Resumo

Na investigação musicológica sobre as origens, difusão e funções dos primeiros sistemas de escrita musical no contexto do repertório gregoriano, a perspectiva paleográfica tem assumido um papel essencial. Mas é claro que muitas outras metodologias e abordagens teoréticas concorrem para densificar o horizonte de compreensão da Musicologia histórica. Nestas notas, procuramos considerar a leitura que Theodor Adorno, no seu projecto inacabado “Zu einer Theorie der musikalischen Reproduktion”, faz da emergência da notação musical. Reflectindo sobre as especificidades do sistema notacional, Adorno compreende-o à luz do nuclear operador conceptual de Mimésis. Apesar da progressiva racionalização da música ter esbatido a originária dimensão mimética, ela perduraria de forma latente nos sinais gráficos, entendidos como “imagens de gestos” e como instrumentos de controle social.

Mimesis, gestures and the origin of neumes in Adorno’s Towards a theory of musical reproduction (brief remarks)

Although the paleographical approach remains essential in the scholarly research focused on the origins, dissemination, and functions of the earliest notational systems used in medieval plainsong, historical Musicology is open to new methodologies. This article seeks to analyse some topics about the origins of chant notation from the perspective of the critical theory of Theodor W. Adorno. In his unfinished “Towards a Theory of Musical Reproduction”, Adorno reflected on the specificities of the notational system, which he sought to comprehend in light of the nuclear concept of Mimesis. For him, "the musical symbols chosen to wrest the music are images of gestures", serving the function of social control. Nonetheless the progressive rationalization of music (indispensable for its aesthetic autonomy) has faded its mimetic dimension, the former continues to be remarkable on the graphic signs. It seems important to critically (re)adress this challenging and interpellant theoretical discourse.