HYPERBOLIC SPACE AND VIOLETA DINESCU'S MUSICAL REPRESENTATION OF THE ‘WOMAN'S SOUL’

Abstract

Abstract This paper proposes an approach to the representation of mental musical space, understood here as a mental ‘hologram’ of a musical structure created while composing or listening to a piece of music. Composers claim to ‘hear’ music in their mind and ‘see’ it in their spatial imagination; normally we see music graphically represented on two-dimensional staves, but we could mentally decode it in a three- or multi-dimensional space, and I argue that Violeta Dinescu's musical vision occupies a non-Euclidean imaginary musical space rather than the Western classical-music template. Dinescu's graphical design suggests a hyperbolic space, distorting the musical parameters accordingly. Two of her works are discussed: Gehen wir zu Grúschenka, for cello with voice ad libitum, and Herzriss – Aus deinem Herzen kannst du die Liebe nicht ausreißen, an opera for solo voice(s), percussion and cello. The first views the behaviour of musical parameters as if in an imaginary hyperbolic space; the latter exemplifies intertextuality in a cultural hyperbolic space. Both are metaphors of the woman's soul.