CESEM Editions

Noble et sentimental

2025-04-04T12:20:05+00:00

Pedro de Freitas Branco (1896-1963) was one of the most prominent figures in 20th-century Portuguese music. Throughout his career, he revitalised the Portuguese music scene by creating various opera companies, organising the New Symphonic Concerts in Lisbon, and serving as the conductor of the Orquestra Sinfónica da Emissora Nacional. He also developed an international career, regularly conducting different European orchestras and being regarded as a leading interpreter of Maurice Ravel's orchestral music. This book examines the reasons behind the recognition of Freitas Branco's interpretations of Ravel’s works. It also seeks to explore the aesthetic dialogue between the two men and how this was fundamental to Freitas Branco’s interpretations. Additionally, it seeks to understand why Ravel might have prioritised Freitas Branco's interpretations and approach, and how this compares with other performances of Ravel’s music at the time, thus defining Freitas Branco’s unique identity as an interpreter.

O órgão em Portugal no final do Antigo Regime

2025-04-05T23:01:27+00:00

This book contributes to knowledge about the life and work of Friar José Marques e Silva, but above all, it sheds light on the character of Portuguese organ building at the end of the Ancien Régime. It is the result of João Vaz's doctoral thesis, in which he explores the theme of organ music in Portugal at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century, as well as the relationship between the instruments built during that period and the performance of this repertoire.

Lutando na periferia

2025-04-05T22:55:11+00:00

“Considering the period between 1860 and the establishment of the Portuguese Republic in 1910, this study includes a critical overview of music education before the foundation of the conservatory, as well as the early development of that institution [...]. It does not solely limit itself to the conservatory but thoroughly analyses other institutions and private spaces for music education. From the careful study and analysis of an extensive collection of documentary data, an extremely comprehensive and detailed picture of music education in the capital of a historically highly centralised country emerges for the first time. The relevance of the critical perspective provided by Joaquim Carmelo Rosa lies in the fact that it does not confine itself to music education topics but, through them, provides us with an enlightening image of the usually less esteemed position that professional musicians occupied within Lisbon society and the limited level of expectations and demands they evoked from that same society, which at times seemed to regard amateur musical activity as superior to that of professionals.” Manuel Carlos de Brito

A caminho de novos portos

2025-04-05T23:14:37+00:00

In examining the pianistic literature of Jorge Peixinho, cultivated by the composer’s dialogue with his epoch and his surroundings, this book seeks a better understanding of the role his music played in the development of an exchange between Portugal and the vanguard of Brazilian musical movements from 1970 to 1994. Peixinho was a major participant and programmer in the principal festivals both in Brazil and those of other Latin American countries and many of his compositions for piano served as mediators between the composer’s ideas and that new (old) world audience.

Der Klangfischer

2025-04-06T00:02:38+00:00

O Pescador de sons: desafios para piano em dez peças inéditas is a teaching album aimed at young pianists and their piano teachers. Ten short pieces by Manuel Pedro Ferreira are presented to the public in sheet music for the first time. With each piece, Luísa Tender tackles very specific pianistic issues. Examples include the challenge of choosing fingerings, planning movements with a view to their musical consequence, strategies for improving the hearing of voices in counterpoint, harmonic awareness, memorisation, among others.

Convergências musicais

2025-04-04T11:43:50+00:00

“The observation and articulation of music and sound as social practices and instruments of power and representation have been evident across all eras and regions. From the earliest narratives about the powers of sound to the state of knowledge in this field in the third decade of the 21st century, common concerns are recognised, echoed through time, and changes are noted, particularly in how knowledge is perceived and constructed. The multiplicity of voices associated with post-structuralism, deconstruction, postmodernism, post-colonial and cultural studies –an inheritance of the linguistic turn that marks the last few decades of the 20th century – now thrives in fertile ground, expanding across various fields and perspectives on networked society. Research on music and sound acquires unprecedented interdisciplinary competencies, remedying old methods and proposing new intellectual tools. Nearly a century after Adorno's first substantial publications, there is still much to be done. We continue to write, review, and rewrite the present, or the pasts within the present, because many margins remain margins and many centres continue to dominate. Today, music scholars around the world are publishing some of the most inspired and systematic essays on a multitude of circumstances based on our experience of music and its textualities. The ten chapters of this book present aspects of ongoing research, with a particular focus on Portugal and Brazil in the 20th and 21st centuries. They explore how music and sound collaborate in the production or maintenance of patterns of social interaction and aesthetic agency, creating, legitimising, or disciplining behaviours. Discontinuities are highlighted, aspects of historical linearity and dialectical explanations are disregarded. The generation of groups and networks of convictions, interests, and expectations is discussed, with perspectives on the world observed across historical, material, and symbolic dimensions, structuring the social order. Questions are produced and, we hope, windows of thought are opened.” Paula Gomes-Ribeiro

