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1

GUITAR

FORUM

European Guitar Teachers Association uk

i s s n 1 4 7 5 – 4 7 8 9

2Lorenzo Micheli

Mauro Giuliani’s Guitar Technique& Early Nineteenth-Century Pedagogy

Julian Bream

How to Write for the Guitar

Luis ZeaOn Teaching the Unteachable

Sarn Dyer

: A Lesson with Ida:an imaginary interview with Ida Presti

Fabio Zanon

: Mignone, Fernandez, Guarnieri:Brazilian guitar music after Villa-Lobos

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W I N T E R 2 0 0 3

i s sn 1 4 7 5 – 4 7 8 9

Editor

Jonathan Leathwood

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Ricardo Iznaola, Stanley Yates, Fabio Zanon

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contents

How to Write for the Guitar, page 1

Julian Bream

Mignone, Fernandez, Guarnieri: Brazilian guitar music after Villa-Lobos, page 9

Fabio Zanon

A Lesson with Ida: an imaginary interview with Ida Presti, page 33

Sarn Dyer

Mauro Giuliani’s Guitar Technique & Early Nineteenth-Century Pedagogy, page 45Lorenzo Micheli

On Teaching the Unteachable, page 71

Luis Zea

Contributors, page 99

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How to Write for the Guitar (1957 )

j u l i a n b r e a m

introduction

One of the more attractive places to wine and dine in London during the late

1950s was a little club in Mayfair called the International Music Association.

For its premises it had use of a beautiful Georgian house in South Audley Street,

and it soon established itself as a fashionable meeting place and watering hole

for musicians from far and wide.

Apart from the excellent bar and restaurant, there was, in the heart of the

building, a charming Recital Room (complete with a little stage and grand pi-

ano), which could be hired for informal concerts, lectures or rehearsals. It could

boast a library, and even had its own in-house magazine called The Score.

The magazine was edited by the late William Glock, himself a fine concertpianist whose career mysteriously never really materialised, but whose love,

knowledge and enthusiasm for music never diminished. Instead of pursuing a

performing career he eventually became a musical coach, an encourager, an en-

abler, and impressively, an indefatigable champion of contemporary music.

I used to bump into him at the club from time to time, and on one occasion

he asked me why my programmes on the guitar were so conservative, contain-

ing so little contemporary music, and none of it British. My reply to him was

quite straightforward: it was that most British composers hadn’t a clue how to

write for the instrument. It was then that he suggested I should write an article

on how to write for the guitar. I got down to it at once, and it was duly included

in the next issue of The Score.Looking back on the article some forty-six years later, it does appear rather

conservative, and very much of its period. Nevertheless, many of the principles

expressed are, in my opinion, still pertinent, in spite of the fact that the style and

language of much contemporary concert music has changed considerably.

Julian Bream, August 2003

1

This article first appeared in The Score

& i.m.a. Magazine, ed. William Glock,

nº 19

(March1957)

, pp19–26

. It isreprinted here as a tribute to Julian Bream

on his seventieth birthday. The Score last

appeared in 1961, and we have been unable

to trace its current copyright holders. We

are very grateful to Mr Bream for granting

us his permission to reprint the present

article, and especially for providing the

introduction.

Copyright © 1957 by The Score & i.m.a Magazine

Introduction copyright © 2003 by Julian Bream

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h o w t o w r i t e f o r t h e g u i t a r

the most important thing to bear in mind when writing for an instrument

is the texture and character of its sound. The guitar is more suggestive and inti-

mate than almost any other instrument, and therefore demands from the com-

poser great imagination and feeling for colour – especially since it is nearly al-

ways solo, and succeeds or falls purely on its own merits of musical expression.My advice to composers trying to write suitable music for the guitar is: ‘refer

to Bach’. A detailed study of the unaccompanied violin sonatas would serve ad-

mirably as a guide to the application of harmony and counterpoint to the gui-

tar, as well as to the suggestiveness that I mentioned just now; better still, com-

pare Bach’s own lute arrangements of the G minor Fugue from the First Violin

Sonata or of the whole C minor Cello Suite, and one will notice that with the

added advantage of more strings (and a closer tuning in fourths and thirds as on

the guitar), he has slightly elaborated the harmony and in some cases developed

the counterpoint. It is an interesting fact that whilst all the unaccompanied vio-

lin and cello music (not forgetting the lute suites) can be played on the guitar,

the same can hardly be said of a single keyboard work.

the tuning of the guitar is a curiosity in itself.

The tuning remains constant, with the possible exception of the sixth string,

which is occasionally lowered a tone in pieces where the prevailing tonality is D.Occasionally the fifth string is also retuned a tone lower for special eff ects in the

key of G, but this should only be done on the advice of a guitarist.

Although guitar music is written in the treble clef, it actually sounds an oc-

tave lower than written; thus the range of the guitar is similar to that of the cello,

though quite often the ear is deceived into thinking that it is considerably higher.

This can probably be attributed to the fact that the sound-chamber is somewhat

smaller than that of the cello, and therefore theovertones and natural resonances

are of a higher pitch.

The guitar fingerboard, unlike that of the violin, is divisioned off by thin

strips of metal (frets) placed a semitone apart. Since the notes are predeter-

mined, the instrument is obviously tempered, though enharmonic diff erencescan be achieved by the finger pushing into or pulling away from the fret.

The Spanish Guitar (as opposed to the Plectrum Guitar) is always plucked

with the fingers of the right hand and never with a plectrum or quill. Dance-

band players have developed the plectrum technique over the last thirty years

or so in order to obtain more power and drive in their rhythmic chord-playing,

but this method is artistically very limited since it cannot manage counterpoint,

and every chord is, and must be, slightly arpeggiated. With the thumb and three

fingers, the classical (Spanish) guitarist has in fact four plectra and can therefore

play four notes simultaneously.

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The guitar has a range of three octaves and a fifth.

As with most stringed instruments, the very high notes of the guitar tend to have

less quality, and complicated passagework in the highest register sometimes

sounds thin and unconvincing; nevertheless, I am all in favour of mountaineer-

ing, if a composition really demands it. The chief thing to remember is that while

the top two strings generally sound well in extreme high positions – if the in-

strument is a good one – the bottom four, on the whole, tend to sound rather

‘boxy’ and dead above the twelfth fret, i.e. above the octave, and I would gen-

erally advise composers against writing six-note chords right up in the ‘dust’ if

they really desire a musical sound!

By no means the least important point to bear in mind when writing for the

guitar is the span which the left hand is capable of stretching. For instance, it is

obviously impossible to play a chord in a high position, and also expect to play

a low F (first fret) on the sixth string; the composer must either bring the chord

down to the low F or else the low F up to the chord – whichever is more vital to

the musical logic.

Example 3 should give some idea of the limits which the average left hand

can stretch. Although five or six frets is the average stretch between the first and

fourth finger, this does not rule out the possibility of playing chords in the high

positions of the treble strings, and plucking open bass strings at the same time.

Many a good pedal is built up in this way, especially if the bass note is given a

little rhythmical interest.

most instruments have their natural keys and resonances, the guitar being no

exception. It is, indeed, essentially a keybound instrument. This being so, atonal

works may present certain problems, though they can be entirely successful if

the composer has acquainted himself thoroughly with the fingerboard, and re-

alised the importance of keeping the texture compact.

When using the conventional tonal system, the composer must select his

key or overall key feeling according to the natural resonances of the instrument.

how to write for the guitar 3

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Since most of the natural harmonics and resonances are built up, as it were,

from the open strings, it is important to use the unstopped strings as much as

possible,particularly the lower three,which add a considerable lustre to the tim-

bre when harmonically employed in conjunction with a phrase or figuration in

high positions on the treble strings. Often an open string may be harmonically

incorrect (academically speaking), but in a great many cases the unstopped bass

strings are so rich in natural harmonics that they often sound more convincing

in the harmony they suggest than a more harmonically conventional stoppednote that might hinder the fluency of a phrase simultaneously played above it.

