Ma 間 e musica: il pieno e il vuoto

The essay examines the concept of ma, a figure of Japanese aesthetic specificity, starting from the organisation of rhythm and meter in the music of Noh theater – which, before being a literary text and a performing art, is above all music. The elusiveness and complexity in the organisation of time, so linked to the breath and the mastery of the performers in their reciprocal musical relationships during the performance, will be considered in the light of specific statements by the great fourteenth-fifteenth century Noh theorist and author Zeami Motokiyo. The magic of the art of Noh is made real through that tense and contradictory timing in the music.