Música, género, sexualidades

2025-04-04T10:23:44+00:00

“The need to observe social reality through the lens of gender expanded with the growing awareness of the invisibility that had been maintained over a broad domain of knowledge within academic practice. The multiplication of perspectives rooted in gender has intensified, particularly since the 1990s, contributing, among other factors, to the exposure of behaviours and narratives that had long been normalised, as well as aspects of unequal power distribution. [...] Throughout the chapters, a questioning emerges that interrelates frameworks of gender and sexuality in a complex web of relationships associated with musical practice as a social context, human action, and the understanding and production of reality and the world.”

(Paula Gomes-Ribeiro)

Iconografia musical

2025-04-06T20:36:56+00:00

A Linha Temática de Iconografia Musical do CESEM-NOVA FCSH tem uma produção científica - individual e colectiva - já com mais de vinte anos. É desenvolvida por um grupo de investigadores com áreas de trabalho que compreendem um vasto período cronológico e temático. A colecção, iniciada em 2015 com Iconografia Musical: Autores de Países Ibero-Americanos e das Caraíbas (coordenação e edição de Luzia Aurora Rocha), publicou algumas dezenas de estudos inéditos e tem chegado a um vasto público nacional e internacional, contribuindo para a divulgação e promoção da investigação que se desenvolve no seio do CESEM. Em 2016 publicou-se Iconografia Musical: A Música na dimensão do Sagrado, com edição e coordenação de Luís Correia de Sousa e em 2017 Iconografia Musical: Organologia, Construtores e Prática Musical em Diálogo, com edição e coordenação Luzia Aurora Rocha e Sónia Duarte. A opção pela organização da colecção em números temáticos tem permitido alargar o âmbito dos estudos e acolher a participação de investigadores de distintas áreas científicas. Conta já com quatro volumes publicados na forma de livro electrónico (e-book).

Iconografia musical

2025-04-06T20:23:04+00:00

O pescador de sons

2025-04-05T23:51:51+00:00

Francisco de Sá Noronha (1820-1881)

2025-01-28T17:18:04+00:00

“[The author] points out [...] even if at times only implicitly, the place of musicians and music in 19th-century societies, their place in social and economic priorities and hierarchies, and their not always evident connection with other branches of artistic and cultural creation. And she manages to do all this with an engaging narrative, a clear and well-structured line of reasoning, and rigorous evidence, without compromising the readability of the writing. Moreover, she provides an iconographic survey of impressive richness and diversity, allowing the reader direct visual contact, not only with the portraits of the characters and images of the places in the story but also with precious visual documentation. In this book, Luísa Cymbron offers us a double testimony of maturity: her own, as a researcher and essayist of remarkable solidity, with a rare command of her field of study, and also that of Portuguese – or Luso-Brazilian – musicology that is rigorous, thought-provoking, intelligent, informed, professional, and up-to-date, ready to take its rightful place in the international musicological context.” (Rui Vieira Nery)

Log in, live on

2025-04-05T23:40:28+00:00

The sixteen articles gathered in this book present a diverse range of perspectives and incidences on the reconfiguration of musical communication practices and models, in the process of the expansion of the Internet and new forms of networked sociability.

