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NEW HORIZONS IN BRAZILIAN CONTEMPORARY MUSIC: GRUPO NOVO HORIZONTE DE SÃO PAULO, 1988–99

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 March 2018

Christopher Dromey
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Abstract

Brazil's foremost ensemble of the late twentieth century, Grupo Novo Horizonte de São Paulo, transformed Brazilian contemporary music by cultivating a new mixed-chamber repertory and giving sustained support to a generation of emerging composers. That this cosmopolitan group took, then outgrew, the Pierrot ensemble as its cornerstone signals the medium it forged: a localized, evolving spectacle with a richly internationalist heritage. This article offers a panoramic view of the musical, intercultural and historical contexts that underpin Grupo Novo Horizonte's practices and legacy. Analysing landmark works by Sílvio Ferraz, Harry Crowl and others allows us to draw further connections between the group, the Brazilianness of late twentieth-century compositional aesthetic, and the realities of contemporary classical music-making in Brazil.

Type
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Information
Tempo , Volume 72 , Issue 284 , April 2018 , pp. 52 - 67
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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References

1 Acting President, to be precise: Temer officially took office on 31 August 2016, after the controversial impeachment of his predecessor Dilma Rousseff.

2 See Mendonça Filho, <https://twitter.com/mendoncafilho/status/734066041530257408> and <https://twitter.com/mendoncafilho/status/734066345822785536> (both 21 May 2016).

3 Founded as recently as 1982, Brazil's performance rights music licensing company (Associação Brasileira de Música or ABRAMUS) was a product of the previous decade's fight for copyright legislation, which did not exist in Brazil at the time. See Howard-Spink, Sam, ‘Brazil’, in The International Recording Industries, ed. Marshall, Lee (London: Routledge, 2013), 77–92 Google Scholar; and Page, Will, Gandelman, Marisa and Dickinson, Bruce, ‘ECADnomics: Understanding Brazil's Unique Model of Collective Rights Management’. Economic Insight 21 (15 December 2010), pp. 1–5 Google Scholar.

4 I am indebted to Griffiths for granting several interviews in late 2015 and early 2016 to support this article, which also draws on ‘The Pierrot Ensemble in Brazil: The Music of Harry Crowl and Sílvio Ferraz’, my paper for the Fourth International Meeting for Chamber Music, organised by Dr Zoltan Paulinyi, University of Brasília, 12 April 2014. I also acknowledge the help of many of the composers and musicians associated to Grupo Novo Horizonte, especially Harry Crowl, Maurício Dottori and Roberto Victorio.

5 Initially advertised as a Centro de Apreciação à Música Clássica, Jardim Musical ran until 1996, by which time classes in music, art, sculpture and even seasonal musical theatre were being offered. Griffiths's talks for the Mozarteum Brasileiro were also hosted there.

6 For example: Toru Takemitsu's Quatrain II (1975–77) and Waterways (1977–78); and Charles Wuorinen's Tashi (1975–76) and Fortune (1979). See Chute, James, ‘Tashi’, in The Grove Dictionary of American Music, 2nd edn, ed. Garrett, Charles Hiroshi (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013)Google Scholar. Version at Grove Music Online, www.oxfordmusic.onlin (accessed 10 October 2016). Grupo Novo Horizonte returned to the line-up only once, agreeing to perform Caio Senna's Tetraphármakom (1995) at ENCOMPOR VI (Encontro de Compositores Latino-Americanos, Porto Alegre) in October 1998.

7 The two musicians share an interest in Brazil's música colonial, of which the historic Ouro Preto, originally known as Vila Rica, had been a hotbed. Griffiths was later elected Vice-President of the Sociedade Brasiliera de Musicologia (1992–98). On Crowl's interest in música colonial, see Crowl, Harry, ‘A música no Brasil Colonial anterior à chegada da Corte de D. João VI’, Revista Textos do Brasil 12 (2005), pp. 22–31 Google Scholar.

8 Although it happens very rarely, any ensemble performing Pierrot lunaire can programme Quatuor alongside it and side-line only the flautist for Messiaen's work.

