Wednesday, November 28, 2012

brio



brio [brio] n.

1.) Liveliness, vivacity, ‘go’ (O.E.D. 2nd Ed.).

Etymology: Italian, lit. mettle, fire, life; in the musical phrase con brio. From Spanish brio, or Provençal briu, both of Celtic origin.

"The brio of the text (without which, after all, there is no text) is its will to bliss: just where it exceeds demand, transcends prattle, and whereby it attempts to overflow, to break through the constraint of adjectives—which are those doors of language through which the ideological and the imaginary come flowing in" (The Pleasure of the Text by Roland Barthes, Richard Miller (trans.), 1975).

(Allegro con brio, Tom Roberts, 1886)