Nevertheless, the first necessity is to choose a key that will give aesthetic sat-

isfaction to the composer and that will also take into account the instrument’s

technical attributes and limitations. The natural keys of the guitar are A,E, D,G,

C, F and the tonic minors.

As can be observed, the three best keys have an open bass note, particularly

if in the key of D the sixth string is tuned a tone lower, thereby giving the com-

poser two open D strings, a dominant A and a subdominant G – all to ease the

performer’s burden!

the guitar has always been admired for its harmonic resources and it is in this

respect that the contemporary composer can use his imagination to the full, un-

fettered by the technical limitations of the instrument where counterpoint or

melody and accompaniment are concerned.

Although the guitar has six strings and can therefore play chords of up to six

notes, the technique of the right hand, as already observed, limits the number of

notes simultaneously playable to four (i.e. thumb and three fingers). Hence five-

and six-note chords are always slightly arpeggiated. If the composer requires

fast repeated chords, say at a moderate semiquaver speed, it would be advisable

to condense all the harmonic interest into four-note chords, or better still, if flu-

ent fingerboard facility is also needed, into chords of three notes. However, acomposition may sometimes demand fast reiterated six-string thrumming, per-

haps to give a sustained tremolando eff ect; here it is imperative that all six strings

be employed, as it is impossible, say, to miss out the third – or any other inside

string for that matter – when the performer is thrumming backwards and for-

wards across the six strings with the forefinger of the right hand.

The layout of harmony on the guitar is a comparatively simple thing, if a few

rules are observed. For instance, in common chords of four notes, the conven-

tional rule of keeping the bottom note of the chord relatively far away from the

triad above it works particularly well, since the major third between the second

and third strings facilitates the close grouping of a triad, whilst a largish interval

between the tenor and bass parts gives a certain size and richness to a chord, be-cause of the sympathetic harmonics arising from the bass – as would happen in

example 5.

It is of prime importance to remember this rule, when employing the guitar for

accompaniments or in chamber ensembles. Triads in the extreme low positions

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sound extremely sonorous, but somehow lack brilliance and definition and get

lost in the general ensemble.

As I have explained earlier, I cannot sufficiently stress the importance of using

the open strings. This applies particularly to the writing of the more progressive

kind of harmony on the guitar. Villa-Lobos, for example, has achieved a brilliant

harmonic system, using stopped notes high up on the inside strings, in conjunc-

tion with open (unstopped) notes. Here is a typical example:

One might argue that artistically this is rather a naïve system of chordal con-

struction, but I can assure the reader that while three notes of every chord (a)

remain constant, each chord has its own harmonic character and bears little or

no resemblance to the preceding one.

The technical device known as the grand barré has great importance in the

construction of ‘fingerboard harmony’. This is achieved by placing the forefin-

ger of the left hand over all six strings, and so producing, as it were, an ad-

justable nut. Most common six-note chords are stopped in this manner, and

when a phrase or chord moves up, say, a major third, all the player has to do is

to shift the grand barré four frets higher, which can be done with the minimum

of thought and eff ort. Incidentally, whilst the forefinger might be engaged in

performing the grand barré it is worth while to remember that the other three

fingers can articulate and stop notes at the same time, providing that they are

not required to stretch more than four frets higher than the point at which the

barré is fixed; and never, never expect a guitarist to perform the barré above thetenth fret – he probably would never physically recover if he tried!

although the lute (forerunner of the modern guitar with exactly the same

technique and similar tuning) reached the height of its development during a

great period of contrapuntal writing, it is interesting to note that the lute and

the guitar have considerable limitations in playing this kind of music. Neither

Dowland nor Bach, in their three- and four-part fugal expositions, ever re-

quired the lute to perform counterpoint at more than moderate quaver speed,

and they were both very careful to choose diatonic outlines, so as to eliminate

unnecessary movement on the fingerboard. By the very nature of the instru-

ment, two-part counterpoint at moderate semiquaver speed, with the parts incontrary motion, is never wholly successful, nor in parallel motion, which is just

as difficult to perform unless at a moderate quaver tempo. Once again, as in so

many cases when writing for the guitar, the composer must simplify the coun-

terpoint, which the instrument finds difficult to project. For instance, if the top

part is the more important of the two, the secondary, or lower, part must un-

dergo slight adjustment; losing some of its contrapuntal significance it takes on

a somewhat harmonic character, at the same time giving the performer more fa-

cility to shape and phrase the figuration above it. This system, which one might

term harmonic counterpoint, also applies in reverse, i.e. with the top part in a

simplified form supporting the figuration of the lower part.


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Some composers may argue that since there are so many limitations in two-

part writing, how on earth are they to compose in three or four parts if the mu-

sical conception of a composition requires it? To this I would answer that two

parts played on the guitar have an eff ect of peculiar fullness and completion.

However, a discreet and fragmentary use of a third and fourth part, in the form

of harmonic punctuation, is often playable, as well as being suitable to the in-

strument.This technique is exploited to perfection in the fugues and other com-

positions of J.S. Bach.

trills and ornamentation are all embodied in a technique peculiar to the

guitar, known as the ‘slur’ or legato. For instance, in example 7 the right hand

plucks no fewer than three times, the other unplucked notes being either ham-

mered (ascending) or plucked (descending) by the left hand alone. This tech-

nique obviously gives shape to a phrase as well as giving considerable ease to

articulation, as the notes sounded by the right hand have slightly more rhyth-

mical impetus and sonority than those plucked or hammered on the finger-

board. All the same, a guitarist cannot go on plucking with his left hand for ever,

unless the string is given a new lease of vibration from the right hand; hence

elongated trills are to be avoided at all costs in favour of shorter figuration. The

mordent, double-mordent, and the elaborated turn can serve adequately the

composer who indulges in baroque niceties.

of all the musical techniques most suited to the instrument, the arpeggio isprobably the most beautiful and evocative. There are many varieties of arpeggi;

in fact, as many permutations between six strings and four plucking fingers as

you would like to use. Here,as examples, are a few basic ones on the open strings.

Arpeggi as a general rule must sound fluent and facile. The guitarist would be

more than delighted if the ‘core’ of the arpeggio fell on adjacent strings, thus en-

abling him to ‘throw it off ’ and concentrate on other things, particularly if

melodic interest is also involved, as in example 9.

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Example 9

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Example 8

a) b) c) d)

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Example 7

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In determining the form of an arpeggio, it is worth while to note that the right-

hand thumb generally controls the fourth, fifth and sixth strings, and the re-

maining three fingers the third, second and first strings respectively. This ex-

plains why there is often a gap of one or two strings between the tenor and bass

notes of a guitar arpeggio, because the thumb has greater manœuvrability than

the fingers and is physically more independent. Occasionally, however, it is nec-

essary for the fingers to work in conjunction with the thumb on the bass strings,

as, for example, in these arpeggio figures which require such rapidity over all six strings that the thumb would fail to cope over its bass territory.

