The project “Euterpe unveiled” centred its tasks in three distinct areas of research, addressing the artistic activities (composition and musical performance) of Portuguese women during the 20^th and 21^st centuries: 1) the study of the interaction between the domestic and professional contexts in music-making, focusing on gender-marked patterns of creation and interpretation during the early years of the republican period and the dictatorship regime; 2) the study of paradigmatic women composers (1910-2000), focusing on collecting, systematising, and notating their musical works and documentation, and on critical contemporary discourses associated with their activity and the connection of these discourses to gender ideologies; 3) the study of recent developments in composition/performance, focusing on collaborative and dialogic paradigms of creation, and their relationship to storytelling and gendered constructs.

These research and work perspectives acknowledged the deficiencies of previous and extant documentation and publications, assuming a ‘compensatory’ (Citron 1993) research stance, with the aim of contributing towards the unveiling of histories and practices that musicological and performance studies outputs, in Portugal, had not systematically addressed.

Archival research was one of the tasks that occupied a significant part of the research team’s activities. This task, including data collection and systematisation, was undertaken in several institutional archives, such as the National Library, the Library of the University of Aveiro, Casa dos Patudos, Portuguese Music Museum, National Museum of Music, Library of the Portuguese Catholic University – Porto, the Library of the Porto Music Conservatory, among others. Archival research also included private collections, such as the archives of the music collector João Pedro Mendes dos Santos, the pianist Olga Prats, the cellist Isabel Millet, or the singer Oliveira Lopes. Team members digitized a large and varied corpus of documentation and musical scores, and used this data as basis for the project’s publications and presentations, as well as for other peer-reviewed publications and events promoted by publishers, journals and congress organizers not associated with the project. This documental corpus included several types of relevant contents, namely musical manuscripts and autographs, out-of-print editions, professional and institutional records, graphic materials (photos, paintings), documentation in electronic or digital supports (audio and video), and other types of documents (concert programmes, posters, etc.), which have been partly uploaded to the project’s database. Team members have also interviewed important and knowledgeable personalities, a research focus that has allowed for the collection of historical information, and the study of artists who are currently active.

The systematisation and discussion of the data gathered during the project was the basis for two paths of dissemination of the research team’s outputs:

1) Publication or presentation in ‘standard’ peer-reviewed contexts of scientific edition and dissemination, including book chapters, articles, and papers read at national and international conferences, as detailed in the outputs listing below.

2) Content production funded by the project and coordinated by team members, or supervised by team members. This item includes publications and contents such as books, ethnographic documentaries, the project’s website and database, dissertations and theses, CDs and DVDs, as well as other contents for wider dissemination, such as posters, talks, exhibits and online resources, concerts and artistic products, and organization of scientific events.

Regarding these project-produced outputs, three specific lines of publication/dissemination of results were created, taking into account the typologies of contents:

a) “Trabalhos de Euterpe” (“Labours of Euterpe”), coordinated by Helena Marinho and Manuel Deniz Silva, focused on the edition of unpublished texts by women performers, composers, and sponsors or promoters of musical activities.
b) “Sons de Euterpe” (“Sounds of Euterpe”), coordinated by Helena Marinho, addressed the critical edition of musical scores, as well as the recording of works by Portuguese women composers. Results included critical editions of musical scores, encompassing a wide variety of musical genres that include orchestral, chamber, vocal and solo instrumental repertoire.
c) “Vozes de Euterpe” (“Voices of Euterpe”), coordinated by Helena Marinho, gathered and disseminated, through the former project’s website, documental interviews with women composers and musical performers, or with their surviving relatives

Keywords

Portuguese art music of the 20th and 21st centuries; Gender studies; Female composers; Female performers.

Outputs

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Euterpe unveiled: Women in Portuguese musical creation and interpretation during the 20th and 21st centuries

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