The journey of Brazilian contemporary music through the festivals of Rio de

Janeiro
Danilo Ávila

Last November 22 was released by Itamaraty, the official institution of the

Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), a project called “Brazil in Concert”. In fact, was a
partnership between MFA and a consortium of Brazilian orchestras composed by São
Paulo Symphony Orchestra, Minas Gerais Philharmonic and Goiás Philharmonic in
arrangement with the record label Naxos. This enterprise aims record and edit more than
a hundred symphonic pieces of the national repertoire and already made its composers:
Carlos Gomes, Henrique Oswald, Alberto Nepomuceno, Villa-Lobos, Francisco
Mignone, Lorenzo Fernandez, Camargo Guarnieri, Cláudio Santoro, José Siqueira,
Guerra-Peixe, Edino Krieger e Almeida Prado. For the contemporary composers, from
Guarnieri onwards, this action can be an indication of a canon in formation.

Events like that, in which some institutional agents choose what are the national
key composers to be known abroad, they make us interrogate 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 intent to
reconstruct some international historical marks of the Brazilian contemporary music and
to expose the accumulation of institutional efforts that conduct this music abroad, as
well as oxygenate the national scenario with presentation of present relevant aesthetics.

When we start to think of contemporary music festivals in general, from what

period we start to understand it’s genesis? This question, ideally aim to retrace an
origin, but, in a prosaic sense, helps the historian to elaborate his choices and structure
the frame of a research. Musicology gives more relevance to the German festivals of
Darmstadt (1946) and Donaueschingen (1921), latter is considered one of the most
ancient contemporary music festivals. In 1946, in the Italian side, was created the
Contemporary Music International Festival inside the celebrated Bienalle di Venezia.

These historical marks 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 for
the group (or movement, the literature disagree) Música Viva. This year, Koellreutter
embark in the ship “Francesco Morosoni” together with some of his students to attend
the activities of the Bienalle di Venezia (“Bienal 1948”). The invite was made by the
celebrated conductor related to the Second Viennese School, Hermann Scherchen; in
this occasion, the german-brazilian professor was requested to minister a conference
about the so-called “Brazilian contemporary music” and promote concerts and recitals
for its divulgation. Three prominent female students accompanied him: Eunice Katunda,
Esther Scliar e Geni Marcondes. Both three, pianists and composers. The idea to bring
female composers that also are performers was due to their ability to sustain the
execution of Brazilian contemporary repertoire for the instrument, since the intention
was to propagate them in the cities they visited. Koellreutter took over the flute parts.

During the musical cruise, the Brazilian expedition corresponded with one of the
major newspaper in Rio de Janeiro, Correio da Manhã, and reported their activities
abroad to its main musical critc, Eurico Nogueira França. He nominated the group as the
“dodecaphonic embassy” in a text from January 28 in 1949. In this day, the “Morosoni”
arrived home. França extensively report the trajectory of the group in this critic, their
entire route through Karlsruhe, Milan, Basil, Stuttgart and Rome. It is noteworthy the
emphasis that was given to Koelreutter’s performance, who ministered conferences
(“Brazilian contemporary music” and “Brazilian popular music and the folklore”) and
performed, aside with Geni Marcondes, plays by Albert Roussel, Luiz Cosme, Cornélio
Hauer, Radamés Gnatalli, Lorenzo Fernandez, Francisco Mignone, Villa-Lobos e
Camargo Guarnieri for piano and flute. França’s critic makes a zigzag: praise the
institutional activities of the professor in the CMIS, his radio programs and celebrate his
talent, but condemn him to “insufflate an orthodox atonalism” in the young composers,
whice has been successful in convert these inventive and tender composers to the
“atonalism’s creed”. In this journey, Eunice Katunda was the most jaunty composer in
contemporary music and once had Luigi Nono and Bruno Maderna as her teachers.