Another delightful technique on the guitar is the tremolo. This eff ect should be

used very sparingly, and I would advise composers to limit their use of it to ex-

tended compositions such as a sonata, suite, or concerto, where it can eff ectively

be used to give textural variety, when all the other ‘stops’ have been pulled! Here

are two examples:

In the first example, the melodic interest is in the tremolo itself while the thumb

plucks a simple accompaniment underneath it.When played at a reasonably fast

speed, it can achieve a highly sustained musical line. The second example, with

the tune in the bass register, is rather unusual in guitar composition, but can

nevertheless be most eff ective.

harmonics on the guitar never cease to intrigue both composer and perfor-

mer. They can be either ‘natural’ or ‘artificial’. The most successful sounds are

the open ‘natural’ harmonics playable on every string at the octave (12th fret),

the fifth above (7th fret), the octave above (5th fret), and the tenth above (4th

fret). (This last harmonic can also be found on the 9th fret.) Other harmonicsof higher partials do exist,but fail to resonate sufficiently to cover the actual per-

cussive noise made when plucking the string. A very exciting sound is obtained

by the chordal treatment of harmonics. This, of course, can be successful only if

the left hand can stretch to the harmonics desired. Care and taste should be ex-

ercised when constructing chords in this manner, as fussiness can often occur,

easily disrupting the flow of a composition.

Artificial harmonics can be sounded on any required note and a whole phrase

can sometimes be played with this type of harmonic. Personally, I find the sound

rather thin in comparison with the natural kind, but of course this can vary with

the characteristics of diff

erent guitars. When indicating harmonics, it is advis-able to write the open string with the fret position above it, thus:


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Example 10

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Example 11

a) b)

a) b)

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Another interestingtone colour is the pizzicato note,plucked by thethumb whilst

the palm of the right hand is clamped down on the strings so as to produce a

muffled eff ect not unlike the sound made by the ‘harp stop’on the harpsichord.This is particularly eff ective in phrases of single notes in the bass register, or in

two- and three-note chords in the upper register of the instrument. The sound

is curiously pathetic and humorous! – but nevertheless quite wholesome.

In concluding,I would like to mention oneother characteristicof guitarplay-

ing, known as the ‘slide’ or portamento. Although this technique is often abused

by instrumentalists, it can, whenperformedforsincere artistic ends,create a feel-

ing of pathos and emotional intensity.

I sincerely hope that this short essay on writing for the guitar has not given

the impression that the difficulties are insuperable.Falla wrote:‘Parmi les instru-

ments à corde avec manche, la guitare est le plus complet et le plus riche d’après

ses possibilités harmoniques et polyphoniques.’ May this encourage composers

to create a literature for an instrument that has been unduly neglected.

note

The following are well worth studying:

Bach: Lute works (Zimmerman)

Villa-Lobos: Douze études pour guitare (Max Eschig), Cinq préludes pour guitare (Max Eschig)

Falla: Homenaje ‘le tombeau de Claude Debussy’ (Chester)

Castelnuovo-Tedesco: Sonata (Schott)

Fernando Sor: 25 Studies (Chester)

8 julian bream

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·

XII

Example 12

[‘Of all the fretted and bowed string’

instruments, the guitar is the richest and’most complete in its harmonic and’

contrapuntal possibilities.’]

[Works subsequently commissioned and

edited by Julian Bream have tended to

show not the open string, but the note

desired with a diamond-shaped notehead,

the notation being the same for natural

and artificial harmonics. See for example

Benjamin Britten, Nocturnal after John

Dowland , op. 70 (London: Faber, 1965),or

Hans Werner Henze, Royal Winter Music: first sonata on Shakespearean characters

(Mainz: Schott, 1976).– Editor ]

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Mi g none,Fernandez,Guarnieri

Braz ilian guitar music a er Vi a-Lobos

f a b i o z a n o n

introduction

The guitar works of Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887–1959) certainly count among the

most performed of the twentieth-century repertoire. Of all composers who

were initially persuaded to write for the instrument by Andrés Segovia – and

whose music found a way into his repertoire – the Brazilian is probably the only

one who tried to create an individual language for the instrument, one which is

(at least in some of the Twelve Studies and the Guitar Concerto) informed by an

enlarged palette of harmonic possibilities and a commitment to innovation in

the musical discourse, inspired by an insider’s knowledge of the fingerboard.

Some writers would go so far as to say that the Twelve Studies of 1928–9 are a

genuine watershed in the history of guitar writing, a referential work in which

an established composer of symphonic music managed to elaborate a specifi-

cally guitar-oriented language, taking as a point of departure the factual possi-bilities of the instrument in order to devise a unique and untranslatable harmo-

nic, melodic, figurational and developmental style. Even though Segovia shied

away from placing Villa-Lobos’s works at the centre of his repertoire – he per-

formed only Studies 1, 7 and 8 and Preludes 1 and 3 with any regularity, and the

Guitar Concerto only at its premiere – subsequent generations of players have

embraced all of his works. The relative accessibility of the Preludes and the Suite

populaire, and the maximised eff ect of guitaristic commonplaces in the Studies,

have made them extraordinarily popular with students and amateur players.

They have also become – with various degrees of artistic success – composi-

tional models for the more recent and widespread phenomenon of the semi-

amateur guitarist-composer.Over the last twenty years or so, some items of twentieth-century Brazilian

popular music have entered the repertoire of classical guitarists as well. This is

not surprising if we consider that the guitar is the instrumental basis of most

Brazilian folkloric and popular urban musical manifestations, and that many of

the players and composers who work in that sphere also have a classical train-

ing. Many of these musicians will readily invoke the name of Villa-Lobos as an

inspiration, on the grounds that the great composer used the guitar as a private

instrument, one which he would take up in order to share experiences with mu-

sicians from the popular realms – most notably the choros players who indeed

played a significant part in his musical upbringing.

9

The solo guitar works of Villa-Lobos are

all published by Max Eschig (Paris):

Suite populaire brésilienne (1908–1923)

Chôros nº 1 (1920)

12 études (1928–9)

5 préludes (1940)

Concerto pour guitare et petit orchestre

(1951)

Copyright © 2003 by Fabio Zanon

:

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The overwhelming presence of a composer of Villa-Lobos’s standard in Bra-

zilian musical life might lead one to assume that younger generations of clas-

sical composers, inspired by the international acceptance of his guitar works,

would also embrace, during the last fifty years or so, the cause of the guitar

repertoire and provide the instrument with a large and meritorious body of

works for the instrument. The assumption is right to a certain extent. The gen-

eration of nationalist composers which succeeded Villa-Lobos has endowed the

instrument with works of lasting importance and is the subject of this article.Younger composers have also frequently visited the guitar, and a list of compo-

sitions can be found at the end of this article.

Nevertheless, a superficial examination of guitar recital programmes around

the world is discouraging. In the orchestral and chamber fields, none of these

composers has so far enjoyed the international exposure of Villa-Lobos. The ab-

sence of Brazilian classical composers of any standing in the repertoire of estab-

lished and amateur players alike is almost total. Brazilian guitarists of interna-

tional prominence tend either to create a repertoire of their own, consisting of

commissioned new music, or to rearrange and dress up some of the best items

of the popular tradition for wider consumption as a cross-over. Symphonic,

opera, chamber and piano series around the world also rarely bring any Brazil-

ian music at all into their programmes, with the exception of a few works of

Villa-Lobos.

One might conclude, then, that either Villa-Lobos’s legacy was not sufficient

to let a culture of serious guitar composition flourish, or that his was an excep-

tional case, an isolated surge of creative power in an otherwise non-existent cul-

ture for classical music.A superficial evaluation might lead one to conclude that

the focus of composition – and of guitar composition – moved north to other

countries, and that Villa-Lobos’s example is to be seen at its best in the works of

composers like the Venezuelan Lauro or the Cuban Brouwer.

None of this is quite the case. International criticism and musicology hasgranted little attention to the production of Brazilian classical music after Villa-

Lobos. There are many reasons for that, some of them of an artistic, some of a

sociological, historical and geo-political nature.

