Intertextualidade e narratividade na Sinfonia nº 1 (“O imprevisto”) de Villa-Lobos

O propósito deste trabalho é apresentar uma análise da Sinfonia n. 1 (“O Imprevisto”) de Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887–1959) a partir de sua estrutura formal e narrativa. A obra foi composta em 1916 e é estruturada como se fosse um poema sinfônico, com texto programático escrito pelo próprio compositor. A narrativa literária é recoberta por outra, de caráter musical, estruturada em forma cíclica segundo o método de Vincent d’Indy (1909). A análise irá buscar pontos de aproximação e afastamento entre as narrativas literária e musical, segundo teorias da forma musical, usando terminologias de Hepokoski e Darcy (2006), Vande Moortele (2009, 2013) e Stoïanova (2000); teorias de narratividade musical propostas por Eero Tarasti (1994) e Byron Almén (2003, 2008); e análises tópicas, segundo Leonard Ratner (1980), Wye Allanbrook (1983), Raymond Monelle (2000, 2006) e outros. A intertextualidade se manifesta no plano musical, com obras de Berlioz, Liszt, Wagner, Franck, Nepomuceno e Debussy, mas também no plano literário, com Dante, Camões, Drummond, Graça Aranha e Haroldo de Campos. Palavras-chave: Villa-Lobos; Sinfonia; Narratividade; Teoria das tópicas; Análise musical; Intertextualidade

Sinfonia nº 4 de Villa-Lobos: a vitória, a derrota e a volta por cima.

O propósito deste trabalho é apresentar uma análise da Sinfonia no 4 (“A Vitória”) de Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959) a partir de sua estrutura formal e narrativa. A obra foi composta em 1919 para celebrar o final da primeira guerra mundial, e sua estreia foi programada para um concerto dedicado ao casal real belga que visitava o Brasil em 1920.Originalmente estruturada como um poema sinfônico em três partes, a obra se baseia em texto escrito por Luís Gastão d’Escragnolle Dória (1869-1948). A narrativa literária é recoberta por outra, de caráter musical, estruturada em forma cíclica segundo o método de Vincent d’Indy. A análise irá buscar pontos de aproximação e afastamento entre as narrativas literária e musical, segundo teorias de narratividade propostas por Eero Tarasti (1994) e Byron Almén (2008), além de análises tópicas, segundo Leonard Ratner (1980), Wye Allanbrook (1983), Raymond Monelle (2000; 2006) e outros. O objetivo é interpretar os aspectos musicalmente significativos resultantes da intertextualidade entre música e texto.

The Uses and Disadvantages of Opera History

This chapter poses a revisionist approach by positing the “unhistorical thinking” by which revival of Christoph Willibald Gluck’s works was defined. When the composer’s works began to be revived from around 1900, after only a few performances since 1837, they might have been interpreted in common with the music-historical approach proposed by the composer and pedagogue Vincent d’Indy. But the fascination with Gluck’s operas is seen here within the persistence of a canonizing rhetoric predicated on universality, indeed often on atemporality, which complicates the historicism that was active in the art world generally from about 1870 to 1920 and that became the dominant ideology in Parisian operatic culture. This chapter is paired with Flora Willson’s “Phantoms at the Opéra: Meyerbeer and de-canonization.”

Albert Roussel

“In expressing my thought clearly, I sought only to serve my art. I hope I have succeeded. That’s the only recompense I desire” (Hoérée 1938, p. 119, cited under Studies by Roussel’s Contemporaries). So spoke Albert Charles Paul Marie Roussel (b. 1869–d. 1937) near the end of his life, and most contemporaries agreed that he achieved his goal. From an unlikely beginning, he rose to become the most celebrated elder composer for the interwar generation. Born in Tourcoing in northeastern France, the composer was orphaned by age eight and raised by relatives. After a seven-year naval career, he began serious music lessons at age twenty-five. Following private lessons in counterpoint and harmony with Eugène Gigout (b. 1844–d. 1925), Roussel enrolled in the composition program taught by Vincent d’Indy (b. 1851–d. 1931) at the Schola Cantorum; in 1902, while still a student, he became its Professor of Counterpoint. In 1908 he married Blanche Preisach (b. 1880–d. 1962), and for their honeymoon they took a four-month journey to India and the Far East. He resigned from the Schola in 1914, served as a transport officer in the First World War, and after hostilities ended he and his wife moved to Varengeville-sur-mer on the Norman coast (the sea entranced Roussel throughout his life). His musical voice changed markedly over his career: from a prewar style that combined scholiste methods of construction with chords and colors drawn from Debussy and India (to 1918), he moved to a harmonically astringent language (1918–1926), and ultimately to a personal neoclassicism that united austere “classical” structures and nondescriptive content with “romantic” feeling expressed through harmony and rhythm. As Nicole Labelle puts it in her article on Roussel for the New Grove Dictionary, “He forged a personal, unique style in a modern idiom resting on the foundations of traditional music” (Labelle 2001, cited under General Overviews and Reference Sources). Commentators repeatedly praised Roussel’s “independent spirit” that “constantly renews itself.” The price of such individuality was that Roussel was often more respected than heard; as his former student Jean Cartan testily wrote, “The public doesn’t know Albert Roussel—or worse, it thinks it knows him and is grossly mistaken—and this state of affairs is entirely the fault of our esteemed artists [messieurs les artistes]” (Labelle 1985, p. 21, cited under Roussel’s Students). Nevertheless, Roussel enjoyed the deep respect of many of his fellow musicians, both in France and abroad—as the items in Memorial Tributes demonstrate—and continues to do so today.