MMM - Mariana Museum of Music October 1, 2007
Posted by Tom Moore in : brazil, brazilian , add a comment
The Church of St. Francis, Mariana, Minas Gerais, Brazil
Brazil, as well as being a worldwide exporter of its popular music, has a centuries-old tradition of classical music, dating to its colonial era (1500-1822). The rich mining area known as Minas Gerais experienced an incredible artistic flowering in the eighteenth century, powered by the wealth generated by the extraction of gold and precious gems. The former capital of the state, Ouro Preto (Black Gold), is studded with lavishly decorated churches in the Baroque style, and was declared a World Cultural Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1980, the first Brazilian city to receive the designation. Not only did the gold from the mines pay for building and decorating churches, but it also paid for the musical settings of the liturgies which were said.
It is only in recent years that musicological study has been recovering and publishing these musical works. One important project was that coordinated by the Mariana Museum of Music and supported by sponsorship from Petrobras, the Brazilian petroleum corporation. Over three years the project produced nine sets of scores and accompanying recordings. Five years later, it may be difficult if not impossible to purchase copies of the scores and CDs, but the website of the project makes available free scans of the original manuscripts, free downloads of the scores, and selected free downloads of audio. Unfortunately the English language version of the site is incomplete, only covering the first three sets issued.
Below I have linked the pages for downloads for each volume.
Vol. 1 Pentecost
Vol. 2 Mass
Vol. 3 Holy Saturday
Vol. 4 Conception and Assumption of Our Lady
Vol. 5 Christmas
Vol. 6 Holy Thursday
Vol. 7 Popular Devotion to the Saints
Vol. 8 Litany of Our Lady
Vol. 9 Funeral Music
Choro September 11, 2007
Posted by Tom Moore in : agua de moringa, brazil, brazilian, chorinho, choro , add a comment
Água de Moringa. Saracoteando (Strolling) - CD 8021
This charming disc, a personal favorite, is as good an introduction as any to the Brazilian genre of music known as choro, just as deeply part of Brazilian music as samba, but not very well-known outside the country’s borders. Choro (or chorinho, as it is sometimes known, with a playful and affectionate diminutive) is perhaps what ragtime might have been in the USA had it not been extinguished by jazz based on blues and the 32-bar popular song. Choro is an instrumental music based on origins in popular dance (waltz, mazurka, polka, schottische, tango), and thus has a three-part form (think of the alternating strains in the Maple Leaf Rag), and sophisticated melodies and harmonies. Its origins are in the groups of players (flute, guitar, ukulele) that would stroll the streets of Rio de Janeiro playing their adaptations of the latest dance music in the second half of the nineteenth century, and the tradition continues unbroken from that day to this. The last decade has seen choro gain widespread popularity among musicians and listeners in their twenties and thirties, so it’s not unusual to see fans at crowded downtown bars enjoying tunes written before their parents were born.
Duke’s own graduate student Thomas Garcia produced a dissertation on choro (find it via the linked list to Duke dissertations on the Music Library webpage), and he has since collaborated on an excellent book on the subject with Tamara Elena Livingston-Isenhour, Choro: a social history of a Brazilian popular music (Indiana University Press) - ML3487 .L58 2005
Multicultural (1926) August 27, 2007
Posted by Tom Moore in : Uncategorized, Villa-Lobos, brazil, multicultural , add a comment
While Heitor Villa-Lobos was not the first Brazilian composer to make a big impact internationally (that was Carlos Gomes, with a string of successful operas for La Scala in the late 19th century), he was the first whose works remain in the repertory. His career also coincided with the economic modernization of the country in the first three decades of the 20th century, and with the cultural modernization which took place in the 1920s, particularly in Sao Paulo. This was a time in which Brazil began to view its racial heritage positively, as something to be proud of. Even today the logo of the Brazilian federal government incorporates colors representing the “three races” – white, black and red for Brazilians of European descent, of African descent and of indigenous descent.
Villa-Lobos’s own esthetic reflected the multicultural mix of Brazil, incorporating the composer’s experiences with popular Brazilian music, including its African influences, and his knowledge of European modernism, particularly that of Stravinsky and of
France. One of the composer’s masterpieces is certainly the Choros no. 10, a ten-minute work from 1926, which begins with an instrumental introduction (perhaps representing the vibrant nature of Brazilian forests), and concludes with an almost orgiastic choral combination of indigenous (Brazilian Indian) rhythms and music drawn from a popular song by composer Anacleto de Medeiros and poet Catulo da Paixao Cearense), full of percussive accents. It would be hard to find a piece which better expressed the aspirations of a tropical country, full of life.
The Music Library has this piece on three CDS (CD 5179, CD 3054 and CD 1361), and you can also listen to it on streaming audio via Classical Music Library.
Brazilian beats August 13, 2007
Posted by Tom Moore in : Lenine, Pernambuco, Recife, Siba, brazil, brazilian, folk, pop, popular, rabeca , add a comment
MESTRE AMBROSIO – CD 7527
Music-lovers from outside Brazil usually identify the country musically with the samba, the highlight of Carnaval each year, a cultural product imported to Rio de Janeiro from Salvador in the early twentieth century, and adopted as a national symbol by the government of Getulio Vargas in the 30’s and 40s. But Brazil, a large country with a heritage of more than 500 years since its colonization, has musical roots that are deep and various, and nowhere more so than in the Northeast, where the Portuguese arrived first. If a composer wants to evoke Brazil, he draws upon the folk music of the Northeast -particularly Paraiba and Pernambuco.
The musical group known as Mestre Ambrosio (“Mestre”, or master, is the honorific given to a skilled musician) is based in Recife, the capital of Pernambuco. The group was formed in 1992, and recorded its first CD in 1995, which was produced by pop star Lenine. Unlike Lenine’s music, where more mainstream musical sounds are flavored with Northeastern idioms, Mestre Ambrosio is much closer to back-country Northeastern roots, with a stripped-sound style based on the rabeca (a folk-violin which dates to Portuguese borrowings from Muslim invaders in the middle ages), with percussion. Lots of percussion – the photo on the CD shows the lone rabeca (played by Siba) with no fewer than five percussion instruments. On occasion you may hear an electric guitar or bass – but the music rocks without these. The groove is infectious, and the lyrics amusing or hilarious, with a deadpan delivery by lead singer Siba. Once this disc hits your CD player, it will stay there.
Official site (Portuguese only): http://www2.uol.com.br/mestreambrosio/
-Tom Moore
