Composition in Bahia, Brazil

Composition in Bahia, Brazil:Ernst Widmer and His Octatonic Strategies Paulo Costa Lima (bio) The distinctive role of Ernst Widmer (1927-90) in the realm of Brazilian musical creation during the second half of the twentieth century is supported by the broad perspectives of a project that encompasses both teaching composition and creating music. In fact, according to Widmer (1988, 5), teaching composition and composing are similar processes, rooted in a set of common principles. These perspectives include the projection of a discourse about composition and teaching, the concrete development of pedagogical practices, the creation of musical works, and the elaboration of a compositional theory underlying these pieces, as well as the construction of cultural and institutional leadership both locally and nationally. All these components are closely connected to the process of cultural interaction that characterizes Widmer's lengthy permanence in Brazil, whether through direct pedagogical experience and the inevitable interchange with students, or through conscious experimentation involving local materials and thematic horizons. Widmer's experience differs from many other instances in which a foreign composer establishes himself in Brazil, proclaiming a specific compositional practice or aiming at the creation of a "school of composition," something that usually requires an affiliation to a model. Quite the contrary, for Widmer it represented an investment in the singular development of student-composers, leading to a movement that described itself as anti-school, and that tried to become relevant through questioning accepted principles, both traditional and modern ones. Widmer's teachings entailed a necessary interaction and friction between European creative practices and the perspectives of the tropics, developing a very peculiar parity [End Page 157] between students and professor, something that evolved quite naturally into the creation of the Group of Composers of Bahia (GCB) in 1966. The initiative to train composers in Bahia possessed all the ingredients to be considered far-fetched and implausible, viewed from the perspective of 1963, when the group was officially formed. It could seem so even from the standpoint of Seminários de Música, the school of music modeled after a German conservatory and established in 1954 with the aim of catching up with the contemporary artistic milieu in Europe. What credibility could be associated with the idea of converting these young people recently admitted to the Seminários into active leaders of the compositional movement in Brazil? Nevertheless, this was precisely what happened in 1969, just six years after the beginning of the course, when some of these students won national recognition at the Festival da Guanabara, an event that has become a paradigm for developments in the area of composition in Brazil. Bahia showed no precedent in recent history to compare to this dynamic of educating and articulating student-composers. Between 1963 and 1987 Widmer became deeply involved in the instruction of sixty-seven students, thirty of whom have since become recognized composers. Despite this prolific activity, there are no comments in the musicological literature concerning a common style practiced in Bahia. The proposals of Lindembergue Cardoso, Fernando Cerqueira, Jamary Oliveira, Agnaldo Ribeiro, and others are always presented as quite autonomous enterprises, reverberating distinctive identities, even though they share a common background. This is an issue that brings about immediately the problem of compositional identity and its construction in Bahia, and it represents a challenge for the analytic efforts directed to the production of composers related to the GCB: What compositional principles underlie this important movement? How can these principles be understood as reflecting a process of identity construction? How do they relate to the overt discourse of the Group? It seems reasonable to believe that the analytical elaboration of Widmer's music will present significant elements in the process of addressing these questions. Indeed, this constitutes one of the best justifications for analyzing Widmer's output. Thus, the present undertaking transcends the immediate meaning of the individual work of the composer, or even its insertion in the broader scene of European avant-garde, and points to a better understanding of the compositional path of a Brazilian group. It departs from the interaction with this Swiss-born professor, dedicated to cultural dialogues, organic developments, and inclusive solutions. Two basic ideas, organicism and relativism (inclusive

Art · Composition (language · Geography · Literature · Musical · Realm · Sociology · Visual arts · Brazilian cultural history and politics · Musicology and Musical Analysis · Schopenhauer and Stefan Zweig

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