Latin American Electroacoustic Music Collection

Jorge Antunes, Contrapunctus contra Contrapunctus, 1965
(Brazil)



Recording time: 4 min 16 s.
Instruments: Tape
Recorded at: Home studio. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Other resources available:
- Biography of Jorge Antunes
- Compositions by Jorge Antunes

About this composition:

This work was composed in 1965, still using the composer's amateur, home-made studio located in his home in Rua Orestes in Rio de Janeiro. In the same year Antunes had completed writing his theory on the correspondence between sound and colour and was consolidating it in an artsitic activity focussed on this aesthetic consideration.
He was simultaneously active in plastic arts, making what he called Integral Art. In 1965 he exhibited his Ambiente I, a penetrable installation: an experiment which anteceded the first works of Hélio Oiticica.
From 1965 Jorge Antunes began to compose various mixed works, using magnetic tape of electronic sounds in pieces for groups of chamber music instruments and in orchestral works.
In Contrapunctus versus Contrapunctus the composer was aready developing more elaborated work in both the aesthetic sense and technical sense. The sound material is treated with meticulous care in cutting and splicing, resulting in the patient production of micro-assemblies. But the aethetics of precariousness were manifest, and the use of closed tapes (loops) is one of the main resources.
The scheme of the electroacoustic musical discourse is characterised by the use of obstinati of cells of electronic sounds, which are superimposed on melodic improvisations produced by the wave generator. Here, the traditional training of the composer is evident: the piece has three sections and, much as in a lied, the third section is a brief re-exposition with variations, of the first section.
The work Contrapunctus versus Contrapunctus, together with the Sideral Waltz of 1962, was included on the first LP of electroacoustic music made in Brazil, and was launched in the Mangione Edition in 1975, in the collection "Musical Jewels" [Jóias Musicais]. Catalogue code: Mangione LP 15003: Title: Jorge Antunes, Electronic Music.

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