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’)
danilo.avila@gmail.com
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
. França 1949.
1
130The 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.
131Danilo 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 Heitor Côrrea de Azevedo as Brazilian delegate10.
Let us analyze Correio da Manhã’s coverage of this event. First, the
newspaper announces «Rimes for symphony orchestra and electronic tape» from
6
. Ibidem.
7
. Barros 2017.
8
. See Avila 2016; Kater 2001; Silva 2001.
9
. «Brazilian classical music, in the fifties, was hegemonically nationalist, centred in
Guarnieri’s ‘school of composition’, which the more evident orientation was Mario de Andrade’s
Essay about Brazilian music [1928]». Salles 2006.
10
. Week Programme 1961.
132The Internationalization of Brazilian Contemporary Music
the Belgian composer Henri Pousseur11. Four days later, a report in the cultural
supplement alerted: «Eleazar de Carvalho brought avant-garde music to Brazil».
According to Correio’s report, the Brazilian maestro was looking to bring «the
top three of avant-garde music»12 (Stockhausen, Cage, and Berio) and informed
that Berio was preparing an outdoor electroacoustic concert in Praia Vermelha,
which also included an «avant-garde samba»13. The event intended to promote
interaction between avant-garde music and local experimental theatre. On 13
September, four days before the Week, Correio published a note: the first concerto
was performed by Bahia’s Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Koellreutter,
which executed Symphonic Music composed by Ernest Krenek, Concerto for 9 soloists
by Webern and, last but not least, the première of Concretion 1960, composed
for this occasion by the conductor. In the following performance, «avant-garde
jazz»14 took place. We can conclude by now that «avant-garde» became, in this
period, an adjective to music that employed new compositional techniques,
experimentalists, happenings. So, practically every genre, popular or classical,
could be «avant-garde».
The closing concert was performed by Brazilian Symphonic Orchestra
(BSO), with the celebrated pianist Yara Bernette as soloist. In that evening at
the TMRJ, they performed Koellreutter’s and Pousseur’s works one more time,
and the climax of the event: Allelujah ii for five instrumental groups by Luciano
Berio. Berio required one conductor for each group in the score, and Eleazar
organized the performance that way. It was the first time that Rio de Janeiro saw
five conductors in one stage. Correio displayed the name of the maestros’ team:
Eleazar de Carvalho, Luciano Berio, Koellreutter, Diogo Pacheco, and Alceu
Bocchino in all capitals15.
França wrote a musical critique in Correio that covered the first performance
by Koellreutter and the Bahia Chamber Orchestra. The critic repeated the
zigzag he made eleven years before: celebrated the protagonist role played
by Koellreutter as the teacher who founded the Seminários da Bahia and by his
«unmistakable authority» as a promoter, while condemned him as a conductor.
França also declared that he did not have any interest in the repertoire.
Concerning Koellreutter’s composition, the critic’s will was to «populate them
11
. Correio 1961a.
12
. Correio 1961b.
13
. Ibidem.
14
. Correio 1961c.
15
. Correio 1961d.
133Danilo Ávila
with some more notes, or extend it to the notes that already existed»16. Roughly
summarizing it, França’s interpretation was that the work was tedious and did
not communicate with its audience.
Moreover, the first festival was a commendable success. Eleazar and Jocy
turned, in a certain aspect, into avant-garde authorities that had the power to
measure its impact and reception in Brazil. Five years after the Week of 1961,
the couple intended to «check if there had been any modification in the Brazilian
musical scenario». This musical research was backed by the state Secretary of
Education through the Guanabara governor, Negrão de Lima17. Counting
with the success of the first edition, the Second Avant-garde Music Week was
apparently guaranteed in terms of composers, audience, and sponsorships. In a
more appropriate venue for chamber and symphonic pieces, the second event
took place in Sala Cecilia Meireles, a concert hall created in 1965 by the governor
Carlos Lacerda at the heart of Rio de Janeiro centre, Lapa. Four composers were
announced: Bruno Maderna, John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Iannis
Xenakis. The only Brazilian composer invited was Claudio Santoro. According
to researcher Flávio Silva, who did not reveal his sources, one of the Week’s
organizers would have explained the absence of Brazilian composers because
they were not up to date with the compositional techniques used worldwide18.
