r i t m u n d a n o
m u n d a n o
mapscores
Although music is an eminently temporal art form, many of its compositional elements are conceived as "objects": notes, chords, clefs, etc., and can be individualized as visual symbols or alphanumeric coordinates. These musical "objects" can be arranged on a plane, in paths to be followed, or delimiting areas in a coded space, like a map, without a predefined temporal sense. While many artists (including musicians, but not only), since the 20th century, have experimented with free arrangements of musical elements on the page, the idea of "musical maps" (in the sense of adapting cartographic devices to write music) is somewhat unconventional, especially among musicians.
Below are some examples of how this synthesis between musical scores and maps can be applied: "mapartituras" (map scores).
Procession-score to Santo Amaro da Purificação
The city of Santo Amaro da Purificação, in the Recôncavo region of Bahia, is recognized as the birthplace of several important artists, including Caetano Veloso, Maria Bethânia, Xisto Bahia, and Emanuel Araújo, among others. Like other cities in the Recôncavo (and other regions of Brazil), Santo Amaro also has a strong tradition of philharmonic bands, instrumental wind and percussion groups. It is also in Santo Amaro that the Center for Culture, Languages and Applied Technologies of the Federal University of Recôncavo da Bahia (CECULT-UFRB) is located, where I teach in the music and arts courses and in the interdisciplinary bachelor's degree in culture.
The layout of the main streets in the center of Santo Amaro follows the course of the Subaé River, celebrated in poems and songs such as "Where I was born, a river flows" and "Purify the Subaé," by Caetano Veloso. For several decades, the city has suffered from socio-environmental problems, such as lead contamination caused by a foreign mining company in the 1980s, and pollution of the river.
The processional score, based on a city map, proposes a translation of the street layout into melodic lines to be played in a procession by four simultaneous groups of wind and percussion musicians. Each melody (a, b, c, d, in the legend) is played by a group, following the route determined on the map. Each group that reaches a crossroads or convergence between streets ("chords" in the legend) must wait for the other group from the parallel street to pass and play a cycle together, creating a temporary polyphony. In some cases (such as at the beginning of the procession), all four groups meet simultaneously.