The Notation of the Cantigas de Santa Maria

2025-04-06T19:36:18+00:00

Manuel Pedro Ferreira | Direction

Rui Araújo | Musicography and Editorial assistance

Ana Gaunt | Collaboration

Mariana Lima | Collaboration

The Cantigas de Santa Maria is one of the major monuments of the European medieval culture. It consists of a vast, strictly organized collection of devotional songs in Galician-Portuguese (419 cantigas), in praise of the Virgin Mary or narrating miracles attributed to her. The poetry was written and the music composed or transcribed at the royal court of Castile and León, centred in Seville, under the direction of King Alfonso X, surnamed el Sabio (the Learned). Staves with musical notation, provided for hundreds of songs written on three books between approximately 1270 and 1285, offer an enormous amount of information on musical practice, in a well-defined spatial and temporal context. The aim of this edition was, therefore, to present rigorously the musical notation of the medieval sources of the Cantigas de Santa Maria (considering the limitations of the software used), trying to record, when detectable, any modification to the primitive state of the musical writing in the given source. Summary: Diplomatic edition of the musical notation in the three notated medieval MSS that contain Cantigas de Santa Maria (13th century), in three volumes (one per MS), each with Portuguese and English versions in separate tomes; with introduction, tables and indices. Funding: PEST (UID/EAT/00693/2013) A Notação das Cantigas de Santa Maria: Edição Diplomática / The Notation of the Cantigas de Santa Maria: Diplomatic Edition, dir. Manuel Pedro Ferreira, musicography by Rui Araújo, collaboration of Ana Gaunt and Mariana Lima. Lisboa: CESEM, 2017 [e-book], 3 volumes (2 tomes each): Vol. I: Códice de Toledo (pt) ISBN 978-989-99975-0-9 / Toledo MS. (en) ISBN 978-989-99975-1-6 (198 pp.) Vol. II: Códice Rico (pt) ISBN 978-989-99975-4-7 /Códice Rico (en) ISBN 978-989-99975-5-4 (306 pp.). Vol. III: Códice dos Músicos (pt) ISBN 978-989-99975-2-3 / Códice de los Músicos (en) ISBN 978-989-99975-3-0 (498 pp.) Corrections in the edition: February 2018 – An incorrect transposition by a 3rd was found in the CSM 334 of the Códice de los músicos. The file was replaced. July 2018 – An incorrect transposition by a 2nd was found in the CSM 223 of the Códice de los músicos. The file was replaced. January 2019 – In the CSM 1 of the Toledo MS. two figures were reallocated to get closer to the original version. January 2019 – In CSM 1 of the Códice de los músicos the head of a figure was changed, to be exactly the same as that found in the original version. February 2019 – In CSM 198 of the Códice de los músicos the head of a figure was changed, to be exactly the same as that found in the original version. February 2019 – In CSM 198 of the Códice de los músicos two figures were reallocated to get closer to the original version. February 2019 – An incorrect transposition by a 3rd was found in the CSM 224 of the Códice de los músicos. The file was replaced. February 2019 – An incorrect transposition by a 3rd was found in the CSM 319 of the Códice de los músicos. The file was replaced.

The Notation of the Cantigas de Santa Maria

2025-04-06T19:06:09+00:00

Manuel Pedro Ferreira | Direction

Rui Araújo | Musicography and Editorial assistance

Ana Gaunt | Collaboration

Mariana Lima | Collaboration

Iconografia musical

2025-04-06T20:17:13+00:00

«Iconografia Musical: Organologia, Construtores e Prática Musical em Diálogo» resulta do trabalho do Núcleo de Iconografia Musical (NIM). Este é constituído por uma equipa de seis investigadores – Luzia Rocha (coordenadora), Luís Correia de Sousa, Nicola Bizzo, Sónia Duarte, Ana Dias e Maria Fernandes – que, desde o ano 2000, se têm centrado na pesquisa e estudo de fontes iconográfico-musicais portuguesas e internacionais.

Peças de um mosaico

2025-04-05T22:51:32+00:00

“[This book presents] a series of independent, though in many cases interconnected, essays that, as a whole, contribute to a vast and complex picture of the history of music in Portugal. It includes the indispensable element of aspects of the history of music in overseas territories, particularly in Brazil (…) covering a period of about 300 years, from the 17th century to the early 20th century." David Cranmer

The Notation of the Cantigas de Santa Maria

2025-04-06T19:16:33+00:00

Manuel Pedro Ferreira | Direction

Rui Araújo | Musicography and Editorial assistance

Ana Gaunt | Collaboration

Mariana Lima | Collaboration

A música no Convento de Cristo em Tomar

2025-04-05T22:43:42+00:00

“This work reveals the musical past of the Convent of Tomar, the main house of what was considered the most powerful and emblematic Portuguese religious order: the Order of Christ. Revisiting a brief investigation conducted a hundred years ago by Sousa Viterbo – the only previous study on the musicians of this convent – it is concluded that this was one of the most important centres of musical activity in Portugal. Tomar is comparable to Coimbra, with a Chapel recognised for the excellence of its music at the end of the 16th century, and a majestic instrumental and vocal practice during the 17th century, with its own music written by Friar Fernando de Almeida (1604-1660), the most prominent composer of the Order, which is a remarkable example of Portuguese Mannerist music.