9 Graham Griffiths, correspondence with the author, 23 May 2016.

10 For example, another feature of ‘Rote Messe’ is how it employs the doubling instruments of bass clarinet, piccolo and viola (with cello and piano) to accompany the excesses of Pierrot’s make-believe world. Triple Duo, as Carter's title implies, separates the woodwinds (doubled flutes and tripled clarinets), strings (viola and cello) and piano/percussion in its musical discourse.

11 Harry Crowl, correspondence with the author, 15 May 2016.

12 Harry Crowl, correspondence with the author. Introduced in the second movement, the chant is less obvious thereafter but is often weaved into the musical fabric, e.g. the piano in bar 42. See also Pruslin, Stephen, ‘The Triangular Space: Davies's Ave Maris Stella ’, TEMPO 120 (March 1977), pp. 16–22 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Including Davies's own music, the Pierrot Players/Fires of London commissioned or premiered 88 such pieces.

14 Griffiths met Dottori and Victorio through Crowl. Their collegiality was such that, as with Canticae et Diverbia, these first works were not commissions in the traditional sense. All three composers gifted their works to the group, beginning a relationship that would eventually account for a third of Grupo Novo Horizonte's 42 new works. These totals include 11 works the group performed and three others it commissioned but did not perform.

15 Scored for tripled flutes and clarinets, piano doubling celeste, violin doubling viola, and cello.

16 See Arnold, Judy, ‘From a Latin-American Diary, 1977’, in Peter Maxwell Davies: Studies from Two Decades, ed. Pruslin, Stephen (London: Boosey & Hawkes, 1979), pp. 91–3Google Scholar.

17 Mauricio Dottori, correspondence with the author, 17 May 2016.

18 Coincidentally, the first work to be scored in this way was written by Davies (Unbroken Circle), five years before Dottori's Elegie.

19 Pacheco had not played the bass clarinet before joining Grupo Novo Horizonte. His conversion to it began when Griffiths lent Pacheco his own bass clarinet, an arrangement that continued until Griffiths gifted it to him when Grupo Novo Horizonte disbanded.

20 These musicians included the flautists Rogério Wolf and Grace Henderson, the American cellist Gretchen Miller, who later founded and conducted the São Paulo Youth Orchestra, and the violinist Helena Akiko Imasato.

21 Graham Griffiths, correspondence with the author.

22 It was the inaugural award. The São Paulo Association of Art Critics (Associação Paulista de Críticos de Arte) did not have a category for contemporary classical music before Grupo Novo Horizonte released its debut CD.

23 The dialogue between instruments and voice in Pétala petulância is analysed in Diogo Lefèvre, ‘O poema em música e a música além do poema: estudo sobre a relação entre música e poesia em obras de Almeida Prado, Eduardo Guimarães Álvares e Harry Crowl’ (PhD diss., Instituto de Artes da UNESP, 2015), pp. 43ff. Lefèvre also interviews Crowl, who explains how he introduced Álvares to Griffiths and explained the group's ethos to him; see pp. 230–31.

24 These works also marked the debut of Claudia Riccitelli, who more typically sang opera with the Theatro Municipal de São Paulo. The pianist Catarina Leite Domenici was also drafted into the group, freeing Griffiths to conduct once again.

25 Griffiths recalls: ‘Silvio developed the piece with two percussionists [Eduardo Leandro and Ricardo Bologna aka Duo Con-Texto (founded 1989)], who built the instrument. It was made of many lengths of PVC tubing with a tight drumhead at one end of each tube. They were all fitted into a frame vertically. The two players stood at it, facing each other and hitting the small tight drumheads with very strong fingers. A real virtuoso show’. Graham Griffiths, correspondence with the author; emphasis his.

26 Also the work's dedicatee, Ferreira Braga was commonly known as Braguinha or João de Barro. Mesquita's playful title is explained by the latter (joão-de-barro), a Portuguese nickname for the popular rufous hornero bird.

27 See de Souza, Rodolfo Coelho, ‘The Use of Brazilian Folk Instrument Sounds in a Concerto for Computer and Orchestra’, Organised Sound 10/1 (April 2005), pp. 31–36 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 See also Seeger, Anthony, Why Suyá Sing: A Musical Anthropology of an Amazonian People (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987)Google Scholar.