Silva points out that the musical critic of Jornal do Commercio (RJ), Andrade
Muricy, attacked what should be Eleazar’s decision19. The report announces
the subjectivity of this decision. This occurred in the same year of the third
edition of the Santos Festival of Música Nova (SP), a festival that brought
together a considerable contingent of active Brazilian composers. We must
consider that these were two conflicting port areas in the construction of the
institutionalization of Brazilian contemporary music, Santos, and Rio de Janeiro.
If Koellreutter’s caravan (1949) was a moment when Brazil represented
its national contemporary music outside the country, Eleazar’s second Week
brought the international scenario without local representation. From all those
invited, only Xenakis took the flight to Rio de Janeiro. There was a broad
reaction to this tense situation, full of happenings. Gilberto Mendes reported
to Santos’ main newspaper A Tribuna that during the São Paulo performance of
Xenakis’ work Strategie for two symphonic orchestras, a group of two composers
16
. França 1961.
17
. Correio 1966.
18
. Silva 2001.
19
. Ibidem.
134The Internationalization of Brazilian Contemporary Music
(Rogério Duprat and Willy Corrêa) and a poet (Décio Pignatari) attacked
Eleazar and the Greek composer. All three, in the middle of the orchestral
performance, stood up and started to sing Juanita Banana, a comic section of
Verdi’s Rigoletto20. Krieger, replacing the main critic of Jornal do Brasil, Renzo
Massarani, told of another happening, this time in Rio de Janeiro: the final
encore «motivated a pugilistic incident between two ardent antagonists in the
audience»21. Furthermore, Krieger reports the newness of the event, stressing
the performance of percussionist Rich O’Donnell as its climax, mainly because
he promoted the interest in contemporary music for percussion22.
Eleazar’s perspective was myopic. A consensus was constructed, between
supporters and detractors, that the organizers looked more to abroad and
less to national composers. Performed in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, the
second Week achieved a better and bigger structure, but failed in the artistic
direction. Evaluated against his objectives, Eleazar missed the checking. Augusto
de Campos, a Brazilian Concrete poet, after a polemic debate during Xenakis’
conference, in which he defended the three menestrellis against Eleazar’s rage,
wrote a long essay for Correio reporting both events (RJ/SP). His opinion of the
performances and conferences evidence the difference between the two capitals:
while the Cariocas did not realize the spirit of «being avant-garde», only whistling
and fighting randomly23, the Paulistas organized a resistance that «saved the neck
of Brazilian avant-garde in a Week that started with many fireworks but showed
itself an insufficient vanguardism ember»24. Eleazar made a gesture aiming for
consensus, he told the Concrete poet that he already included his critiques in
the proceedings of the Week and that they would be incorporated to the next
edition — one that never happened.
In the late ’60s, the festivals started to be more coherent and they were
looking for an integration of the whole Latin America. There are examples
like the First Rio de Janeiro Interamerican Music Festival (1967) and the First
Americas Music Festival (1967). The latter with works by Jocy de Oliveira,
Gilberto Mendes, Cláudio Santoro, Edino Krieger and Marlos Nobre25.
20
. Mendes 2013.
21
. Krieger 1966.
22
. Ibidem.
23
. The whistling episode was described in França’s critique. According to him, these
whistlings were covered by an enormous constellation of savorless applauses that only reinforced
the cordial atmosphere of concert halls. França 1966.
24
. Campos 1966.
25
. Silva 2006.