“This book offers the most comprehensive biography of this composer, who, unfortunately, met a tragic and unjust end at the hands of the Inquisition. The liturgical-musical practice in the Order of the Temple — an unexpected and original subject of study — became a starting point for understanding the ceremonial and liturgical-musical practice of the Order of Christ, which succeeded it in Portugal. Finally, the discovery of a music collection from Tomar, entirely unpublished and linked to the church of St John the Baptist in Tomar, may be the first piece of the puzzle, still to be reconstructed, of the musical repertoire of the churches of the Order of Christ.”
Cristina Cota

Música e história

2025-04-05T22:31:48+00:00

This volume aims to highlight the prominent position that Manuel Carlos de Brito has occupied in the field of music history, not only in Portugal, to whose musical past he dedicated most of his studies, but also internationally. As a musicologist, Manuel Carlos de Brito adopted as guiding principles scientific modernisation, a cosmopolitan perspective on research, and the defence of a ‘unified field of musicology where its various branches can collaborate, guided by what might be called an anthropological perspective on musical phenomena.’

His main field of research encompasses music from the 17th to 19th centuries, particularly the study of opera in Portugal during the 18th century. In retrospect, this approach to musical life in Portugal, which sets aside dogmatic prejudices and seeks innovative perspectives solidly grounded in documentation, constitutes one of Manuel Carlos de Brito’s greatest contributions to the discipline.

The Tabula gratulatoria in this volume testifies to his broad scope and privileged relationship with the Latin European world, also reflected in the contributions gathered in this book, written by musicologists from three successive generations, originating from Portugal, Brazil, Spain, England, France, and Italy.

“Um movimento musical como nunca houve em Portugal”

2025-04-05T22:17:38+00:00

“The meticulous research, rigorous treatment, and sharp, historically informed analysis of all the social, cultural, and economic aspects of this musical activity – with particular emphasis on the intense wave of associativism – provide us with a completely new perspective and understanding of musical life during this period. The different and, in some cases, contradictory motivations of the various participants (sometimes resulting in intense rivalries) help us, for the first time, to grasp many issues for which Portuguese musicology had not yet found an adequate answer. [...] This study by Francesco Esposito thus constitutes an important contribution to the understanding of 19th-century Portuguese musical history, undoubtedly earning a prominent place in the historiography of music for this period.” Manuel Carlos de Brito

Uma história social do piano

2025-04-05T22:22:34+00:00

Between 1820 and 1930, the piano was a constant presence in daily life in Madeira. In the first quarter of the 19th century, a musical culture centred on the piano began to take shape in Funchal, characterised by: private soirées and public concerts, where musical performances featuring the piano were the main source of entertainment; a rigorous music education system, in which women gradually gained prominence; a repertoire focused on music for voice and piano, dances, and pieces of a brilliant or virtuosic nature; and a piano import trade, initially from England and, later, predominantly from Germany. From the 1930s onwards, amateur piano playing began to decline, due to strong competition from new technologies such as gramophones, radio, and cinema.

Iconografia musical

2025-04-06T20:05:11+00:00

«É com particular agrado que o Núcleo de Iconografia Musical (NIM) do Centro de Estudos de Sociologia e Estética Musical apresenta uma segunda publicação especialmente dedicada a estudos de Iconografia Musical. Depois da edição anterior, que reuniu um interessante conjunto de textos de autores de países ibero-americanos e Caraíbas, de temáticas diversas, lançamos o desafio no sentido de se prepararem novos estudos tendo como tema central a Música e as Religiões, reconhecendo a importância que a arte dos sons assume no seio das distintas religiões, sob diversas formas e expressões.» Luís Correia de Sousa

Cantate Dominum

2025-04-05T22:07:48+00:00

“Cantate Dominum: Music and Spirituality in Baroque Azulejo by Luzia Rocha surprises us with the revelation of an art that we have always known existed but is now transformed into cascades of blue, arranged in a luminous and pedagogical synthesis. We find ourselves entering churches, convents and manor houses and admiring the masterful azulejo panels that artisan genius has developed over centuries. Among the multiplicity of motifs are familiar epic figures holding trumpets and innocent seraphim singing songs of praise. What we certainly would not have guessed is that these themes would occupy a significant place in azulejo art.