This international activity is one of the main moments in which brazilian

contemporary music, through the choice of and ecletic corpus of composers and
performers, is systematically disclosed in events and festivals abroad with the same
aesthetic concerns. This choices (1) are situated in a conceptual frame that link it to
previous experiences (great masters -> moderns -> “the very new”) and also present it
compositional dilemmas (tension between folklore and music serial technics) through
Koellreutter’s speechs and conferences; (2) are in tune with his pedagogical purposes,
because he also bring with him in the journey names that was in the early days of the
career, like Sonia Born (singer), Myriam Sandbank (pianist), Antonio Sergi (pianist);
(3) they promote the brazilian section of CMIS that was founded at that year. Historical,
pedagogical and institutional contents that legitimate these choices, above all critics that
could accuse the enterprise as aesthetically commited.

It is necessary to go back to França’s narrative to understand the relevance of the

event. Correio’s main critic starts accusing Koellreutter to had “deflagrated”, “with
truly German tenacity and coherence”, a movement that, by struggling for the
“advanced positions in art”, was inclined to a “an avant-garde specie that un-rarely
seems to have lost the contact with human reality, risking to fall in the terrain of
experimental aridity”. In the final section, França acclaim Koellreutter’s “considerable
labor” in promote “not only [composers] of atonalism, which would be an purely
sectary act, but the expressive music of our contemporaries”. Zigzag aside, the
argument has a directionality: if you compose or perform atonal music, you will not be
played or listened except by your peers. Music sociologist Frederico Barros, in a study,
reveals that Guerra-Peixe constantly declare to his colleagues that turned nationalist
because want your work to be more played.

With the interruption of Musica Viva in early fifties, the decade is a gap for
Brazilian music activities considered “contemporary” or “avant-garde”. 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 a first Biennale that never happened. This Week don’t have any relation
with the Biennales projected by composer Edino Krieger that had his first edition in
1975, event that this article will discuss later. The week was promoted between the days
16 and 26 of September in 1961 at Teatro dos 7, a typical theatre for young actors and
companies that occupied before the Teatro Brasileiro de Comédia (TBC) and the
Teatro Municipal do Rio de Janeiro (TMRJ).

Eleazar de Caravalho was the general diretor of the Juventude Musical

Brasileira, our jeunesses musicale, and achieves a broad support of entrepreneurship
and state institutions. Brazilian Phillips has the exclusive sponsorship. But, like the
programme shows, also “contributed to make the I Avant-Garde Music Week possible”,
in the private sector, the Brazil-German Institute, Brazilian Mercedes-Benz S.A,
National Bank of Minas Gerais, the Brazilian Panair, Glória Hotel and, finally, the
automaker Brazilian Willys Overland. In the public sector, the event had the support
from the Ministry of Education and Culture (MEC), Guanabara’s Tourism Department,
and it was inspirated in the recommendations of UNESCO’s International Music
Council that, in this period, had Luiz Heitor Côrrea de Azevedo as Brazilian delegate.

Let’s accompany Correio da Manhã’s coverage from this event. First, the
newspaper announces “Rimes for symphony orchestra and electronic tape” from the
Belgian composer Henri Pousseur. Four days later, a report in the cultural supplement
alerted: “Eleazar de Carvalho sent avant-garde music to Brazil”. According to Correio’s
report, the Brazilian maestro was looking to bring “the top three of avant-garde music”
(Stockhausen, Cage e Berio) and notice that Berio was preparing an outdoor
eletroacustic concert in Praia Vermelha which also includes an “avant-garde samba”.
The event pretended an interaction between the avant-garde music and the local
experimental theater. In September 13, four days before the Week, Correio published a
note: the first concerto will be performed by Bahia’s Chamber Orchestra, conducted by
Koellreutter, which will execute “Symphonic Music” composed by Ernest Krenek,
“Concerto for 9 soloists” from Webern repertorire and, least but not last, the premiere of
“Concretion 1960” composed for this occasion by the conductor. In the next
performance, an “avant-garde jazz” takes place. We can conclude by now that “avant-
garde” became, in this period, an adjective to music that employs new compositional
techniques, experimentalisms, happenings. So, practically every genre can be “avant-
garde”.

