THE ART SONG OF EDMUNDO VILLANI-CÔRTES: A PERFORMANCE GUIDE OF SELECTED WORKS

• Main Author: Rodrigues, Irailda Eneli Barros Silva
• Format: Others
• Published: UKnowledge 2014
• Subjects: Brazilian Art Song; Edmundo Villani-Côrtes; Brazilian IPA; Vocal Pedagogy; Brazilian music; Latin American Languages and Societies; Musicology; Music Pedagogy; Music Practice; Other Spanish and Portuguese Language and Literature; Portuguese Literature
• Online Access: http://uknowledge.uky.edu/music_etds/25; http://uknowledge.uky.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1027&context=music_etds

The purpose of this study is to present a performance guide for singers on twelve selected songs in Brazilian Portuguese for voice and piano by Brazilian composer, pianist, and arranger Edmundo Villani-Côrtes (b.1930). Since 1949, Villani-Côrtes has been active in the musical scene of Brazil. He has a unique compositional style that seamlessly combines elements of both art music and popular music. Villani-Côrtes’s body of works includes over two hundred compositions for solo instrumental music, orchestral music, choral music, and art song. He has written over sixty songs in Brazilian Portuguese, including the Ciclo Cecília Meireles (1987), winner of the 1988 Prize of the Associação Paulista de Críticos de Arte (A.P.C.A.), but most of these remain unpublished. This performance guide is the result of three years of research, study and personal communication between the author, Villani-Côrtes, and poets whose words the composer used as lyrics. It offers a comprehensive body of information relevant for both the performer and voice teacher who approach this new and untraditional repertoire. It includes a concise biography of the composer, biographical information for the poets, comments on the compositional style of Villani-Côrtes, an overview of the Brazilian Portuguese International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)—with a chart of Brazilian Portuguese Sounds, IPA transcriptions with English word-by-word translations and poetic versions of all the lyrics, comments from the composer and the poets on each of the songs, and the technical information, pedagogical suggestions, and interpretative insights provided by the author.