Towards a Dialogical Musical Polyphony: Contributions from Solo Singing Performance

ABSTRACT We retrieve in this paper Bakhtin’s definition of polyphony to, firstly, seek its roots in music and then demonstrate how the literary meaning of the term can contribute to the study of contemporary concert music in new understandings of its polyphonic dimension. To this end, in addition to Bakhtin’s Circle writings, we reference academic literature on the concept, both in the areas of literary theory and musicology. For this conceptual expansion, we propose three polyphonic strategies applied to the solo vocal repertoire: 1) the multiplicity of texts, 2) the multiplicity of roles, and 3) the multiplicity of actions. Through this path, the article results not only in the densification of the components that form the concept of polyphony, but also in a performance approach capable of being applied in musical practices.