The closing concerto was performed by Brazilian Symphonic Orchestra (BSO),

with the celebrated pianist Yara Bernette as soloist. In that evening at TMRJ, they
performed Koellreutter’s and Pousseur’s pieces one more time, and the climax of the
event: “Allelujah II” for five instrumental groups by Luciano Berio. Berio, in the score,
preview one conductor for each group, and Eleazar organized the performance that way.
It was the first time that Rio de Janeiro saw five conductors in one stage. Correio’s note
displayed in all caps the name of the maestro team: Eleazar de Carvalho, Luciano Berio,
Koellreutter, Diogo Pacheco e Alceu Bocchino.

França wrote a musical critic in Correio that covers the first performance by
Koellreutter and Bahia Chamber Orchestra. The critic repeat the zigzag that he made
eleven years ago: celebrate the protagonism of Koellreutter as the teacher who founded
the Seminários da Bahia and by his “unmistakable authority” as a promoter, while
condemned him as a conductor nor had any interest in the repertoire. About
Koellreutter’s composition, the critic’s will is to “populate them with some more notes,
or extend it to the notes that already exist”. Roghly resuming, França’s interpretation is
that the piece is tedious and doesn’t communicate.

Moreover, the first festival is a commendable success. Eleazar and Jocy turned
into some kind of avant-garde authority that has the power to measure its impact and
reception in Brazil. Five years after Week of 1961, the couple pretends to “check if
there have been any modification in the Brazilian musical scenario”. This research was
backed by the state Secretary of Education through the Guanabara governor, Negrão de
Lima. Counting with the success of the first edition, the second Avant-garde Music
Week was apparently guaranteed in terms of composers, public and sponsorships. In a
more appropriate room for chamber and symphonic pieces, the second event took place
in Sala Cecilia Meirelles, 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 researcher Flávio Silva, which didn’t
reveal its sources, one of the Week’s organizer would have explained the abscense of
Brazilian composers because they are not up to date with the compositional techniques
used worldwide. Silva points that the musical critic of Jornal do Commercio (RJ),
Andrade Muricy attacked what should be Eleazar’s decision. The report announces its
subjectivity, this is the same year of the third edition of the Santos Festival of Musica
Nova (SP) that brought together a considerable contingent of active composers. We
must consider that these are two conflicting port areas in the construction of the
institutionalization of Brazilian contemporary music.

If Koellreutter’s caravan (1949) was a moment when Brazil represented

Brazilian contemporary music in the international scene, Eleazar’s second Week
brought the scenario without representing us. From all invited, only Xenakis took the
flight to Rio de Janeiro. There was a broad reaction to this conjucture, full of
happenings. Gilberto Mendes report to Santos’ main newspaper A Tribuna: during the
San Paolo performance of Xenakis’ piece “Strategia” for two symphonic orchestras, a
group of two composers (Rogério Duprat e Willy Corrêa) and a poet (Décio Pignatari)
attacked Eleazar and the Greek composer. Both three, in the middle of the orchestral
competition, stood up and started to sang “Juanita Banana”, a comic section of Verdi’s
Rigoletto. Krieger, replacing the main critic of Jornal do Brasil, Renzo Massarani, told
another happening, this time in Rio de Janeiro: the final bis “motivated an pugilistic
incident between two ardent antagonists in the audience”. Furthermore, Krieger reports
the newsness of the event, stressing the percussionist Rich O’Donnel as its climax,
mainly because he promoted the interest in contemporary music for percussion.

