The Internationalization of Brazilian Contemporary Music Through the Festivals of Rio De Janeiro
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The Internationalization of Brazilian Contemporary Music through the Festivals of Rio de Janeiro Danilo Ávila (UNESP – Universidade Estadual Paulista ‘Júlio de Mesquita Filho’) [email protected] On 22 November 2019, Itamaraty, the official institution of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), released a project called «Brazil in Concert». It was formulated by a partnership between the MFA and a consortium of Brazilian orchestras composed by São Paulo Symphony Orchestra, Minas Gerais Philharmonic and Goiás Philharmonic in an arrangement with the record label Naxos. This enterprise aims to record and edit more than a hundred symphonic pieces of the Brazilian repertoire and it has already nominated its composers: Carlos Gomes, Henrique Oswald, Alberto Nepomuceno, Villa-Lobos, Francisco Mignone, Lorenzo Fernandez, Camargo Guarnieri, Cláudio Santoro, José Siqueira, Guerra-Peixe, Edino Krieger and Almeida Prado. For the contemporary composers, from Guarnieri onwards, this action can be an indication of a canon in construction. Events like that, in which some institutional agents choose who are the national key composers to be known abroad, are also an opportunity to investigate the Brazilian dilemmas in the internationalization of contemporary classical music. The activity of certain composers and performers in international events (festivals, biennales, and conferences) or the importation of international experiences through these agents can elucidate how this «fundamental repertoires» are constructed. For this reason, this article intends to reconstruct some international historical landmarks of the Brazilian contemporary music and to expose the accumulation of institutional efforts that conducted this music abroad, as well as to oxygenate the national scene with the exposition of present relevant aesthetics. Journal of Music Criticism, Volume 4 (2020), pp. 129-145 © Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini. All rights reserved. Danilo Ávila When we start to think of contemporary music festivals in general, from what period do we start to understand its genesis? This question ideally aims to retrace an origin, but, in a prosaic sense, it helps the historian to elaborate on his choices and to structure the frame of the research. Musicology gives more relevance to the German festivals of Darmstadt (1946) and Donaueschingen (1921), the latter is considered one of the most ancient contemporary music festivals. In 1946, on the Italian side, the Contemporary Music International Festival was created inside the celebrated Biennale di Venezia. These historical landmarks conduct us to the relationship between these festivals and Brazil. The composer and professor Hans Joachim Koellreutter, member of the Contemporary Music International Society (CMIS) and, during the period, a leader of the group (or movement, the literature disagree) Música Viva. That year, Koellreutter embarked in the ship ‘Francesco Morosini’ with some of his students to attend the activities of the Biennale di Venezia («Bienal 1948»). Invited by the celebrated conductor related to the Second Viennese School, Hermann Scherchen; in this occasion, the German-Brazilian professor was requested to offer a conference about the so-called ‘Brazilian contemporary music’ and to promote concerts and recitals for its publicity. Three prominent female students accompanied him: Eunice Katunda, Esther Scliar, and Geni Marcondes. All three were pianists and composers. The idea to bring female composers that were also performers was due to their ability to sustain the performance of Brazilian contemporary repertoire for the instrument, since the intention was to disseminate it in the cities they visited. Koellreutter played the flute parts1. During the musical cruise, the Brazilian expedition corresponded with one of the major newspapers in Rio de Janeiro, Correio da Manhã, and reported their activities abroad to its main musical critic, Eurico Nogueira França. He nominated the group as the ‘dodecaphonic embassy’ in an article from 28 January 1949. On this day, the ship ‘Morosini’ arrived home. França extensively reported the trajectory of the group in this critique, their entire route through Karlsruhe, Milan, Basil, Stuttgart, and Rome. It is noteworthy the emphasis that was given to Koellreutter’s performance, who ministered conferences («Brazilian contemporary music» and «Brazilian popular music and the folklore») and performed, aside with Geni Marcondes, pieces for piano and flute by Albert Roussel, Luiz Cosme, Cornélio Hauer, Radamés Gnattali, Lorenzo Fernandez, Francisco Mignone, Villa-Lobos, and Camargo Guarnieri. França’s critique 1. FRANÇA 1949. 