture can be understood as a structural element in perception of musical interaction in mixed music, through examples of analysis, systematization, classification and categorization of different interactive musical gesture relationships between instruments and electronics.Bacharatá established a group of theoretical interaction models that can be applied as a method for analysis, as well as a compositional tool.
The closing session of the Forum was on the topic of Performance practices as symbolic power discourses.Germán Gan-quesada (Univ.duced an interpretation of different perspectives regarding musical criticism agents' -critics, composers and musicians -through a comparative study of musical criticism texts from Teatro de São Carlos, published in Lisbon's newspapers in the early years of the 1970's.The Portuguese music field was extensively portrayed by the critics and in order to provide an overview of musical criticism in Portugal, during the period cited above.Therefore the focus of the presentation was largely on the critics behavior -reactions, divisions, common ground -as a result of the repertoire performance practices renewal at the Teatro de São Carlos, by its Director João de Freitas Branco.Matilde Olarte's (Univ.Salamanca) presentation, entitled "The synergy between popular music and musicians de concierto: the reception of the baile español in the cultural gatherings of Kurt Schindler", reported on the post World War I and II popularity of Music composition based on the tradition and cultural identity of Spanish popular music.In particular the presentation focused on the work of the German Composer Kurt Schindler  who was the first to research and record dance and music materials in the field throughout the Iberian Peninsula.Shindler's Work was completed after an extensive comparison of the ethnograph ic materials that went beyond the "tipismo" of the "andalisian" and the "gypsy" across the unpublished repertoire, including "jotas", "romances", working songs, children's songs, etc. Mário Vieira de Carvalho (CESEM, FCSH/Univ.Nova de Lisboa) closed the last session of the Forum with a presentation entitled "Gestures of the life-world: the aesthetic gaze on rustic music".Vieira de Carvalho took as a example the case of the Portuguese Composer Fernando Lopes-Graça (1906-1994), to distinguish an "aesthetic" approach to folk music from the anthropological (or ethnomusicological) and "folkloristic" approaches.In his presentation Vieira de Carvalho referred to some video-examples of field research by the ethnologist Michel Giacometti (with whom Lopes-Graça collaborated as musical adviser) that showed how some manifestations of traditional music in their apparently archaic gesture could seem so "modern" and so challenging even for the trained aesthetic approach.
Slide-show presentations, from left to right: Nancy Lee Harper, Koray Tahirogku, Nuno Aroso, Carla Fernandes, Maria João Serrão and Rui Araújo.theme in much sound-based art, but what is emphasized in Søchting's work is the interplay between the act of listening and the act of producing sound, opening an artistic investigation of how sound (or the absence of sound) affects a particular environment.In his communication Søchting responds to the question, in what way can one talk of a "gesture of silence" and how strategies of silence might open for wider reflection upon embodied experience and cultural signification.
Aroso's research was to determine how the gestures inherent in percussion performances influence the perception of musical semantics.For this purpose he presented an ongoing study to determine the meaning and the impact of gesture on the perception of musical discourse.By the use of technologies, such as video cameras strategically oriented to capture different angles of the percussionist and Wii Remotes, with motion sensing capabilities to capture three different music percussion pieces, the research team was able to register and analyze data that will enable the establishment of relationships between the gestures produced and the perception of musical discourses.Maria João Serrão (Esc.Sup.Teatro e Cinema -IPL; CESEM/FCSH/UNL) carried out the third communication under the title "Gesture / Memory and vocal performance.From the graphism to the global music-kinetic creations".In her presentation Serrão presented and analyzed several vocal pieces to unveil the role of graphics in the vocal evolution of this area since the beginning of the twentiethcentury.Maria João Serrão video projection.
Autònoma de Barcelona) and Helena Martín-nieva (Universitat Ramon Llull, Barcelona) made the first presentation of the session entitled "Ceci n'est pas un concert!Mirror image of gesture, sound and stage setting in Concert per a Representar (Concert to be performed) (1964), by Joan Brossa and Josep Maria Mestres Quadreny".The presentation showed a closer look at how the scenic and composition conceptions work, in "Concert per a Representar", by means of a performative analysis.The work is presented in the context of the series of transgressive "musical proposals" (Santana -1960, Divertimento La Ricarda -1963, Conversa -1965, Suite bufa -1966), and as a revealing example of the difficulty in assuming the international post-vanguard movements by musical composers in the Iberian Peninsula.The second presentation of the session entitled "The reception by the Lisbon press of the staging practices developed at Teatro de São Carlos, in the last years of the Portuguese dictatorship -1970 to 1974", João Romão (CESEM, FCSH/UNL) intro-Mário Vieira de Carvalho.Isabel Pires.
He creates sensor-based musical instruments for performance, and is known for his work with biosignal interfaces.Previously he undertook several key positions in research and artistic institutions, such as IRCAM, Apple France, Sony Computer Science Laboratory Paris and STEIM.
1ST DAYAfter a brief welcome session, presided by Paula Gomes Ribeiro, who introduced us to the formalities of the Forum, and Manuel Pedro Ferreira (CESEM, FCSH/Univ.Nova de Lisboa) who used historical references like the Gregorian chant, the Greek Theatre and the concept of "neuma do cantor", and others, to introduce the topic of the Forum: "Music and Gesture", the sessions of communications began.