Protected
Musical Heritage
It is a pleasure to bring to the public the project Brazilian Music Archives – Restoration and Dissemination: three CDs (out of the nine scheduled) with pieces taken from the collection of manuscripts and sheet music from the Mariana Museum of Music.
With the objective of documenting and disseminating the collection of exemplary works from this important institution of Minas Gerais, inserts with information on the selected pieces accompany the CDs.
The publications and recording were structured from the pieces previously chosen. This first series includes the pieces Pentecost, Mass and Holy Saturday. The conductors Afrânio Lacerda (MG), Naomi Munakata (SP) and Júlio Moretzsohn (RJ), were invited to perform the respective repertoires. The work has been carried out thanks to the sensibility of Petrobras, a company that is aware of the necessity to preserve our cultural heritage in its most comprehensive sense, involving all forms of artistic expression. Therefore, musical creation cannot be omitted or given secondary importance.
The institutions participating in this enterprise aim not only at recovering the manuscripts and printed material from the Mariana Museum of Music, but also restoring them. It is not just a matter of restoring the collection itself but the essence of each musical piece. We seek, with this in mind, the original structure of the scores, the closest possible to its matrix, duly supported by apparatus criticus indicating precisely the sources which had been consulted and modifications made in the music during the publishing process.
Complex, extensive and multiple, with diverse and delicate nuances, the collection was organised in the 70's and 80's by José de Almeida Penalva (Curitiba) and Maria da Conceição Rezende (Belo Horizonte). This work resulted in organising the detached manuscripts and sheet music in 979 files and the production of nine volumes with the description of relevant part of the material. Considering the importance of these actions, there is still a lot to be done to preserve and disseminate this invaluable asset.
For the reason, the researcher Paulo Castagna, from the Instituto de Artes da Universidade Estadual Paulista, - today widely renowned as one of the authorities in historical musicology - to technically co-ordinate the works, with the collaboration of six other researchers of acknowledged experience in musical documentation in our country.
This undertaking, which is likely to take three years, brings together various profissionals, including conductors, musicians, singers, designers, journalists, revisers, photographers, producers, managers, publishers, sound and filming technicians and advisors - all of them with the necessary credentials for accomplishing a perfect performance.
In addition to the production of inedited CDs, which represent the collection, the project has scheduled concerts in Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo performed by a group of guest musicians in order to bring to a large public the researched collection.
Santa Rosa Bureau
Cultural
Fundação Cultural e Educacional da Arquidiocese de Mariana