130 The Internationalization of Brazilian Contemporary Music makes a zigzag: it praises both the institutional activities of the professor in the CMIS and his radio programs, and celebrates his talent, but condemns him for «insufflating an orthodox atonalism» on the young composers, which had been successful in converting these inventive and tender composers into the «atonalism’s creed»2. In this journey, Eunice Katunda was the jauntiest composer in contemporary music, she had studied with Luigi Nono and Bruno Maderna3. This international activity is one of the main moments in which Brazilian contemporary music, through an eclectic corpus of composers and performers, was systematically made known in events and festivals abroad with the same aesthetic concerns. These choices (1) are situated in a conceptual frame that links them to previous experiences (great masters moderns «the very new»4) and they also present their compositional dilemmas (tension between folklore and serial technique) through Koellreutter’s speeches and conferences; (2) they are in tune with his pedagogical purposes, because he also brought with him in the journey names that were in the early days of their careers, like Sonia Born (singer), Myriam Sandbank (pianist), Antonio Sergi (pianist); (3) they promote the Brazilian section of CMIS, founded that year. Historical, pedagogical and institutional contents that legitimate these choices, above all critics that could accuse the enterprise as aesthetically committed. It is necessary to go back to França’s narrative to understand the relevance of the event. Correio’s main critic starts by accusing Koellreutter of having «deflagrated», «with truly German tenacity and coherence», a movement that, by struggling for the «advanced positions in art», was inclined to «kind of an avant-garde that un-rarely seems to have lost the contact with human reality, risking to falling in the terrain of experimental aridity»5. In the final section, França acclaims Koellreutter’s «considerable labour» in promoting «not only [composers] of atonalism, which would be a pure sectary act, but the expressive 2. Ibidem. 3. In late 1949, Katunda’s quintet Hommage to Schoenberg received a prized in the 24th international festival at CMIS, to which she had recently been appointed for membership by the highest delegate in Brazil, Renato de Almeida. KATER 2001. 4. Since 1946, when Claudio Santoro and Guerra-Peixe were already earning their first merits as composers, Koellreutter elaborated a philosophy of history for Brazilian music in which he inserted his disciples at the end of the progression line. The article ‘Generation of Masters’ shows progressive emancipation of national music from European tonalism since Alberto Nepomuceno, through Villa-Lobos, Mignone, and Guarnieri, until the ‘novíssimos’, his disciples. KOELLREUTTER 1946. 5. FRANÇA 1949. 131 Danilo Ávila music of our contemporaries»6. Zigzag aside, the argument has a direction: if you compose or perform atonal music, you will not be played or listened except by your peers. Music sociologist Frederico Barros reveals in a study that Guerra- Peixe constantly declared to his colleagues that he turned nationalist because he wanted his work to be played more7. With the interruption of Música Viva in the early fifties8, the decade is a gap for Brazilian music activities considered «contemporary» or «avant-garde»9. Conductor Eleazar de Carvalho joined pianist and composer Jocy de Oliveira and they starred in the early sixties the First Avant-Garde Music Week. This event was presumably an introduction to the First Biennale, that never happened. This Week does not have any relation with the Biennales projected by composer Edino Krieger that had their first edition in 1975, an event that this article will discuss later. The Week was promoted between 16 and 26 of September 1961 at Teatro dos Sete, a typical theatre for young actors and companies that worked before in Teatro Brasileiro de Comédia (TBC) and the Teatro Municipal do Rio de Janeiro (TMRJ). Eleazar de Carvalho was the general director of the Juventude Musical Brasileira, the national representative of Jeunesses Musicales, and achieved broad support from entrepreneurs and state institutions. Brazilian Phillips had the exclusive sponsorship, but, as the programme shows, other institutions also «contributed to make the First Avant-Garde Music Week possible»; in the private sector, the Brazilian-German Institute, Brazilian Mercedes-Benz S.A., National Bank of Minas Gerais, the Brazilian Pan air, Glória Hotel and, finally, Willys Overland, the Brazilian branch of the North American automaker. In the public sector, the event had the support from the Ministry of Education and Culture (MEC), Guanabara’s Tourism Department, and it was inspired by the recommendations of UNESCO’s International Music Council that, in this period, had Luiz