Osvaldo Costa de Lacerda (March 23, 1927 – July 18, 2011) was a Brazilian composer and professor of music. Lacerda is known for a
Brazilian nationalist musical style that combines elements of Brazilian folk and popular music as well as twentieth-century art music, as exemplified in the works of his teacher
M. Camargo Guarnieri (1907–1997). His compositional output includes works for orchestra, choir, smaller vocal and instrumental ensembles, voice and piano, solo instrument and piano, solo piano, and other solo instruments. He received several musical awards during his lifetime, including the
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, and contributed significantly to the training of younger musicians in Brazil as a professor of composition and theory, member of various musical organizations and societies, and author of textbooks for theory, ear training, and notation.
Biography
Early life and musical training
Lacerda was born in the city of
São Paulo
São Paulo (, ; Portuguese for ' Saint Paul') is the most populous city in Brazil, and is the capital of the state of São Paulo, the most populous and wealthiest Brazilian state, located in the country's Southeast Region. Listed by the Ga ...
in 1927 and remained there throughout his early years. He began his musical training with piano lessons from teacher Ana Veloso de Resende when he was nine years old, later studying piano with José Kliass, and he also started composing in his youth. Between 1945 and 1947 Lacerda studied harmony and counterpoint with Ernesto Kierski and singing with Olga Urbany Ivanov (his mother was also a singer). Clayton Juliano Rodrigues Miranda notes in his dissertation that piano and voice, the two instruments that the composer studied when he was young, would eventually become areas of compositional strength for Lacerda.
Impetus to study composition seriously came when the São Paulo Municipal String Quartet commissioned a work from Lacerda in 1952. At this point, Lacerda began lessons with composer Camargo Guarnieri, with whom he would continue to study until 1962 and who helped popularize Lacerda’s music through recitals. Alongside his studies with Guarnieri, Lacerda also attended law school at the University of São Paulo, graduating in 1961; after earning his degree he focused mainly on composition. Lacerda also founded two artistic societies during this period: the Sociedade Paulista de Arte (1949–1955) and the Sociedade Pró Música Brasileira (1961–1966). In 1962, Lacerda received first prize in the Brazilian National Composition Competition in 1962 for his orchestral suite ''Piratininga''.
In 1962 Lacerda received a
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship and traveled to the U.S. to study with
Vittorio Giannini
Vittorio Giannini (October 19, 1903 – November 28, 1966) was an American neoromantic composer of operas, songs, symphonies, and band works.
Life and work
Giannini was born in Philadelphia on October 19, 1903. He began as a violinist under the t ...
in New York and
Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland (, ; November 14, 1900December 2, 1990) was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later a conductor of his own and other American music. Copland was referred to by his peers and critics as "the Dean of American Com ...
at
Tanglewood
Tanglewood is a music venue in the towns of Lenox and Stockbridge in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts. It has been the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra since 1937. Tanglewood is also home to three music schools: the ...
. In 1965 Lacerda participated in the Inter-American Composers Seminar at Indiana University and the Third Inter-American Music Festival in Washington, D.C., having been chosen as the country’s representative for these events by the Brazilian Minister of International Relations. Lacerda returned to Brazil after his American studies and festival participation, and from the late 1970s to early 1980s he also studied orchestration with conductor Roberto Schnorenberg.
Later life and career
From the mid-1960s onward, Lacerda’s career consisted of composing, teaching, writing music textbooks, and promoting the Brazilian national style in art music. He taught at the Escola Municipal de Música de São Paulo from 1969 to 1992 (a government-funded school providing free instrumental and theory teaching), at Santa Marcelina College, and at several music conferences and festivals. He also assisted Guarnieri by giving new students preparatory lessons in counterpoint and harmony. He became a member of the ''Academia Brasileira de Música'' in 1972. Lacerda married pianist Eudóxia de Barros (b. 1937) in 1981, and throughout her lifetime she has remained a strong supporter of the composer and his music. In 1984 Lacerda founded his third artistic society, the Centro de Música Brasileira; this organization is still active today. Lacerda also wrote four textbooks that are frequently used in Brazil and Portugal: ''Compêndio de Teoria Elementar da Música'', ''Exercícios de Teoria Elementar da Música'', ''Curso Preparatório de Solfejo e Ditado Musical'', and ''Regras de Grafia Musical''.
