Metaphor and the Erotics of Interpretation

Grounded in artistic practice, the project seeks to interweave experimental performance methodologies with theoretical perspectives drawn from semiotics and psychoanalysis, particularly the works of Roland Barthes, Julia Kristeva, and Paulo de Assis.

The research is structured around four interconnected case studies: (1) A Thousand Hammerklavier Sonatas, a series of daily reinterpretations of Beethoven’s Op. 106; (2) Transfigured, an investigation of Romantic piano transcription as a medium for analogical transformation; (3) an application of Stanislavski’s “Magical If” to musical performance; and (4) a study of Barthes’s concept of somathemes as a framework for embodied musical signification.

Taken together, these case studies address a central research topic: how the highly symbolical musical sign-system can be related to embodied expressive performance. The project proposes metaphor as the operative link between these domains. In A Thousand Hammerklavier Sonatas and Transfigured, metaphor and analogy function as procedures that translate symbolic structures into performative action. The "Magical If" provides concrete techniques for training this translation, understood not as an external or decorative addition but as a practical method for activating the relation between imagination and bodily execution.

The fourth case study develops Barthes’s notion of somathemes as the site at which this relation becomes operative. Somathemes are conceived as minimal bodily-textual units through which symbolic musical structures are actualised in performance. In this sense, they do not supplement interpretation but constitute the medium through which metaphor is realised as sound, gesture, and affect. Interpretation thus appears neither as the decoding of a score nor as free expression, but as a process of embodied signification.
Across all four studies, the project develops the concepts of 'transmutational metaphor' and the 'erotics of interpretation', foregrounding the interplay between intellectual reflection and sensory engagement in musical performance. Through systematic artistic experimentation and critical inquiry, it challenges conventional interpretative paradigms and proposes performance as a site of meaning production.

The project is embedded in the research cluster MetamusicX, led by Paulo de Assis, and extends and develops the cluster’s previous work within the MusicExperiment21 framework. It is carried out in collaboration with the Royal Conservatoire Antwerp, the University of Antwerp, and the Royal Danish Academy of Music, and is funded through a grant from the Augustinus Foundation.