Eleazar’s verification was myopic. It was constructed a consensus between

supporters and detractors that the organizers look more abroad and less for national
composers. Performed in San Paolo and Rio de Janeiro, the second Week reached a
better and bigger structure, but failed in the artistic direction. Evaluated against its
objectives, Eleazar missed the checking. Augusto de Campos, a brazilian concrete poet,
after a polemic debate in Xenakis’ conference, in which he defended the three
menestrellis against Eleazar’s rage, wrote an long essay for Correio reporting both the
events (RJ/SP). Campo’s opinion of the performances and conferences evidence the
difference between the two capitals: while the cariocas didn’t realized the spirit of
“being avant-garde”, only whistling and fighting randomly, the paulistas organized a
resistance that “saved the neck of brazilian avant-garde in a Week that started with
much fireworks, but showed itself an insufficient vanguardist ember. Eleazar made a
gesture aiming consensus, he told the concrete poet that he already wrote his critics in
the minutes of the Week and will incorporate in next edition – that never happens.

In late 60’s, the festivals started to be more coherent and were looking to
integrate 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 pieces from Jocy de Oliveira, Gilberto Mendes, Cláudio Santoro, Edino
Krieger e Marlos Nobre.

In 1969, it was created Guanabara International Music Festival with a strong

InterAmerican stamp. Projected by Edino Krieger, the Guanabara Festivals had an
inspiration in the celebrated MPB song festivals. To match each other, Krieger fought
one of the principal Teatro Municipal barriers for the young people: formal suit and tie
required. In May, after a long and costly bureaucratic process, educational secretary
Gama Filho allows sports suit, but only in the theatre galleries, not in the balconys or
foyers. Told like that, the event seems prosaic, but this is a fundamental fight to bring
new public to the concert hall to knew living composers, since the song festivals were
effervescent and retained the attention of all generations. The link between song
festivals and Guanabara Music Festival had a protagonism in Krieger, he won a prize in
the second International Popular Song Festival with “Fuga e Antifuga”, a song based on
a lyric from Vinicius de Moraes. Krieger’s intent was a meeting of generations of
composers and public.

José Siqueira, composer and teacher in Music School of Federal University of

Rio de Janeiro (FURJ), was mentioned in the column of Renzo Massarani in Jornal do
Brasil, he affirms that is “inadmissible and humiliating” for “made mans” like Camargo
Guarnieri and Francisco Mignone compete on equal terms in a compositional contest.
Hardly reproached by Siqueira, Guarnieri faced with softly humility the terms of the
competition, which congratulates the chance to be in a competition with his students.
Like he declares to Massarani days later (05-19-1969): “I participated for honouring a
new initiative between us, sportly, without worrying me with the prizes that are
offered”.

Another breach of protocol takes place in Guanabara’s Festival. The same

França argues against the fact that Krzysztof Penderecki was invited only to be a jury in
the competition, not as a composer with a commissioned piece or a national premiere.
Figuring out 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 musical critic. This decision can be interpreted, consciously or unconsciously,
as a form of resistance against the subservience to European patterns and classical
tradition. While Eleazar looked only abroad, Krieger wants Brazilian institutionalization
– bring justification a legitimacy to our composers – and Latin America and national
integration. To exemplify the integration inside national borders, we can say that
Seminários da Bahia, despite Eleazar’s intent to bring the chamber orchestra and
commission a piece from Koellreutter, Rio de Janeiro didn’t knew the main composers
of the group: Ernst Widmer, Lindembergue Cardoso, Fernando Cerqueira e Jamary de
Oliveira. As José Antonio Almeida Prado, a prodigy composer in the late 60’s,
remember: “When, for example, the Bahia group arised in Guanabara’s Festival, I had
an extraordinary revelation that the mixture between serial techniques and national
folklore was possible “.
 This three events – Koellreutter’s caravan (1949), Eleazar and Jocy’s week
(1961-66) and Guanabara festival (1969-70) – establish the innovation criteria which
have been progressively introduced in Rio de Janeiro’s contemporary music scenario.
Some scholars believed that Guanabara Festival didn’t work because of its
Interamerican disposition.