Gesture in contemporary music - on the edge between sound materiality and signification

Abstract

In this paper I approach a variety of topics related to musical gesture in contemporary music. I explain how gesture can be understood in contemporary music. I show that sound materiality and signification are very closely related and that gesture is on the edge between them; that gestures can be regarded as a natural ground to justify compositional options; that significations can be introduced by gestures into the composition, and that to deconstruct stereotyped symbolic gestures is to bring them closer to sound materiality. I analyze transcultural significations in gesture and the reduction of signification to gesture. I comment on gesture in performance in the particular case of electroacoustic music, and I conclude by commenting on gesture and the poetic conception of the contemporary music as a resource to concentrate listening in one of its central plots.