135Danilo Ávila
In 1969, the Guanabara International Music Festival was created with
a strong Interamerican stamp. Projected by Edino Krieger, the Guanabara
Festivals had an inspiration in the celebrated MPB – Brazilian Popular Music
song festivals. To match each other, Krieger fought one of Teatro Municipal
principal barriers for the young people: formal suit and tie requirements. In
May, after a long and costly bureaucratic process, education secretary Gama
Filho allowed sports suits, but only in the theatre galleries, not in the balconies
or foyers26. Told like that, the event seems prosaic, but this was a fundamental
guideline that prevented a new public to attend to the concert hall to know living
composers. The Brazilian song festivals, on the other hand, were effervescent
and retained the attention of all generations. Krieger was the protagonist in
linking song festivals and the Guanabara Music Festival, he won a prize in the
second International Popular Song Festival with Fuga e Antifuga, a song based
on lyrics by Vinicius de Moraes. Krieger’s intent was to promote a meeting of
different generations of composers and the audience.
José Siqueira, composer, and professor in the Music School of Federal
University of Rio de Janeiro (FURJ), was mentioned in the column of
Renzo Massarani in Jornal do Brasil, he affirmed that it was «inadmissible and
humiliating» for «mature men» like Camargo Guarnieri and Francisco Mignone
to compete on equal terms in a compositional contest27. Hardly reproached by
Siqueira, Guarnieri faced with soft humility the terms of the competition, and
he congratulated the chance to be in a competition with his own students. He
declared to Massarani days later (19 May 1969): «I participated to honour a
new initiative between us, sportingly, without worrying about the prizes that
were offered»28.
Another breach of protocol took place in Guanabara’s Festival. The same
França argued against the fact that Krzysztof Penderecki was invited only to
be a juror in the competition, not as a composer with a commissioned piece
or a national première29. Realizing that the reputed Polish composer came only
to hear a bunch of students mixed with some great names of Brazilian recent
compositional tradition, annoyed Correio’s music critic. This decision can be
interpreted, either consciously or unconsciously, as a form of resistance against
the subservience to European patterns and to the classical tradition. While
26
. Jornal 1969.
27
. José Siqueira cit. in Lovaglio 2008.
28
. Massarani 1969.
29
. Lovaglio 2008.
136The Internationalization of Brazilian Contemporary Music
Eleazar only looked to abroad, Krieger wanted Brazilian institutionalization —
bringing legitimacy to our composers —, and a Latin America and Brazil
integration. To exemplify the integration inside national borders, we can
say that in Seminários da Bahia, despite Eleazar’s intent to bring the chamber
orchestra and to commission a piece from Koellreutter, Rio de Janeiro’s
audience did not have the opportunity to know the main composers of the
group: Ernst Widmer, Lindembergue Cardoso, Fernando Cerqueira, and Jamary
de Oliveira. As José Antonio Almeida Prado, a prodigy composer in the late
’60s, remembers: «when, for example, the Bahia group arose in Guanabara’s
Festival, I had the extraordinary revelation that the mixture between serial
techniques and national folklore was possible»30.
These three events — Koellreutter’s caravan (1949), Eleazar and Jocy’s
week (1961-1966) and Guanabara festival (1969-1970) — established the
innovation criteria which have been progressively introduced in Rio de Janeiro’s
contemporary music scenario. Some scholars believed that the Guanabara
Festival did not work out because of its Interamerican logistics31, but Krieger’s
report appoints to a bureaucratic interruption32. In a text celebrating the 20th
anniversary of Brazilian contemporary music biennales, which shows how its
model was based on Guanabara festivals, Krieger relates that the latter event was
made possible, mainly, because Guanabara’s Education Secretary. Gonzaga da
Gama Filho supported it. To show his commitment, Gama Filho promised three
festivals (1969-1970-1971) to be provided with a structure which, as he believed,
would not fail to be continued after the next municipal elections. However,
suddenly after the second festival (1970), the secretary was found dead and his
substitute suspended the continuity of the festival. It is important to remember
that Guanabara’s Festival was the first event of this kind to record two LPs
with the five winner works, live in Theatro Municipal (RJ), produced by Cravo
Albin, director of the Sound and Image Museum, and with support from the
celebrated major record label, Odeon.
