Composition and analysis of a comic opera: Investigating the construction of musical meaning

Abstract

I intend to demonstrate the contribution of specific cognitive devices in regulating processes that determine the perceptive choices and the ways of constructing musical meaning in the compositional process of a comic opera. To this end, from the libretto A Sonâmbula, by Machado de Assis, I develop the composition and a reflective analysis of the composition of an opera in two cycles: (i) In the first, according to the principles of formalist semantics, I generate the first version of opera; and (ii) in the second, from the application of devices of an incorporated semantics, I produce the final version of the opera. Comparing the artistic results of the two cycles, I discuss the process of producing the musical meaning that regulates compositional acts, highlighting the role of cognitive devices described by enacting theories of contemporary cognitive sciences, still little addressed by the literature on musical composition, particularly in the operatic genre.