Brazilian Sacred and Religious Music from the 18th
and 19th centuries: theories and editorial practices

Carlos Alberto Figueiredo
ISBN: 978-85-917578-4-8
2nd edition, 2017.

Presentation

The textual issue in music, like in other arts, is inciting and it is surprising the difficulty to make a music scholar or a practical musician realize the richness of the processes involved in the graphic transmission of music works in general, and, particularly, of the Brazilian sacred and religious repertoire of the 18th and 19th century. This repertoire presents a great exuberance, and archives in Brazil and abroad are full of manuscripts, autograph and from the tradition, demonstrating the enormous creativity of Brazilian composers in the production of music for the catholic rite, and also the intense transmission of this music. The autograph manuscript sources that transmit those works are real documents that enable us to have a glance at the most intimate moments of the composers in their creative process, with their hesitations, faults, esthetic constraints of several kinds and limitations. And the sources from the tradition are equally real, reflecting the process of reception of the copyists, also involved in their esthetic constraints, limitations and faults of all kinds. And all those documents represent the history of the works themselves, like the bonds of an infinite chain, in which the modern editor will be inserted. And not because he has more technological resources availabe, or master new editorial techniques, or have access to more sources the modern editor may claim that his edition is a definite one. Many other editors will come and work always with new perspectives.

This book has been released originally in print, in July 2014. This first edition is sold out for already a long time, creating the necessity of a second one, released now as an e-book, in PDF and E-pub formats. The decision to make it available for free comes from the practical necessity of enabling total access for scholars and students, in Brazil and abroad. This second edition brings also a revision of the first, with modifications and insertions. The book is only available in Portuguese.

Biography

Carlos Alberto Figueiredo is faculty member at the under-graduate level at the School of Music of Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO) and graduate level at the School of Music of Universidade Federal de Goiás (UFG). He has his Doctor Degree with the Dissertation Editing José Maurício Nunes Garcia, awarded with the Prize José Maria Neves of Associação Nacional de Pesquisa e Pós Graduação em Música (ANPPOM). He is the author of the Catalogue of Publications of Brazilian Sacred and Religious Music – works from the 18th and 19th centuries. He has taken part in several Brazilian editorial projects, like Acervo e Difusão de Partituras, as editorial coordinator, and Patrimônio Arquivístico - Musical Mineiro. He has done his post-doctoral research in Lisbon, working on the Responsories of Holy Saturday, by David Perez (1711-1778). He has studied Choral Conducting with Frans Moonen, at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, Holland. He is the director of Coro de Camera Pro-Arte, performing specially the works of José Maurício Nunes Garcia (1767-1830), in concerts and CDs. He has guest conducted the OSESP, Camerata Antiqua de Curitiba and Polifonia Carioca choirs.