The work brought to light has the merit of synthesising a style to make it more prominent and evident. Syntheses have the merit of gathering what is dispersed and allowing us to better see the unity of scattered notes. The azulejo panels with musical themes, in the most diverse locations, form a true symphony in which the visitor contributes to the composition with the tone of their gaze, intensity of emotions, elevation and depth of feelings, and prolonged contemplation.” Mário Tavares de Oliveira

Joaquim Simões da Hora

2025-04-05T20:10:13+00:00

“[…] Joaquim was a radiant personality who illuminated the lives of those around him, but memories die with those who carry them, because time passes and is unforgiving. If nothing were done to remember him and perpetuate the record of his work and his decisive impact on Portuguese – and Iberian – music, his name would eventually fade into a limbo of occasional vague references.

[…] From inert objects, scattered documentary sources and personal testimonies, the author has managed to rescue from oblivion and brilliantly capture the profile of an exceptional musician. He has reconstructed his learning process, the repertoires he cultivated, the artistic networks he built within and beyond Portugal, the numerous projects he initiated, and the disciples he trained.”
(Rui Vieira Nery)

Iconografia musical

2025-04-06T19:50:37+00:00

Elena Le Barbier Ramos e Mauricio Molina abordam a iconografia musical medieval. Elena Ramos investiga as fontes literárias – designadamente bíblicas, entre outras – em que se baseiam os artistas medievais na sua iconografia musical, e estuda por seu turno esses testemunhos como fontes para uma melhor compreensão do papel da música na sociedade medieval. Molina analisa a complexa questão da imagem da mulher executante na Idade Média, a sua contraditória figura, suscitando respeito e consideração pelas suas destrezas e, simultaneamente, estigmatização e condenação como fonte de “pecado”, por desafiar os estereótipos da ordem social – contradição essa em certa medida resolvida pela tentativa de construção duma imagem “mais limpa” que assegurasse a sua mobilidade social.Também Isabel Porto Nogueira se ocupa extensivamente das questões de género, tomando por objeto fotografias de mulheres intérpretes ou intérpretes/compositoras em programas da década de 1940 e 1950, e descodificando-as na perspetiva da construção da identidade face a um mundo intelectual e artístico então ainda predominantemente masculino. O mesmo tópico está ainda presente no ensaio de Luzia Rocha, incidindo sobre os azulejos de figura avulsa com motivos musicais, presentes em coleções portuguesas, e onde também são abordados outros detalhes musicais e a dimensão organológica. Luís Manuel Correia de Sousa estuda as gravuras de uma obra de referência do Renascimento – Hypnerotomachie Poliphili, de Fransciscus Columna – enquadrando-a na matriz cultural e estético-ideológica da época como revisitação da cultura da Antiguidade. María Carolina Rodríguez Tabata investiga a noção e aplicação da iconografia como método de investigação em textos historiográficos venezuelanos que recorrem à relação entre artes plásticas e música ao abordar a atividade musical na época colonial (séculos XVI-XVIII) – época em que se cria uma cultura de mestiçagem em resultado da confluência “do espanhol, do aborígene e do africano”. Alfredo Piquer Garzón e Ruth Piquer Sanclemente trabalham sobre a obra litográfica de Henri Fantin-Latour, mostrando a sua importância, quer no contexto das relações entre artistas plásticos e músicos na segunda metade do século XIX, quer na renovação dos ideais estéticos.

Finalmente, Verónica Elvira Fernández Díaz aborda a iconografia musical como testemunho sociocultural de uma região específica de Cuba, no quadro de um projeto de salvaguarda do património musical regional que pressupõe o contributo de várias disciplinas musicológicas. Trata-se, pois, de um conjunto de ensaios muito representativo de diversas tendências da iconografia musical, onde se entrecruzam a história, a sociologia, a estética, e donde também não está ausente uma teoria crítica da sociedade.