In fact, the three most important Brazilian composers of the generation fol-

lowing Villa-Lobos – Francisco Mignone (1897–1986), Oscar Lorenzo Fernandez

(1897–1948) and Camargo Guarnieri (1907–1993), all of them established com-

posers with a large catalogue of symphonic and chamber music – have left gui-

tar works of great quality. In the case of Mignone, this production rivals Villa-

Lobos’s own in number of works and standard of craftsmanship. If one prefers

to accept the often-repeated motto about the guitar having a precarious reper-

toire, an explanation for the disappointing international career of Mignone andGuarnieri as guitar composers is even more elusive. The purpose of this article

is to bring attention to the guitar output of the second generation of Brazilian

nationalist composers and to investigate the reasons for their restricted dissem-

ination among guitar students and professionals. It will also include a shortlist

of the major Brazilian compositions of the last fifty years or so which I consider

worthy of wider dissemination.

In such a relatively young country as Brazil, questions of national identity

have always been at the core of artistic creation. Thus, an overview of the history

of nationalism in Brazilian music is our point of departure.

10 fabio zanon

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brazilian nationalism

Chopin and Liszt, eastern European composers, were probably the first to bring

to their work a consistent exploration of specifically national features in early

Romanticism, but, after the revolution year of 1848, rapid political changes and

the ensuing need to define national values put intense pressure on composers

of the second Romantic generation. ‘Classical’ music, which is in essence an in-

ternational style,can trace its origins back to the ecclesiastical and courtly musicof a handful of Central European countries. Slavonic, Scandinavian and Iberian

composers, following the example of their literary forerunners, brought to the

centre of their creative methods the search for a vernacular that would ideally

express both the consecrated classical forms and the specificity of their respec-

tive national characters.

It follows naturally that the Americas and other ex-colonies which were large

and rich enough to have a classical music culture would tread, after a consider-

able gap, the same path. But that is not necessarily the case, because the mecha-

nism of the creative mind in a colonised environment is not the same. Whereas

countries such as Russia, Poland or Bohemia have had a continuous tradition of

folk and religious music for centuries – a tradition which is concomitant with

the formation of the international style in classical music – the process of colo-

nisation has left the scar of a split identity. The artist of a colonised mentality is

forever trying to come to terms with the fact that most tools of the trade are im-

ported, and that the sense of collective identity is not so clear cut: the societies

that once populated that particular environment either have been displaced or

have disappeared. These scars are still present today, not only in artistic realms

but also in the very constitution of society: the questionable attitude towards

technological and global issues and the several levels of ethnic and social con-

flict all bear witness to this fact. It is also important to remark that there is a

strong discrepancy between the ways this process of colonisation took in Northand South America.

The commonly encountered definition of Brazilian society as a confluence of

European, black African and native Indian cultures seems to imply that these

three branches had all the same relative cultural weight; in fact, native Indian

elements played a very modest role in the forging of a characteristically Brazil-

ian artistic idiom. From the very beginning of the sixteenth century, Jesuit mis-

sionaries explored their musical inclinations as a strong tool for conversion. If

at the beginning some of the elements of plainchant may have been ignored and

Christian texts adapted to Indian melodies, by the end of that century Indian

culture had already capsized under the powerful apparatus of catechism, a pro-cess often called deculturation: Indian children were already performing Christ-

ian plays, playing the flute, violin and even harpsichord, and being graduated as

‘Masters of Arts’ in the first capital, Salvador in Bahia, where they were entitled

to play several instruments and organise choral singing. Cultural (and physical)

survival was a hard task for those Indian groups who refused to submit to the

Portuguese; they tended to run away, deeper and deeper into the hinterland, and

lose much of their vitality as the groups became smaller and less powerful. Two

and a half centuries later, the Rousseau-tinged myth of the savage as an icon of

purity and virtue impregnated the imagination of Romantic writers, and the

mignone, fernandez, guarnieri 11

The Colonial Period

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first steps in the affirmation of a Brazilian national cultural identity adopted the

‘good savage’ as the symbolic Brazilian individual, notwithstanding the small-

ness of the Indians’ actual share in their own cultural profile. Although there is

no music surviving from the first decades of colonisation, one can safely assume

that it was not of the same outstanding level as that being performed in Mexico

or Lima: conversion of such sophisticated civilisations as the Aztecs and Incas

required superior eff orts of artistic persuasion.

Brazilian music in the Colonial period (which ended with the flight of theRoyal family from Portugal to Rio de Janeiro in 1808) was essentially Portu-

guese, in spite of the fact that it was composed and performed almost exclusively

by black and mulato (mixed white and black race) people. To this day, this in-

teraction is one of the decisive factors in the establishment of a specifically

Brazilian idiom. Poet, writer and musicologist Mário de Andrade said that ‘the

Portuguese crystallised our harmonic tonality, gave us the strophic squareness –

probably the syncopation as well, which we have taken charge of developing, in

contact with the rhythmic fidgetry of the African’.

It must be added that this symbiosis between elements of African music and

the overwhelming power of European culture was very slow and almost imper-

ceptible at the beginning. It was taken for granted that the status quo could only

be maintained if the culture of enslaved black people was treated with con-

tempt. The progressive social ascent of mulatos did nothing to benefit the ac-

ceptance of African cultural elements. Quite the contrary: in their anxiety to be-

long to the mainstream of society, free people of mixed race tried to negate any

feature that could betray their origins. This behaviour is quite understandable

and still present not only in Brazil but also in the Andinian countries, where

mestizos from the town tend to reject the rural traditions.

There are records of Portuguese sacred music and Italian opera being per-

formed in the major towns of Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Paraná in the south

and Pernambuco, Bahia, Maranhão and Pará in the north of the country already in the sixteenth century. What is so far the first important manuscript by a Bra-

zilian composer is a Recitativo e aria by Caetano Mello Jesus, dated 1759, from

Salvador, but the first consistent movement of Brazilian musicians and compo-

sers happened in the state of Minas Gerais in the last decades of the eighteenth

century. Minas Gerais had quickly become one of the wealthiest and most en-

lightened parts of the country, thanks to its seemingly never-ending sources of

gold and precious stones. Splendid Baroque churches were erected in its major

towns, and at one time over a thousand musicians were working in a handful

of neighbouring towns. At first these composers were imported from Bahia or

Pernambuco, but local talent quickly flourished and the first Brazilian com-

posers who can boast a corpus of works are Emerico Lobo de Mesquita (1746–1805), Francisco Gomes da Rocha (?–1808) and Manuel Dias de Oliveira (1745–

1813), among others whose surviving work is not so extended. All these com-

posers, like most players and choir and orchestra directors of the period, were

probably of black or mulato origin. Practically the totality of this music is com-

posed for the church, and characteristically Brazilian traces are non-existent.

The individual features that can be perceived are of an utterly practical nature –

harmonic complexity is usually proportional to the category of musicians avail-

able at a certain church; the choices of instruments for certain scores might

seem unusual, but probably owed as much to the current availability of instru-

ments and capable players. So strongly attached was this music to the Baroque

12 fabio zanon

Mário de Andrade, Música, doce música

(São Paulo: Livraria Martins, 1963),p 13.

In all quotations, translations from the

Portuguese are my own.

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End of the Colonial Period:

Nunes Garcia, da Silva, Gomes

churches of Minas Gerais that, by association, it has been called ‘Brazilian

Baroque’ – a completely misleading label. This tentative beginning of a Brazil-

ian music history is much more akin to the early classical style of a Johann

Christian Bach, Pergolesi or a young Haydn, whose music was certainly im-

ported by the Church during the period.

The arrival of the Portuguese Royal family in 1808 – they were running away

from the Napoleonic invasions – shifted the cultural focus back again to Rio deJaneiro. It was a brief period of thirteen years, but a decisive one for the coun-

try, as the court was avid for entertainment of every nature. Opera composers

were brought from Portugal and a Royal Chapel was reorganised. This sudden

surge of activity revealed the uncommon talent of Father José Maurício Nunes

Garcia (1767–1830), another mulato who can safely be called the first major Bra-

zilian composer. Author of a wide variety of religious works and of a method for

pianoforte, his compositions display a detailed knowledge of Haydn; his masses

and especially his Requiem make a good showing alongside the average sacred

music composed in Europe at the time. Once again there is the individuality of

a gifted composer but no trace of a national style.

