Biography
Mariana Portas de Freitas is a PhD Candidate Integrated Researcher in Historical Musicology at INET-MD Institute of Ethnomusicology Music and Dance, as well as at Caravelas – CESEM Centre for Studies of Sociology and Musical Aesthetics, both belonging to the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences of the Nova University of Lisbon. She develops her PhD project under the guidance of Rui Vieira Nery. She holds an Advanced Studies Diploma and a Master's Degree in Historical Musicology from the same Faculty, as well as a Bacharelor's Degree in Law from Portuguese Catholic University, Lisbon. She works at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, where she has gathered experience from projects implemented by the Foundation in the field of cultural heritage of Portuguese influence around the world. She was editorial coordinator of several books on musicology published within the series Musicological Studies of the Gulbenkian Foundation, under the direction of Rui Vieira Nery.
Doctoral Project
Title
Models and singularities in Portuguese-Brazilian Music Theory of the Ancien Regime: Caetano de Mello de Jesus’ Escola de Canto de Orgaõ (Salvador da Baía, 1759-60)
Advisor
Abstract
In the context of cultural life in colonial Brazil of the first half of the XVIII century, mostly influenced by the central religious institutions such as the Cathedral or the Jesuits’ school, a vast manuscript work on music theory was written in Salvador in 1759-60, entitled Escola de Canto de Orgaõ. It was the largest music treatise to be written in Portuguese language in the Ancien Régime. Its author, chapel master Caetano de Melo de Jesus, endeavored to compile all the musical knowledge existent up to his time, according to the scholastic tradition and using and abundant prose of the Baroque style. Seeking to emulate the large music theory compilations produced in Spain in the XVII and XVIII centuries, Caetano tried to exceed the patterns of the treatises written in his homeland. This research will focus on the complete transcription, comparative-critical analysis of the text and a global appreciation of its significance. As yet considerably ignored by music historians, the relevance of this treatise has been underlined by both Portuguese and Brazilian musicology.
AdvisorAbstractIn the context of cultural life in colonial Brazil of the first half of the XVIII century, mostly influenced by the central religious institutions such as the Cathedral or the Jesuits’ school, a vast manuscript work on music theory was written in Salvador in 1759-60, entitled Escola de Canto de Orgaõ. It was the largest music treatise to be written in Portuguese language in the Ancien Régime. Its author, chapel master Caetano de Melo de Jesus, endeavored to compile all the musical knowledge existent up to his time, according to the scholastic tradition and using and abundant prose of the Baroque style. Seeking to emulate the large music theory compilations produced in Spain in the XVII and XVIII centuries, Caetano tried to exceed the patterns of the treatises written in his homeland. This research will focus on the complete transcription, comparative-critical analysis of the text and a global appreciation of its significance. As yet considerably ignored by music historians, the relevance of this treatise has been underlined by both Portuguese and Brazilian musicology.Research Group: Historical and Cultural Studies in Music