Escutar a literatura

2025-04-05T19:43:03+00:00

Este livro é sobre a cultura da escuta na literatura portuguesa. Objeto de análise são não só as relações de intertextualidade entre música e literatura, mas também a relavância do universo sonoro em sentido lato na escrita literária. A cultura da escuta implica ainda o que está para além do som: os contextos de interação para os quais ele nos remete, as interpelações que nos faz, a atenção que nos suscita, ou até a aparente indiferença com que o percecionamos. Tornar audível ou inaudível não é socialmente menos relevante do que tornar visível ou invisível. Pelo contrário: nas relações intersubjetivas, bem como entre ser humano e natureza, ou do sujeito consigo próprio, a escuta teve sempre um papel determinante.

Arte de Ser Professor

2025-04-05T20:01:41+00:00

"One of the concerns of the work we've been doing at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, the Department of Communication and Art of the Universidade de Aveiro and the Companhia de Música Teatral has been to help ensure that music reaches our children more and better.

‘This book is one of the centrepieces of this work, based on solid reflections and principles, which aims to inspire others. By creating Grande Bichofonia we have opened up a path that has marked our journey and already inspired other projects. We are now in a position to share our experience, articulating it with the work of colleagues in similar fields.

This publication reports on a particular project, but it also aims to promote wider reflection on relevant issues and access to materials and strategies that ‘resonate’ with our experience. Part of it comes from teacher training, from which the Grande Bichofonia project was born. Some of these reflections, included in the chapter ‘The Grande Grande Bichofonia project in the context of teacher training: from theory to practice’, take a critical view of this." Helena Rodrigues and Paulo Maria Rodrigues

Olhares sobre a música em Portugal no século XIX

2025-04-05T19:30:26+00:00

“[Olhares sobre a música em Portugal no século XIX] is a volume full of unprecedented information that is deeply stimulating for all those dedicated to artistic and cultural studies in Portugal, which demonstrates the richness and complexity of an era to which we are finally beginning to do justice. With this book, we owe the author the unequivocal confirmation that the history of music in 19th-century Portugal truly deserves to be told.”
(Paulo Ferreira de Castro)

Mémoires…Miroirs

2025-04-05T19:01:39+00:00

This volume gathers a selection of presentations from the international colloquium Jorge Peixinho – Mémoires…Miroirs, organised by the Centre for the Study of the Sociology and Aesthetics of Music (CESEM) in the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences at Nova University Lisbon, in collaboration with the Caixa Geral de Depósitos/Culturgest Foundation, on 8–9 October 2010. Over the course of two days, around thirty researchers, musicians, and musicologists discussed the music of Jorge Peixinho, opening new horizons for understanding, documenting specific aspects of his work, and fostering renewed analytical and interpretative approaches to his scores. Some presentations were followed by fascinating discussions, which are transcribed here with minimal editorial intervention, aiming to retain the colloquial liveliness typical of such a context.

Conceived as a starting point for new approaches, reflections, and studies on the work of Jorge Peixinho, this book is intended for all those interested in Portuguese music and the arts of the second half of the 20th century.

Marcos Portugal

2025-04-05T19:10:50+00:00

This volume brings together 26 chapters on the life and work of Marcos António Portugal (1762–1830), the Luso-Brazilian composer who, during his lifetime, achieved an international prominence that has yet to be matched or surpassed. In an act of close collaboration, especially with Portuguese and Brazilian specialists, it aims to reveal, demystify, and reassess this prominent figure, who has often been the subject of controversy.

Mozart, Marcos Portugal and Their Time

2025-04-04T22:53:06+00:00

The present volume brings together texts by researchers from Portugal and internationally working, on the one hand, on Mozart – the composer who most fully symbolises the last quarter of the eighteenth century – and, on the other, on his younger contemporary Marcos Portugal – a composer possibly more typical of the Europe of their time and certainly more widely in fashion than Mozart was – as well as on the period in which they worked. The apparent disparity between the lives and fortunes of the two composers results in a fascinating, broad-based discussion of the contexts of composition and reception of the works of both.

Ópera e caricatura

2025-04-04T23:02:30+00:00

“The caricaturist Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro was a regular visitor to the São Carlos Theatre. In his newspaper O Antonio Maria, he created several caricatures of the performances at this theatre, thus presenting opera in its most comedic aspect. These caricatures provide us with valuable information about singers, managers, audiences, and the cultural life of Lisbon in the late-19th century. The author’s approach focuses on the iconographic-musical aspects in close relationship with musicology, history, sociology, and art history.”