Independence was declared in 1822, and the return of the Royal Family to

Portugal meant a pronounced scaling down of resources for the performing

arts. Nevertheless, the newly crowned Emperor, Pedro I, was a music enthusiast

and a composer himself, and under his aegis Francisco Manuel da Silva (1785–

1865), a former pupil of Nunes Garcia and the author of the National Anthem,

founded the National Conservatory. The return of Pedro I to Portugal cast a

shadow over this musical activity but there was still an extraordinary interest in

Italian opera, which must be regarded as a second important European influ-

ence towards the formulation of a Brazilian national style. The bel canto style of

Rossini and Bellini was adopted by composers of light and popular songs, and

the arias performed at social functions in the houses of well-to-do people be-came the basis for the formation of the Brazilian serenade style, the modinha,

which was to have a very important role in the works of Villa-Lobos and

Mignone decades later.

The reign of Pedro II marked an unusual flourishing of Brazilian culture. A

genuine erudite himself, an expert in linguistics, architecture and environmen-

tal issues, and admirer of poetry and literature, he was also very musical. Wag-

ner was one of his passions: he was present at the opening of the Bayreuth festi-

val and even invited Wagner to make a base for his activities in Rio de Janeiro.

The support he gave to the creation of a national press, to the translation and

publication of books, to scientific research, etc, is inestimable, but music will al-

ways be grateful to him for promoting Carlos Gomes (1836–1896), another com-poser of vaguely mulato origin and possibly the major opera composer of the

Americas. Opera in Brazil at the time, in spite of a few attempts to create opera

in the vernacular, meant Italian opera. Gomes, coming from a background as

a bandmaster, had already composed works of major consequence when he was

sent with a scholarship to Milan. There he met with great success: his opera Il

guarany was performed in every major opera house in the world. As his style

became more sophisticated, however, his initial success declined. A few years

after his death he was already forgotten except for a few extroverted arias. With

the hindsight of a century, one could today safely say that Gomes is the natural

link between Verdi’s mature style (Verdi was a great admirer of Gomes) and the


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The Abolition:

birth of a popular style:

young Puccini. Fashion in opera operates in mysterious ways, but revivals of

Gomes’s operas have kept the taste of isolated attempts – in spite of the splen-

did music and superior treatment of the voice; the less successful dramatic con-

struction might be the reason.

But there is one important feature in Gomes’s otherwise purely Italian style.

There is a Brazilian national theme in at least two of his operas: the successful

Il guarany (The Guarani), based on the romantic novel by Alencar, in which the

main character is a Guarani Indian; and the most artistic, Lo schiavo (The Slave).It might seem a timid start, but this would prove to be the slit through which

subsequent composers would peep. Gomes also composed popular songs at the

beginning of his career, some of which are still performed; even though he

was not a major agent in the development of national song, they are character-

istic of their times and can already be classified as genuinely Brazilian modinhas

and lundus.

The abolition of slavery finally came in 1888 and the fall of the monarchic sys-

tem could only follow suit in 1889, when the Republic was proclaimed and

Pedro II and his family were sent to exile in France. These are two very impor-

tant events which exposed an undercurrent that had been present already in the

1870s. The presence of European musicians in Rio de Janeiro had encouraged

the wealthy society to adopt European dances – waltzes, schottisches, polkas, etc

– as their favourite light entertainment. Professional musicians, the majority of

whom, as has already been said, were of black origin, had the benefit of an in-

sider’s knowledge of the formal requirements of European dance music. With

the sudden freedom of expression allowed by the Abolition of 1888, these musi-

cians were legally allowed to gather for their own pleasure and to adopt musical

elements of African origin for their interpretation – a distinctive way of avoid-

ing the strong part of the beat, an incorporation of choreographic elements, the

use of melodic repetition to achieve a certain periodic recurrence of rhythmicfeatures in the melody. This is the first real division between the activity of a

‘classical’ composer and the birth of a ‘popular’ musical expression. It marked

the gradual replacement of the old-fashioned vocal style of the modinha with

the more expansive seresta, and the birth of the choro as the dominant urban in-

strumental dance form.

This new kind of expression was solemnly ignored by a few composers of an

exclusively European education – some of them quite extraordinary composers

like Henrique Oswald (1852–1931) or Leopoldo Miguéz (1850–1902) – but started

to attract the attention of a few others, composers of a very high calibre such

as Alexandre Levy (1864–1892) and Alberto Nepomuceno (1864–1920). Perhaps

Nepomuceno will be best remembered for his splendid, if rather Germanic,Symphony, but following the example of other minor composers he wrote in

1891 his Série brasileira, a work that suff ers from the composer’s lack of experi-

ence but is the first symphonic piece whose main thematic material is derived

from Brazilian folklore. He was also a leader in the maintenance of musical ed-

ucation of high quality and a champion of the use of Portuguese as the language

for national song. Nepomuceno is a transitional composer in many ways: be-

tween the internationalism of his education and the strong impulse towards

a music of national character (probably prompted by his close relationship with

Edvard Grieg); between the conventionally scholastic and the innovative and

personal; between the symphonism of the nineteenth century and the new ne-cessities of the twentieth; between the old monarchic order and the Republic.

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Reception

whole world after the Second War (most notably in the usa), did the most for

the acknowledgement of the cultural role of aboriginal and black African el-

ements. For the obtuse, once-aristocratic, coff ee and industrial elites of Rio de

Janeiro and São Paulo, the niche that this music gained in Paris was testimony

to its artistic value; the enormous curiosity for the way the lower classes lived

and entertained themselves overtook any aristocratic prurience.

Another important contribution made by Villa-Lobos’s astonishing intu-

ition and creative power (and also by Mário de Andrade’s thoroughness as amusicologist) was a second discovery of Brazil, one that extended beyond the

urban realms of the major southern towns like Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.

Precarious transport and means of communication meant that the vast exten-

sions of land of the northern coast, Amazon and far south were a closed book.

Folklore in these regions was and is extraordinarily complex and unexpected,

but the artistic circles in the capital could only suspect that. Villa-Lobos and

Andrade mapped out, the former with his vast production, the latter in his mu-

sicological and literary writings, the vehement presence of Indian, Hispanic and

African elements in these local cultures, many of which could be traced back al-

most intact to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This proved to be a tre-

mendous encouragement for the creation of not only a national literary culture,

but a regional one as well.

Curiously the generation of composers who most benefited from this wider

common ground came from immigrant families who had only recently arrived

in Brazil: Mignone, Guarnieri, Gnatalli and Santoro came from an Italian back-

ground, and Fernandez from a Spanish one.

Critical and academic reception has undergone dramatic swings in the last

eighty years or so. A first reactionary generation of critics would simply dismiss

Villa-Lobos as savage and incompetent: Oscar Guanabarino, the implacable

critic in Rio de Janeiro, would go so far as to classify all folkloric culture as a cor-ruption and simplification of classical models and unworthy of serious atten-

tion. Andrade, an active critic himself, and scores of other writers schooled

under his wing, would develop a school of criticism informed by a Marxist view

which would exclude any aesthetic possibilities outside the sphere of national-

ism. Andrade’s own assessment synthesises this line of aesthetic thought:

If a Brazilian artist feels within himself the strength of a genius

like Beethoven or Dante, it is obvious he must write national music.