29 Sílvio Ferraz, sleeve-notes to Canto de cura, in Brasil! New Music! Volume 2: New Brazilian Electro-acoustic Music, trans. Graham Griffiths (Camerati, ECD 4003–2, [1994]), p. 11.

30 See Lange, Francisco Curt, ed., supplement to Boletín latino-americano de música 6 (Montevideo: Interamericano de Musicología, 1946), pp. 37–44 Google Scholar. Dedicated to Lange, Música de câmara was probably commissioned for publication in the Boletín, which the Uruguayan-German musicologist founded in 1935.

31 Griffiths would later write a second piece for his group: the cello duet Corrente de Quatá (1998, since lost) for Dimos Goudaroulis and Teresa Cristina Rodrigues. The latter musician also performed under Griffiths in his Camerata Novo Horizonte side project, a 30-piece period ensemble and choir that performed Latin American sacred music. The cellists’ specialisms were a foil for Griffiths's neo-Baroque suite, which begins off-stage and tunes the cellos to 430 Hz and 440 Hz respectively.

32 Literally ‘D-fifth’, ré quinta is the Brazilian-Portuguese term for the E-flat or sopranino clarinet and remains a common feature in Brazil's municipal bands. Pétala petulância, Dottori's Largo and Música de câmara are the only Grupo Novo Horizonte works that call for the ré quinta.

33 For more on Koellreutter's influence, see Kater, Carlos, ‘Música Viva’, Revista Textos do Brasil 12 (2005), pp. 88–95 Google Scholar. There are further interesting parallels here between Brazil and Britain. Humphrey Searle and Elisabeth Lutyens were second-generation serialists with no British forebears, yet they, like Santoro, were supported by central European émigrés (such as Erwin Stein) to spearhead their country's post-war rebirth of contemporary music. Furthermore, Santoro received performances in London around this time: his Sonatina for Piano (1948) was heard at London's new Institute for Contemporary Arts (ICA) on 14 December 1948, an event on Twelve-Note Music Today that Searle helped organize.

34 Koellreutter had studied in Berlin with Scherchen, whose career was launched alongside Schoenberg as co-conductor of Pierrot lunaire’s first tour in 1912.

35 Ives, Charles, Memos, ed. Kirkpatrick, John (New York: Norton, 1972), p. 73 Google Scholar.

36 Gilberto Mendes, programme note to Uma foz uma fala. Augusto de Campos, incidentally, was also responsible for translating Albert Giraud's Pierrot lunaire into Portuguese. Mendes called his piece Uma foz uma fala to distinguish it from the earlier work, Uma vez uma vala (1994), for choir only. Of the Brazilian composers Grupo Novo Horizonte commissioned, Mendes was the most senior. The association arose because of Festival Música Nova de Santos e São Paulo, which Mendes founded in 1962. The festival, the longest running for contemporary music in South America, booked Grupo Novo Horizonte throughout the 1990s. Offering concerts across two cities was intended to help attract international guests and to address the new-music problem of single, quickly forgotten performances.

37 Griffiths was persuaded to curate a Baroque/modern concert – Grupo Novo Horizonte's only such programme – for an Educational Concert for Young Audiences at the Theatro Municipal in April 1992. The concert accounts for the atypical presence of Purcell, Palestrina and Mouret in the group's repertory.

38 Álvares's original text reads: ‘Grupo Novo Horizonte está garantindo de forma democrática que seja possível a (r)existência de outros tipos de manifestações musicais, além dos ditados pela mídia … Outro aspecto muito importante do grupo é que ele tem divulgado o trabalho de compositores comprometidos com as mais diversas tendências estéticas desse fim de século, sem discriminação: música serial, neo-tonal, repetitiva, com elementos do folclore, com recursos eletroacústicos e com elementos de teatro musical’. Eduardo Guimarães Álvares, ‘Guia do Ouvinte: Novo Horizonte: Dez anos de (r)existência’. SP Rádio Cultura (August 1999), 3/4; emphasis his. Griffiths's Corrente de Quatá and Carlos Kater's Cenas sugestivas (1985, performed in darkness) support Álvares's last assertion.