Ópera e caricatura

2025-04-04T23:34:49+00:00

Expression, Truth and Authenticity

2025-04-04T22:43:21+00:00

“Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) is one of the most representative German philosophers of the 20th century and of the Frankfurt School. Amongst the main topics of his critical thinking is aesthetic theory, which he developed in particular in many of his essays on music. By dealing mainly with Adorno’s theory of music and musical performance, the essays collected in this book offer critical insights not only into his approach to music but also his philosophy as a whole. Adorno’s theory of music and musical performance does not merely exemplify his aesthetic theory, but, rather, plays an essential role in its development and his critical approach to culture and society. The constellation in which Adorno’s unity of thought comes to light presupposes, in fact, an essential relationship between his theory of art and his social theory.

Starting from the key concepts of ‘expression’, ‘truth’ and ‘authenticity’, relevant aspects of Adorno’s musical thought are approached critically in this volume: the link between music and language, and the ‘speech-character’ of art; ‘meaning’, ‘mimesis’, ‘idiom’, and their role in musical interpretation; ‘fetishism’, ‘phantasmagoria’, and the idea of ‘unity of arts’; ‘new music’ and the culture industry; the relation between ethics and aesthetics; and the critique of ‘quotation’. Adorno is compared with Nietzsche, Lyotard and Wittgenstein. Particular emphasis is given to the discussion of his approaches to Schubert, Wagner, Mahler, Berg and Strauss.”

Medieval Sacred Chant

2025-04-04T22:17:28+00:00

This book presents a collection of unpublished essays on religious music, specifically one-voice (sacred monody) music during the Middle Ages, and the notation used to transmit it between the 12th and 16th centuries. Written by various specialists, the essays cover Buddhist chanting (in Japan), Orthodox Christian chanting of Byzantine origin (from Greece to Russia), and Christian chanting of the Western European Catholic Church (Hispanic, Gallican, Old Roman, and Roman-Frankish liturgies). These essays derive from some of the presentations given at the colloquium Medieval Sacred Monody / Monodia sacra medieval (Lisbon/Évora, 2–5 June 2005), which aimed to draw attention in Portugal to the academic fascination with the oldest musical repertoires.”

Investigação em psicologia da música

2025-04-04T15:38:55+00:00

"Research in Music Psychology – Critical Studies aims to help researchers interested in the fascinating field of music psychology sharpen their critical thinking. The authors believe that exercising critical thinking is at the core of creativity. It is worth making new proposals when we do not fully identify with those that already exist. However, no one creates from scratch. In fact, creativity is often about disorder, reorganisation, and a different focus on other pieces of the puzzle of previously received information. This is believed to be the foundation for new studies and research projects to emerge. Research in Music Psychology – Critical Studies ultimately aims to assist researchers in finding new research problems. Original, captivating, capable of inspiring us to work with a sensibility that lasts our whole life."

Constança Capdeville

2025-04-04T15:00:41+00:00

"This text discusses the thesis Constança Capdeville et le théâtre musical au Portugal. La voix contemporaine (University of Paris 8, January 1997). Through the analysis of works by Constança Capdeville, it aims to establish reasonable parallels between these and the forms of staged music creation of the 20th century, specifically theatre/dance, performance art, multimedia, sound poetry, and contemporary opera – forms to which compositional and aesthetic research in the domain of musical theatre has made significant contributions. Thus, the composer's works have been integrated into the recurring processes of the genre: relationships between text and music, systematic use of citation and allusion, unconventional vocal techniques, and the use of absurdity, contradiction, irony, paradox, and contradictions; signs of the influence of philosophical ideas, poetry, visual arts, and the aesthetic movements of major predecessors: Camus, Artaud, Steiner, Schwitters, Müller, Kafka, Joyce, Dali, Bausch, Cunningham; and composers such as Mozart, Debussy, Brahms, Varèse, Satie, Cage, Kagel, and Aperghis. Beyond emphasising how Constança Capdeville positioned herself within the artistic trends of her time, the text highlights her commitment to new forms aimed at creating new types of communication with audiences, in an aesthetic linked to what was then "contemporary music”, which are paradigmatic of today's theatrical/music spectacles."