Because as a genius he will certainly know how to find the essential

elements of nationality. He will have, therefore, an enormous social

value…And if the artist belongs to the ninety-nine per cent recog-nised not to be a genius, then this is an even stronger reason to make

national art. Because attaching himself to the Italian or French

school he will be only another one in the oven, where in the be-

ginner’s school he will be meritorious and necessary…The one who

makes international or foreign art, if he is not a genius, is useless, nil.

This premise leads to the logical conclusion that composers like Nunes Garcia

or Carlos Gomes had prompted little repercussion at international level for the

simple reason that they had not imprinted national values in their music and

16 fabio zanon

Mário de Andrade,

Ensaio sobre a música brasileira

(São Paulo: Livraria Martins, 1928), p 19.

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Music & Politics

would always be second-raters in a culture that had never belonged to them in

the first place, which is a scandalously unfair statement.

Great hope was deposited on the shoulders of the second generation of na-

tionalist composers. Mignone, Fernandez and Guarnieri, as the leading lights of

this nationalistic upsurge, were frequently cast in the role of cultural ambassa-

dors to Europe and North America. Their failure to find a niche in the interna-

tional repertoire coincided with a second wave of European immigrants, who

arrived in Brazil around the time of the Second War. Among them was the in-telligent and persuasive German composer and theorist H.J. Koellreutter, who

instructed generations of Brazilian composers, many of whom had at first em-

braced nationalist ideals, in the art of the Second Viennese School. The ensuing

discussion between those faithful to Andrade’s ideas and a new wave of interna-

tional avant-garde was certainly beneficial to the aesthetic formation of com-

posers, but it was at the same time harmful for the musical institutions which

were still in a formative period. Such an enormously popular essayist as the Ar-

gentine Juan Carlos Paz affirms that

the formulation, in the Americas, of a concrete musical reality reveals

the delay that logically must exist…[it is] manifested especially in

the diverse and limited localisms within which it has locked itself…

A simple comparison of art music produced in Latin America with

the one developed under similar conditions in Europe…reveals the

causes of its retard – spiritual, technical, speculative and aesthetic –

and the lack of synchronicity.

This statement, obviously aimed at the various nationalisms still in vogue in the

sixties, takes into account neither the abject lack of institutional interest and

technological and factual support, nor the precarious state of general and mu-

sical education in the continent as a whole, which latter also prevents the ap-pearance of a consistent production of an avant-garde which is synchronically

attached to European and North American production.

The ensuing development of composition and of musical institutions in

Brazil has followed, in very general lines, that of other countries, especially the

United States. Nationalists and internationalists feuded for government subsidy

along with command of concert societies and newly created music departments

at major universities. General lack of public and critical interest in the more for-

bidding experiments, and failure to achieve any degree of international recogni-

tion, impelled younger composers towards a purely academic path, where they

could work under the protective shield of research grants and a monthly wage,

and remain oblivious to the reality of a professional composer who has to gethis works published and performed.

Political contingencies have also played an important part in the present config-

uration of musical life in Brazil and its perception abroad. The military coup

of 1964, followed by a considerable repression of public expression from 1968 to

1980, required a definite political position from all sectors of society, and classi-

cal composers were no exception. Composers of a governmentalist inclination

failed to persuade the military commanders of the need for a sustained devel-

opment of classical music and were later punished by the opinion of the cultural


Juan Carlos Paz, Introducción a la música

de nuestro tiempo (Buenos Aires: Editorial

Sudamericana, 1971); translated into Por-

tuguese by Diva Ribeiro de Toledo Piza as

Introducão à música de nosso tempo (São

Paulo: Livraria Duas Cidades, 1977), p 314.

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Future Prospects

establishment for their opportunistic attachment, while composers in the op-

position tendedto retreat to therelative security of universityposts which are, in

eff ect, public servant jobs. Their participation in this turbulent period of strug-

gle for the right of expression and a breach in the prevailing political attitude

was insignificant.

This difficult phase coincided with the gradual but ultimately all-powerful

ascension of pop music as the sole subject of interest for the mass media. From

a purely technical and aesthetic point of view, Brazilian popular music is of a generally higher musical and literary interest than, say, rock-and-roll. Bossa-

nova represented the current aspirations to a modern society, and the huge fes-

tivals in the sixties and seventies brought to the fore a generation of educated

upper-middle-class singer-songwriters, who could envelop their protest songs

in a subtle involocrum of contemporary poetry and eclectic nationalist music.

This led many of them to temporary exile, and their status as manipulators of

public opinion grew exponentially after their irrefutable role in the gradual po-

litical opening in the late seventies and early eighties.A whole generation of new

journalists, but also of academic researchers, displaced their focus of interest

from a classical music that was being composed just for itself to a cultural expe-

rience of major sociological relevance. mpb ( Música popular brasileira) became

an emblem of a puissant cultural and social movement with the capacity to en-

gage vast numbers of people in social causes – a role that had been fulfilled by

Villa-Lobos and his vast ‘patriotic concerts’ fifty years earlier. In a short period

of twenty years, classical composers were excluded from the major cultural de-

cisions and mpb, frequently marketed as ‘Brazilian jazz’, became the favoured

cultural export. It is no accident that singer-songwriter Gilberto Gil was chosen

for the Ministry of Culture at the beginning of 2003 – even long established lit-

erary intellectuals were neglected in the choice of this important position.

Political events since 1964 have been of incalculable importance for the cur-

rent development of Brazilianmusical aff airs and for its lack of inception in mu-sical circles abroad. Composers of earlier nationalist schools, such as Mignone,

Guarnieri and Villa-Lobos himself, have been forgotten by major institutions

like symphony orchestras and opera houses for their excess of local colour and

assumed lack of relevance within an international cultural network. Progressive

composers who came to the fore from the 1960s onwards lack the logistic sup-

port to develop a language and to produce a corpus of works that might win

them entry into the international circuit of contemporary music. And possibly

above all, interest in the major composers of Latin America is generally per-

ceived to be so tightly bound to sociological and political circumstances that the

European audiences would probably not be as sympathetic to a conflict of cul-

tural identity that does not belong to them.

Aesthetic judgement of music of a national character has its own problems. The

first wave of romantic nationalism was easily digested by the philharmonic pub-

lic because the classical essence of its construction was never doubted: Dvořák,

Grieg, Rimsky-Korsakov, Sibelius and many others were still composing coher-

ent symphonic and operatic designs and national features acted almost exclu-

sively as local colour. Whenever folkloric elements became determinant in the

elaboration of a musical language,as in Mussorgsky andJanáček, theacceptance

was much slower – it requires a leap of faith on the listener’s part, and a keen-

ness to educate oneself to a culture that is not as central to the understanding

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of a continuous line of classical development as, say, Bruckner and Mahler are.

Colonised cultures, moreover, as has already been explained, keep the search for

a sharper musical fingerprint at the core of their psychological configuration, a

type of personal conflict that is not shared by most developed nations.

Nevertheless, a recent upsurge of international interest in the music of com-

posers such as Villa-Lobos and Ginastera might mean that this state of aff airs is

walking towards a turning point. International recording companies have kept

in their catalogues complete recordings of all the major cycles by Villa-Lobos,and critical reception has been surprisingly good. Recent developments in the

musical life in Brazil – stabilisation of several concert series in all major capitals,

renovation and general improvement of technical standards of the major sym-

phonic orchestras, solidification of the international careers of performers on

various instruments, renewed interest in the research of three hundred years of

music history as a consequence of a general rise in academic standards at the

universities – these have all made a contribution in prompting the public to take

pains to investigate the unknown heritage of national classical music.

