SAMUEL JERONIMO: RIMA

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Rima:
Music as an excess of transparency and lightness, 
or a loss caused by assimilation
 The 20th century gave birth to a wide variety of new languages that for the first time caused people to feel revolted against novelty not only because of the extremely radical ideas brought forth but also because of everything that those ideas put in question.
This revulsion urged its creators tremendously to justify their works so as to be able to defend themselves from such onslaught, but also because these new languages required a new grammar as they presented a radical break with the past.
The very idea of modernism implies a denial of time, the invention of an ongoing present. In the words of Stravinsky, ‘Music is the only reign in which man can build the present’. Modernism, be it in Rilke or Rimbaud, Varèse or Picasso, is viewed as an art of truth, of truth that is truer than the truth of the past; and everything that is created is therefore liable to the paradoxical need to deny itself with every new step.
‘Classical’ modernism was defined by the 19^th century British critic Matthew Arnold. According to Arnold, poetry should present itself as ‘creation’, as the mother of all things, as Adam at the dawn of time. The modern poet is a person who names things for what they are, while modernism is above all a statement of literal truth, undoing the figures and the artifices that came before it. Modernist poets transformed this desire for purity into varying degrees of irony, into an upheaval against Romanticism, calling it out as a dying art form.
But Arnold’s idea of modernism does not stand alone, its descendants can be found throughout all of the history of art and modern critique. As regards the alternative power of a German tradition (born during the first generation of Romanticism) or the needle-sharp perception of the ambivalence of Baudelaire, Stendhal and Berlioz, or even of Walter Pater and his followers (Wilde, Yeats, Joyce) – Arnold’s ideas, adapted to new interests and as conveyed by the poet Eliot, have not lost any of their vigour to this very day. The early works of Stravinsky, this pagan hero of new music, transpose this modernism into the realm of music, reducing it to a fairly simplistic and commonplace format. Unlike Schönberg, who never denied his departure from tradition, Stravinsky becomes the alleged prophet of amnesia at the turn of the 19^th century.
‘Rima” [meaning Rhyme] manifests my opinion about this issue, and its musical discourse meanders through the almost imperceptible parameters of the creative conflict between modernism (past-present) and post-modernism (present-future), creating a dialectic relation between my musical writing in a synthesis between Nietzsche’s myth of the eternal return and Heidegger’s rekindling of the notion of one’s being (Dasein).
It is for this reason that I believe that the Present owes the Past, such as the Future shall come to owe the Present, ultimately also owing the Past that gave rise to the Present, and denying altogether the idea of an ongoing aesthetic annihilation of what is ‘old’ by what is ‘new’ by adding layers of different aesthetics in a daring but also exciting process in which all present differences will eventually be attenuated in the Future.
The name of the piece illustrates the connection and interdependence of the different time dimensions: Past-Present and Present-Future, just as in a proper cross rhyme one predict the end sound of a future line by means of listening to the present line’s end sound, and just as one knows the end sound of a past line by listening to the present line’s end sound, and it is the reader (or listener) who searches for this ‘unique moment’ that ‘never arises’ or ‘perhaps will never arise’, in the words of the Portuguese poet António Ramos Rosa, lingering ‘in anticipation of that moment’ in which the musical word can ‘speak the colours, the sweetness, the perfume that transforms the exile into the bright paradise of silence’.

Tracks:

Verso 1 [09.21]
Verso 2 [09.46] - http://jeronimosamuel.no.sapo.pt/discografia/rima.htm
Verso 3 [15.03]
Verso 4 [09.36]

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samuel.jeronimo Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Reviewer page Forum Senior Member Joined: May 26 2005 Location: Portugal Status: Offline Points: 132	Topic: SAMUEL JERONIMO: RIMA Posted: October 26 2006 at 03:41
	Rima: Music as an excess of transparency and lightness, or a loss caused by assimilation The 20th century gave birth to a wide variety of new languages that for the first time caused people to feel revolted against novelty not only because of the extremely radical ideas brought forth but also because of everything that those ideas put in question. This revulsion urged its creators tremendously to justify their works so as to be able to defend themselves from such onslaught, but also because these new languages required a new grammar as they presented a radical break with the past. The very idea of modernism implies a denial of time, the invention of an ongoing present. In the words of Stravinsky, ‘Music is the only reign in which man can build the present’. Modernism, be it in Rilke or Rimbaud, Varèse or Picasso, is viewed as an art of truth, of truth that is truer than the truth of the past; and everything that is created is therefore liable to the paradoxical need to deny itself with every new step. ‘Classical’ modernism was defined by the 19^th century British critic Matthew Arnold. According to Arnold, poetry should present itself as ‘creation’, as the mother of all things, as Adam at the dawn of time. The modern poet is a person who names things for what they are, while modernism is above all a statement of literal truth, undoing the figures and the artifices that came before it. Modernist poets transformed this desire for purity into varying degrees of irony, into an upheaval against Romanticism, calling it out as a dying art form. But Arnold’s idea of modernism does not stand alone, its descendants can be found throughout all of the history of art and modern critique. As regards the alternative power of a German tradition (born during the first generation of Romanticism) or the needle-sharp perception of the ambivalence of Baudelaire, Stendhal and Berlioz, or even of Walter Pater and his followers (Wilde, Yeats, Joyce) – Arnold’s ideas, adapted to new interests and as conveyed by the poet Eliot, have not lost any of their vigour to this very day. The early works of Stravinsky, this pagan hero of new music, transpose this modernism into the realm of music, reducing it to a fairly simplistic and commonplace format. Unlike Schönberg, who never denied his departure from tradition, Stravinsky becomes the alleged prophet of amnesia at the turn of the 19^th century. ‘Rima” [meaning Rhyme] manifests my opinion about this issue, and its musical discourse meanders through the almost imperceptible parameters of the creative conflict between modernism (past-present) and post-modernism (present-future), creating a dialectic relation between my musical writing in a synthesis between Nietzsche’s myth of the eternal return and Heidegger’s rekindling of the notion of one’s being (Dasein). It is for this reason that I believe that the Present owes the Past, such as the Future shall come to owe the Present, ultimately also owing the Past that gave rise to the Present, and denying altogether the idea of an ongoing aesthetic annihilation of what is ‘old’ by what is ‘new’ by adding layers of different aesthetics in a daring but also exciting process in which all present differences will eventually be attenuated in the Future. The name of the piece illustrates the connection and interdependence of the different time dimensions: Past-Present and Present-Future, just as in a proper cross rhyme one predict the end sound of a future line by means of listening to the present line’s end sound, and just as one knows the end sound of a past line by listening to the present line’s end sound, and it is the reader (or listener) who searches for this ‘unique moment’ that ‘never arises’ or ‘perhaps will never arise’, in the words of the Portuguese poet António Ramos Rosa, lingering ‘in anticipation of that moment’ in which the musical word can ‘speak the colours, the sweetness, the perfume that transforms the exile into the bright paradise of silence’. Tracks: Verso 1 [09.21] Verso 2 [09.46] - http://jeronimosamuel.no.sapo.pt/discografia/rima.htm Verso 3 [15.03] Verso 4 [09.36]
	SAMUEL JERONIMO