39 Graham Griffiths, correspondence with the author; the emphasis is his.

40 In 1995, Crowl explained: ‘Two years ago I was in Dartington studying with Peter Sculthorpe and I met a group of Danish composers … One of them, Mogens Christensen, sent me lots of material [material that would become Crystalline DeLight, premiered by Grupo Novo Horizonte] … It was a big challenge. The main problem was the balance of the whole ensemble: very concentrated in winds, some brass, and three percussionists and piano [against comparatively few strings]’. Harry Crowl, interview with Gwyn Williams, Documentary on Grupo Novo Horizonte's collaboration with Ensemble Nord for the XXXI Festival Música Nova de Santos e São Paulo. Hear & Now, BBC Radio 3, broadcast 9 February 1996.

41 Most, a conductor and pianist, was also director of Odense Musikskole, where Grupo Novo Horizonte was based while in Denmark.

42 Under the punning title Auri-Sons, the first concert, for Festival Música Nova, had the same programme as the second (Theatro Municipal) and third (at the University itself), with Finismundo the sole non-new work, although Crowl revised it for the occasion.

43 Lumen de Lumine is scored for cello accompanied by flute, clarinet, guitar, piano and percussion; Tenebrae et Stellae for alto flute, bass clarinet, bass trombone, piano doubling celesta, percussion, viola and cello; Exilium maneo for flute, clarinet, trombone, piano, percussion, violin and cello.

44 Sílvio Ferraz, correspondence with the author, 26 March 2014. Ferraz recalls that Ensemble Contrechamps’ flautist Felix Renggli proposed the commission during a visit to Brazil in early 1995.

45 ‘[In 1994] I studied with Brian Ferneyhough and listened [to the] music of James Dillon and Jonathan Harvey. I made the acquaintance of some composers [from] Europe, and [from] Australia and Japan … These were very good to renew my force, my … need, my necessity, to make music’. Sílvio Ferraz, interview with Gwyn Williams, Hear & Now, broadcast 9 February 1996.

46 Graham Griffiths, correspondence with the author.

47 Tatiana Catanzaro summarizes these and other ensembles in ‘A composição brasileira em 2012: Panorama da música contemporânea brasileira atual (ou Quando, almejando o ovo de prata, Dom Quixote se depara com a borboleta)’, in Cem anos de musica no Brasil, 1912–2012, ed. Coelho, João Marcos (São Paulo: Andreato Comunicação e Cultura, 2014), pp. 222–25Google Scholar.

48 See Catanzaro, ‘A composição brasileira em 2012’, p. 255.

49 Caznok's original text reads: ‘Um comentário em tom de lamento e de agradecimento: o extinto Grupo Novo Horizonte de São Paulo, fundado e dirigido por Graham Griffths entre 1989 e 1999, foi um dos grandes responsáveis pela dinamização da composição e da performance da música nova, inaugurando um patamar de qualidade interpretativa que ficou como modelo para grupos que se criaram após sua breve existência’. Caznok, Yara, ‘Música de câmara e quartetos de cordas’, in Cem anos de musica no Brasil, 1912–2012, ed. Coelho, João Marcos (São Paulo: Andreato Comunicação e Cultura, 2014), 85 Google Scholar. See also Catanzaro, ‘A composição brasileira em 2012’, p. 218.

50 Discussion of Brazil's musical heritage has, quite naturally, charted the Atlantic cultural triangle that connects the country's coastal cities with East Africa and Portugal, with the Cape Verde Islands a notable traverse. See, for example, Fryer, Peter, Rhythms of Resistance: African Musical Heritage in Brazil (London: Pluto, 2000), 1–8, 173–5Google Scholar.

51 Moreover, Davies ended the concert, which had been billed as The Fires’ Farewell and Twentieth Birthday Gala (Queen Elizabeth Hall, London 20 January 1987), with a speech accusing Britain's Arts Council of failing to support his group adequately. See Seabrook, Mike, Max: The Life and Music of Peter Maxwell Davies (London: Gollancz, 1994), p. 221 Google Scholar.

52 Roberto Victorio and Marcos Nogueira, sleeve-notes to Trilogia Bororo (Ao Vivo, AA000500, 2016).

53 Graham Griffiths, interview with the author, 23 May 2016.

54 This research was published in Griffiths, Graham, Stravinsky's Piano: Genesis of a Musical Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.