An unbiased assessment of this heritage is bound, in my opinion, to lead to

a progressive increase in international standing for the operas of Carlos Gomes

and for the composers belonging to the second nationalist generation. Compo-

sers of such superlative interest as Guarnieri, Mignone and Fernandez cannot

remain forgotten when the ground is so favourable for a gradual enlargement

of the classical music canon in cultural centres which are now supposed to en-

courage multiculturalism.

francisco mignone (1897–1986)

‘Mignone is possibly the most complete musician we have ever had.’ A brief de-

scription of the varied activities Mignone performed in the musical life of Brazilis enough to support a statement that otherwise might seem rather facile. On

top of an extensive production of symphonic, chamber, vocal and piano music,

he excelled also as a conductor, pianist, writer and teacher. His numerous collec-

tions of waltzes – for the piano, bassoon and guitar – are possibly his best-loved

works in Brazil, but there are two areas where his reputation seems to rest more

firmly: art song, a genre in which his popularity amongst Brazilian composers

is unchallenged, and ballets and symphonic pieces, where the contribution of

African elements to Brazilian music is best expressed. This might seem rather

surprising, coming from a son of Italian immigrants who was born in a town of

a decidedly Italian character (São Paulo), and whose upbringing and technical

preparation were uncannily Italian and French. Influenced by his father, a pro-fessional flautist, Mignone learned both the flute and the piano. At the age of

twenty-three he went to Milan, where he completed his studies with Vincenzo

Ferroni, a student of Massenet who applied French methods of teaching. After

spending two years in Spain, he returned to Brazil for good in 1929 and lived in

Rio de Janeiro, where he became the director of the National Institute of Music

and was active in musical life at large until his death in 1986.

He first came to public attention in 1923, when Richard Strauss, touring

South America as conductor of the Vienna Philharmonic, included Congada, an

excerpt from Mignone’s opera O contratador de diamantes, in his programmes.

In the late twenties, when his technical training had already reached a mature


Vasco Mariz, Francisco Mignone, o homem

e a obra ( Rio de Janeiro: funarte-

eduerj, 1997).

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stage, he increased contact with Mário de Andrade, and that led to a succession

of major orchestral works of Afro-Brazilian inspiration: Maracatu de chico rei,

Batucajé , Babaloxá, Quadros amazônicos, Iara and Festa das igrejas (of which

only the first and last have so far been recorded) consolidated his reputation and

won him regular invitations to conduct his works in Europe and North Amer-

ica. Arturo Toscanini conducted Festa das igrejas quite frequently and recorded

it with his nbc orchestra.

In the late forties Mignone underwent a long period of infirmity and of aes-thetic crisis, vividly discussed in the book A parte do anjo. Very few composers

have managed to face criticism so lucidly and justify their aesthetic choices with

such honesty: Mignone admitted to a certain artificiality in his first nationalist

phase and the irresistible pull of Italian traces in his cultural upbringing, which

led him to study, practise and later discard atonality and twelve-tone technique.

He came out of this crisis with renewed vigour, and to his late period belong a

series of large works for piano, several concertos, three string quartets and most

of his guitar works, not to mention another three operas.

He had already made some attempts at writing for the guitar in the forties

and fifties – some of them belonging to the realm of popular music and written

under a pseudonym – but Mignone’s meeting with the young guitarist Carlos

Barbosa Lima in 1970 (when the composer was already seventy-three) seems to

have been the catalysing factor for his interest in the instrument. In that year he

composed two large series of solo works, the Twelve Waltzes in all minor keys,

dedicated to Isaías Savio,and the Twelve Studies, dedicated to Barbosa Lima. Six

years later he would write his Guitar Concerto, which was premiered in the usa

but has remained unpublished and little performed. In this essay we shall con-

centrate on the two major sets of solo works.

Any approach to Mignone has to come to terms with the fact that he is a tonal

composer living in a decidedly non-tonal period of the twentieth century. In a

letter written in 1980, he says that

at my respectable age I can assert that I am the master, by right and

fact, of all the processes of composition and decomposition in use

today and tomorrow…I feel capable of writing without any trouble

a piece in C major, as well as of elaborating concepts of traditional,

impressionistic, expressionistic, dodecaphonic, serial, chromatic,

atonal, bitonal, polytonal music, and – who knows? – if it crosses my

mind, avant-garde with concrete and electronic touches. Anything

can be done in art, as long as the work can bring a message of beauty

and leave in the listener a desire to hear the work again.

Of course the tone of this letter is jocose, but it testifies to the fact that he had

come to terms with his strengths and limitations. Mignone’s work is strong in

craftsmanship, harmonic invention and instrumental colour; it is not music of

concept, it is music made by a professional craftsman. Many times I have com-

pared him to Rimsky-Korsakov, a comparison which many people might find

derogatory – in fact, it is an acknowledgement that a composer who nurtures

preoccupations of national identity, local colour and instrumental realisation is

also entitled to create work of real permanence, even though other aspects of

musical language might at first seem more crucial. In other words, if the work is

not profound or innovative that doesn’t necessarily mean it is empty. In the case

20 fabio zanon

Francisco Mignone, A parte do anjo:

autocrítica de um cinqüentenário (São

Paulo: Editora Mangione, 1947).

Vasco Mariz, História da música no Brasil

(Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, 5th edn,

2000), p 240.

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12 Waltzes

of Mignone, the psychological complexity of his works is considerable, despite

the fact that he chose not to embrace the conflicts inherent in the various kinds

of departure from tonality.

The Twelve Waltzes (valsas) of 1970 (published in Brazil in the same year by

Irmãos Vitale), in all minor keys, explore one of Mignone’s passions. They are

music of nostalgia – of longing for a lost youth, for the serenades he had played

with choro musicians in São Paulo during the 1910s, for a certain tenderness of everyday life which had been lost during the ensuing decades. They are, for the

most part, waltzes of a dark, bitter and afflicted tone, a character which is en-

hanced by the relative discomfort of certain keys like A or E minor.

As a cycle, variety might have been compromised by a certain sameness of

expression derived from the absence of major keys. Nevertheless, as one can al-

ready perceive in his Valsas de esquina for piano of 1938–42, Mignone works very

carefully on details of expression, richness of texture and harmonic ambiguity.

The formal plan, still derived from the regular a b a with coda of the traditional

urban waltz (where b is a contrasting section in major key), is frequently bent

for expressive purposes. Thus, one can find exceptions to the model already in

Valsa nº 1 in C minor, where the first section is of a languid and nostalgic char-

acter, section b is also in C minor but much more volatile in expression, and the

coda is a spirited precipitato – an ingenious scheme also employed in Valsa nº 9

in A minor. Valsa nº 2 in C minor is a long descending chromatic theme with

a variation, followed by a shorter coda with variation, and Valsa nº 3 is a passa-

caglia. Valsas 4 in E minor, 5 in E minor and 8 in G minor follow the traditional

plan, but 6 in F minor and 7 in F minor are more concise – a theme repeated

with a variation and a short coda, in accordance with the stark and exhausted

character of these pieces. Valsa nº 10 in A minor is a prelude and toccata, where

an episode in A major has a strong feeling of the viola caipira, the Brazilian folk

instrument derived from the five-course Baroque guitar; Valsa nº 11 in B minorfollows the palindromic form of ab c b a, and the last, in B minor, utilises the

form of a Chopinesque study to highlight its cheerful and brilliant style.

One might think that the profusion of awkward flat keys would naturally

lend greater prominence to the pieces written in ‘guitaristic’keys such as E, A or

D minor. Quite the opposite: Mignone’s harmonic language, frequently explor-

ing chromatic embellishments, chromatic descending sequences, diminished

chords in various textural situations and ‘sighing’ suspensions, not to speak of a

very cunning control of part-writing within a restricted compass, manages to

avoid the disturbances provoked by the infrequent appearance of chords based

on open strings.Another characteristic feature of his harmonic style is the pref-

erence for tight chords and the free employment of inversions, maybe as a ves-tige of a chordal style suitable for bowed instruments.