Krieger organized the project of the Biennales to honour Gaminha’s
legacy, right after his death (1971). He searched everywhere for funding to
structure the event, with State Govern, MEC, MFA, MEC’s Radio — without
success. Three years later, he was surprised with a phone call that he mentions
like someone telling a story, it was Myrian Dauelsberg, recently named general
30
. Antonio Almeida Prado cit. in. Gubernikoff 1996, p. 60.
31
. Neves 2008.
32
. Sonora Brasil 2013.
137Danilo Ávila
director of the main concert halls in Rio de Janeiro, Sala Cecilia Meireles. She
started saying: «I found your project in a locker here in MEC, would there be
any objections if Sala Cecilia Meireles took over the project?»33. Krieger, without
hesitating, accepted the challenge. He knew that chances like that could not be
thrown away.
Once the deal was made, Dauelsberg and Krieger started to contact
institutions, composers, performers, audio engineers, and every agent necessary
to make the Biennale possible. The doors once closed to Krieger, were opened
to Dauelsberg. To achieve the First Biennale of Brazilian Contemporary Music,
she congregated institutional support from Rio de Janeiro Theatres Foundation
(RJTF), Cultural Department of State, MEC and its Radio and Sala Cecilia
Meireles, of which she was the director. In this edition, the jury listened to 35
composers, from the so-called modernist Camargo Guarnieri to Seminários da
Bahia’s prized contemporary Lindembergue Cardoso, including Jocy de Oliveira,
Guerra-Peixe, Francisco Mignone and others34. In its first edition, we can
affirm that the Biennale was structured by a coalition of agents of the Brazilian
contemporary music scenario, primarily those who were based in Rio de Janeiro.
First, there was no composition competition. Secondly, some compositions were
already premiered, like Guerra-Peixe’s Concertino for string orchestra, composed
and first executed in 1971. It is important to notice, Brazilian Biennales exists
until today (2019) under the direction of National Foundation for Arts, in 2019
its twenty-third edition took place, now with a sustainable model supported by
national and local institutions, centred in national contemporary composition.
However, a question remains: why the same institutions that Edino searched for
in 1971 closed the doors for the Biennale project while, in 1974, with Dauelsberg’s
leadership, the same doors were found open?
We can find the path to the answer in two ways. First clue, Dauelsberg’s
direction in Sala Cecilia Meireles was decisive to project the concert hall in
Rio de Janeiro, not only she established a teaching program, introducing new
public to concert music, she also worked as a ‘curator’, structuring a season
with Cycles (Bach’s Cycle, Beethoven’s Cycle) that made success. A second and
more important clue, what should have opened the cultural bureaucracy doors
participation and was decisive for the Biennale, was the fact that the concert
hall joined RJTF, which, in 1975, Dauelsberg also had influence. In 1976, Edino
Krieger take over the artistic direction of the Foundation.
. Ibidem.
33
. LP Biennale 1977a.
34
138The Internationalization of Brazilian Contemporary Music
Beyond this privileged bureaucratic situation, in the 1970s there were
several ministerial reforms in the administrative structure that benefited Brazilian
contemporary music. During this decade, the public cultural policies made by the
military dictatorship aimed to improve both the institutional dynamics and the
signed covenants. Between 1966 and 1972 reigned the directions of the Federal
Cultural Council (FCC), a congregation with distinguished academics that had
the task of selecting the projects to which the State would allocate resources.
