Volume 04
Ernst Widmer - A Formação dos Compositores Contemporâneos... ...E seu papel na Educação Musical

Short Review

The formation of contemporary composers... And their role in Music Education (1988) reflects Ernst Widmer’s mature compositional and pedagogical thought. In this extremely concise and objective essay (there are only 5 typewritten pages), Widmer expresses himself about the importance of two ideological principles in the compositional activity, which he recognizes as “laws”: organicity and relativization. The organicity law, he says, “is relative to the creative act, which constitutes of the following phases: to conceive, to give birth, to let it sprout, to develop, bloom and ripen – a rigorously organic process that results in form [...].”As for the “law of relativization”, he equates it to “inclusivity”, to the “paradoxical reality of this and that”, calling attention to the “mutual relativization of the musical elements: melody, rhythm, harmony, timbre, dynamics.” Paulo Costa Lima’s critical essay analyzes Widmer’s text showing a web of subtle relationships where, as the author says, “the idea of a gear or cycle assembling organicity and relativization reverberates in every corner.”