One is tempted to say that a waltz is always a waltz, but diff erent nations have

underlined some aspects of this flexible dance form and imprinted it with what

can be called national characteristics. While the Viennese waltz has kept the

bouncing and gentle flow of the earlier ländler , French waltzes tend to be more

fluid and spry, Russian waltzes brighter and more athletic. Brazilian waltzes are

essentially serenade music, not necessarily intended for dance; they have incor-

porated the Portuguese feeling of nostalgia and the wide leaps borrowed from

Italian bel canto arias. Ornamental elaboration has, moreover, a strong leaning

towards chromaticism, as we can hear in many waltzes by Ernesto Nazareth (the


Francisco Mignone, 12 valsas [1970]

(Irmãos Vitale, 1970).

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12 Studies

one called Confidências is a remarkable example); descending sequences are a

constant, and the characteristic language of the flute, based upon short linking

passages of arpeggios and chromatic scales, is also a feature. This atmosphere, at

once tender, crisp and sorrowful, is perfectly conveyed by Mignone in all of his

twelve Valsas.

Written in a year when experimental music was at its height in Brazil – the

New Music Festival was founded in São Paulo around that time – these pieces,

withtheir decidedly conservative outlook andgenuine longingfor thepast, wereoverlooked by players. Professional Brazilian guitarists working in the seventies

were generally not attracted to this kind of latter-day appendix to nationalism,

and the works of Mignone and Guarnieri were already, at this time, being cham-

pioned by only a handful of interpreters on any instrument. A complete perfor-

mance of these waltzes was only carried out by Edelton Gloeden in 2002, as part

of his PhD dissertation on Francisco Mignone, and nowadays one can say that

they are in the process of finding a niche in the repertoire through the eff orts of

Gloeden and several of his students who have included some of them in their

programmes.

The Twelve Studies are also a late product of Mignone’s evident inclination for

a national language based on classic forms. Written in the space of a couple of

months, in the same year as the Valsas, they immediately entered the repertoire

of their dedicatee Carlos Barbosa Lima, who was by then already living in the

United States. They were published in 1973 (by the Columbia Music Company,

usa) and recorded on lp by the same guitarist a couple of years later. A com-

plete public performance had to wait until 2003 (at the Purcell Room, London;

myself as the guitarist). Some of these studies have graced guitar programmes

over theyears(n 2, 3, 5, 6 and 8 are themost popular),but they cannot remotely

be compared with Villa-Lobos’s set in terms of international penetration.

Barbosa Lima has told how he mentioned to Mignone that, apart from Villa-Lobos, he didn’t have any portentous works by Brazilian composers (there was,

in fact, Guerra-Peixe’s Sonata, another work in serious need of a revival, andone

certainly not well known at the time). Mignone’s response, in the form of an-

other set of twelve studies, makes a clear allusion, a tip of the hat, so to speak, to

theolder composer whom he admired unconditionally. In compositional terms,

though, they are utterly diff erent works, and in many ways Mignone’s are com-

plementary to Villa-Lobos’s set. Where Villa-Lobos wrote a set of concert stud-

ies following Chopin’s model, in which the deployment of patterns,textures and

technical figurations is paramount and, with a few exceptions, thematic devel-

opment tends to be relegated to a secondary level, Mignone’s collection is one of

transcendental studies in a Lisztian vein, better described as character pieces inwhich a dramatic discourse is informed by a more complex motivic fabric and

only occasionally coloured by specific technical problems. Their harmonic lan-

guage is also markedly diatonic in contrast to that of Villa-Lobos, who uses ele-

ments of chromaticism and bitonality according to the spirit of the time, tech-

niques which can be placed alongside similar experiments of his contemporary

Prokofiev.

If innovation was certainly notoneof Mignone’s preoccupations in thecom-

position of these works, precise craft was at the core of his approach. Study nº 1,

cantando, is emblematic of the procedures that are used in the following pieces.

It takes Allard’s Estudio brillante in the guitar version by Tárrega as its closest

22 fabio zanon

Francisco Mignone, 12 Studies [1970]

(Columbia Music Company, 1973).

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model, in which a nocturnal melody emerges from the undercurrent of a diff use

cloud of arpeggios.WhereAllard’s work,charming as it is,could hardly be called

a model of composition, since it does not manage to sustain thematic or har-

monic interest, Mignone writes a long melody of nostalgic character, in which

the occasional appearance of repeated notes lends a speech-like and intimate

quality to the proceedings; the harmonic plan, with its evident orientation to-

ward the tonal pillars of A minor, is imbued with considerable ambiguity by the

subtle deployment of secondary relations and chromatic movement in all parts.The rate of harmonic change is guided with absolute control – compressed at

the centre, progressively stretched at the ends of sections – and episodes in sev-

eral unrelated minor keys follow unselfconsciously in quick succession. The use

of the natural tuning of the guitar is most felicitous: the open basses E, A and D,

played simultaneously, are used as an aggregate alternately for chords of E, A or

D minor, or, now played individually, as minor second colouristic dissonances,

not unlike the ‘wrong-note’ acciaccaturas heard in Rodrigo’s guitar works.

Another strong feature of this study, one found in nearly every piece of the

cycle, is the inventivenessof texture anddetailed writingof expression.Mignone

commands with equal facility tight and wide chordal formations, with special

care for thetransitions;arpeggios nearlyalways bring some kind of thematic im-

plication through the inclusion of secondary part movements, usually off -beat

(a feature found frequently in the studies of Chopin and Liszt as well); despite

Mignone’s use of almost the entire compass of the guitar, one rarely feels strain

in the treatment of the upper register. Intelligent choices of register and texture,

combined with a careful notation of dynamic inflections, articulation, agogics

and tempo fluctuations, give to the discourse as a whole a certain naturalness of

flow, almost as though the interpreter could speak through the instrument.

Thenationalistic features which nurture these twelve studies canbe divided into

groups: Studies 1, 2, 5 and 7 belong to the realm of the modinhas and serestas orserenades. Given that he had already composed or was about to compose a cycle

of twelve waltzes, Mignone naturally avoided any reference to waltz movement

in these studies, andthese serenades refer to theolder strophic quaternary metre

of the modinhas, in which intense climaxes are reached through a careful plan-

ning of melodic peaks, and leaps of sixths, sevenths and octaves are usually led

to a feminine ending. The bass line, reminiscent of the guitar style employed by

choros players, tends to be agile and convoluted. Form and atmosphere in these

studies can be incredibly varied: Study nº 2 consists of two long melodies, one

placed in a straightforward way at either side of the other, which is varied and

rounded off with an arpeggiated bridge; nº 5 employs a strange, almost palin-

dromic, a b c c' b a' form, in which recurring motives are sometimes discardedon behalf of what might be called ‘stylistic assonance’: although there are no re-

curring motives, the three sections have similarities in rhythmic configuration

and melodic and harmonic style. Study nº 7, subtitled cantiga de ninar (‘cradle

song’), is an incredibly rich monothematic piece whose only feature of contrast

is the alternation of chromatic elements and counterpoint of a modal nature;

that this piece should be written in the ungrateful key of F minor, with a chro-

matic modulation to F minor as the most striking harmonic event, makes it all

the more interesting.

Studies 3, 6, 8 and 9 deploy Brazilian dance forms in a quite felicitous way.

Mignone’s watchmaker’s dexterity in finding the right voicing and subtlety of


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inflection, in an otherwise plain texture, serves this dance style admirably well.

Study nº 3, tempo de chorinho, is technically and psychologically the simplest of

all, but the inherently mischievous, playful character of the choro genre is con-

veyed through continuous and minute changes of tempo, inflection, articula-

tion and expression that can be quite hard to control in performance. S

guitar forum 2 (2004)

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