Academics like Correio’s music critic, José Cândido de Andrade Muricy, were
Art advisors that would deliberate, among other tasks, on concert music. FCC’s
inclination was, in its majority, exclusive for patrimonial policies with a strong
conservative conception, in a few words, a group of preservationists. In 1973, the
creation of MEC’s Cultural Action Plan (CAP) and the Department of Cultural
Affairs (DCA) caused tension in the relations between the patrimonial group and
the executive group, this latter was linked to the organization of events, concerts,
and exhibitions, the notions that served as fundamentals to each group were
entirely opposed35. The participation of the executive group in the «institutional
construct» was made by the so-called geradores [generator agents], concert music
professionals in majority, like the pianists Nelson Freire and Arthur Moreira
Lima, the violinist Cussy de Almeida, or from the intimate circle of Sala Cecilia
Meireles, the directors (and pianists) Jacques Klein and Myrian Dauelsberg. This
institutional design appoints to the creation of FUNARTE (1975) and provided
an institutional structure that prioritizes attending to those sectors of cultural
production that were unsupported. Along with the bureaucratic rationalization,
«professional classical musicians, in their move, lobbied in favour of an entity
that would grant resources and a structure to record and edit music scores»36.
Namely, it was not only the privileged position of Dauelsberg inside the
musical institutions in Rio de Janeiro that put the project in its way, but there
was also the lobby of a whole musical stratum (mainly composers, performers,
and critics) in parallel with a process of institutional development that benefited
them. An example of this lobby is the round table debate organized by Jornal
do Brasil on 5 July 1975 — three months before the first Biennale — to which
the composers Marlos Nobre, Francisco Mignone, Guerra-Peixe, Ricardo
Tacuchian and Aylton Escobar attended (four distinct generations of Carioca
composers). Ronaldo Miranda, at this time a critic and a composer wannabe, was
the interviewer and for him: «after Villa-Lobos, the prestige of the composer
. Miceli 1984.
35
. Ibidem.
36
139Danilo Ávila
decreased a lot inside the official institutions»37. The audience was not motivated,
the archives missed many parts of orchestral works, and photocopies were
pulling down the score sales. One of the most performed composers, Marlos
Nobre, earned 1,600 cruzeiros for all the year of 1974, the equivalent of three
minimum wages.
To solve these professional deficits, we can have a clue of what were the
necessities that moved composers, performers, and other agents to create the
most enduring contemporary music festival in Brazilian territory; also, the first
to have bureaucratic capillarity and affiliated, in its second edition, to Itamaraty’s
Cultural Cooperation Department in order to disseminate the recordings abroad.
Researcher Clayton Vetromilla, in an article that approaches the creation of
FUNARTE’s National Music Institution, shows how the composers that were
present in that debate, plus the critic Luis Paulo Horta, took the direction of the
formation of this institution from the Culture Federal Council38. Returning to
the debate, we can find some affirmations there that corroborate Vetromilla’s
hypothesis. In one of his final sentences, Krieger recommends: «If there was
a National Music Institute, with the responsibility to solve this [professional]
problem, it would congregate influences with companies that can collaborate»39.
Marlos Nobre, also in his final participation, made an alert for the current
minister: «it was a good opportunity to notify minister Nei Braga that there is
a class […] that until the present moment has had no access to him to show its
revindications […] it is a super active class»40.
We must emphasize the constant political pressure on DAC that was made
in the newspapers, centred in the figure of Nei Braga. Half civilian half military,
Braga had the responsibility to make the link between the artistic class and the
bureaucracy of culture, this sector was fragilized at the time because of the
censorship that was made on theatres, cinemas, and popular music events. Some
of his public policies were questionable: Tacuchian, in the cited debate, laments
the fact that the composers were wanted only because Braga, through a DAC
official imposition, forced the orchestras to insert national composers’ works in
their tournées.
The Biennale’s second edition, viewed from the perspective of this
institutional accumulation of actions to constitute a perennial contemporary music
37
. Miranda 1975.
38
. Vetromilla 2011.
39
. Edino Krieger cit. in Miranda 1975.
40
. Marlos Nobre cit. in ibidem.
140The Internationalization of Brazilian Contemporary Music
festival, had a power of synthesis. The main agents of this institutionalization
were present: Koellreutter (as a composer), Eleazar (as a conductor), Jocy (as
a composer) and Edino Krieger (as coordinator). The Biennale was widely
covered by the critics in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro and demonstrated the
administrative reach of this consortium41. Brazilian contemporary music
finally had its own exposition festival, it created a corpus (or a catalogue) of
composers from different aesthetical tendencies and generations in a tense,
but not opposed, diversity.
The Biennale had the function of a showcase, a panoramic exhibition of
the national contemporary music to be disseminated both locally and abroad. The
MFA, through its Cultural Cooperation Department, publicized the LPs from
the second (1977) and third editions (1979) and elaborated the catalogue of the
main Brazilian composers alive in a three-language version (English, German,
and French)42. The implications of this agreement for cultural diplomacy are
quite relevant but impossible to be developed in this article. To confirm the
improvised character of the first edition, the second one elaborated, besides
the invitation of the best works from previous Biennale, a national competition
with a jury composed by Krieger, Nobre and the conductor Mário Tavares. With
this structure, the Biennale could give a prize to the young composers and also
made commissions to notable and already prized composers43. As registered in
Dauelsberg’s text on the second Biennale: «38 composers presented in 7 concerts,
involving the participation of 3 symphonic orchestras and 82 Brazilian musical
artists, a landscape of the most varied compositional trends that are present in
current Brazilian musical production»44.
41
. Nonato 1977; Jornal 1977; Miranda 1977a; Miranda 1977b.
42
. Under Vasco Mariz’s coordination, the following catalogues were published: Bruno
Kiefer (1975), Willy Correia de Oliveira (1975), Lindembergue Cardoso (1976), Ernst Mahle
(1976), Osvaldo Lacerda (1976), Mario Ficarelli (1976), Gilberto Mendes (1976), Emilio Terraza
(1976), Sergio Vasconcellos Correa (1976), Brenno Blauth (1976), Almeida Prado (1976), L. C.
Vinholes (1976), Carlos Almeida (1976), Jorge Antunes (1976), Kilza Setti (1976), Souza Lima
(1976), Ernani Aguiar (1977), Heitor Alimonda (1977), Yves R. Schimdt (1977), Dinorá de
Carvalho (1977), Claudio Santoro (1977), Najla Jabôr (1977), Lina Pires de Campos (1977), Luis
Ellmerich (1977), Camargo Guarnieri (1977), Adelaide Pereira da Silva (1977), Ernst Widmer
(1977), A. Theodoro Nogueira (1977), Henrique de Curitiba Morozowicz (1977), Ricardo
Tacuchian (1977), Marlos Nobre (1977), Eduardo Escalante (1978), Francisco Mignone (1978),
Mário Tavares (1979).
43
. Miranda 1977a.
44
. Myrian Dauelsberg in LP Biennale 1977b.
141Danilo Ávila
A ‘fight against stagnation’, the year of 1977 sets up an institutional
landmark reached by the agents of Rio de Janeiro’s concert life. A consortium
with the collaboration of critics, radio professionals, entrepreneurs, academics,
performers, and composers; the institutional actions were not always in a
common direction, but it is important to emphasize that the accumulation of
institutional actions was moved by a necessity: the creation of a perennial music
festival that periodically commissioned performers and composers, with financial
sustainability and internationalization patterns. These agents convinced many
politicians and businessman that an event like that was possible: ministers and
secretaries like Negrão de Lima, Gama Filho and Ney Braga or entrepreneurs and
directors like Philips, Cravo Albin e Myrian Dauelsberg. An indication that these
separated events cited in this article had any strategic coherence is in Eleazar
and Jocy’s Avant-Garde Week subtitle: «(Introduction to the first Biennale)». For
composers, canon is not a matter of genius, but of institutional struggle.
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