Lacerda continued to receive honors and awards throughout his mature years. The ''
Associação Paulista de Criticos de Arte'' awarded him “Best Chamber Work” and “Best Symphonic Work” for several pieces: Trio for Violin, Cello, and Piano (1970); ''Quatro pegas modais'' (1975); ''Apassionato, cantilena e tocata'' for viola and piano (1972); Concerto for Flute and String Orchestra (1981); Sonata for Oboe and Piano (1986); and ''Cromos'' for Piano and Orchestra (1994). He was featured in festivals both in Brazil and the United States, including Sonidos de las Américas in New York City (1996), the 31st Bar Harbor Music Festival in Maine (1997), and the Latin American Music Festival at Bard College (1999).
Compositional style
The Brazilian nationalist musical style that Guarnieri imparted to Lacerda had roots in the writings of aesthetician
Mario de Andrade and continued in the vein of composers such as
Heitor Villa-Lobos and
Francisco Mignone
Francisco Paulo Mignone (September 3, 1897, São Paulo – February 19, 1986, Rio de Janeiro) was one of the most significant figures in Brazilian classical music, and one of the most significant Brazilian composers after Heitor Villa-Lobos. I ...
. Composers in this style brought together features of European art music and musical elements from Brazilian folk and popular music, which itself blends European, African, and indigenous musical heritages. Guarneri taught that composers should absorb these folk sources so that they could naturally use and transform them in their own compositions. This nationalist style can generally be described as neoclassical because it draws from the approaches to form, harmony, and melody of the classical Western tradition, combining these with Brazilian and contemporary European sources of inspiration. In the 1950s, Guarnieri and other composers advocated for the continuation of this national style despite attempts of the ''Música Viva'' movement, led by the German-Brazilian composer
Hans-Joachim Koellreutter
Hans-Joachim Koellreutter (2 September 1915 – 13 September 2005) was a Brazilian composer, teacher and musicologist.
Koellreutter was born in Freiburg, Germany and lived in Brazil from 1937 onward, where he became one of the country's most i ...
, to promote
dodecaphonic composition in Brazil.
One characteristic of Lacerda’s music that reflects his focus on Brazilian traditions is his use of folk dance titles and musical features in many of his instrumental works. Examples of such pieces include his twelve ''Brasilianas'' (four-movement piano suites, composed 1965–1993) and three pieces for oboe and piano, “Aboio,” “Segunda Valsa,” and “Toada.” He also set Brazilian children’s music in some works; according to scholar of Brazilian music David Appleby, music for children or about childhood has historically been an important part of the Brazilian tradition. Lacerda’s oboe and piano work “Variações sobre dois cantos infantis” consists of variations on the children’s songs “Carneirinho, carneirão” and “Sapo Cururú.” In his vocal works, Lacerda set texts in Portuguese as well as some African languages spoken in Brazil. One piece written in a mixture of African languages is his choral work ''Ofulú Lorêrê'': this work is based on a ''
Candomblé'' song that Guarnieri recorded in the state of Bahia, and influences from that Afro-Brazilian ritual tradition can be heard in Lacerda’s treatment of polyphony and rhythm. In his dissertation, Carlos Audi provides a thorough list of “national elements” in Lacerda’s style that come from Brazilian folk and popular genres, including (but not limited to) use of modes, pentatonic scales, melodies with a narrow range, syncopations, ostinatos, and parallel thirds.
Apart from his interest in Brazilian folk and popular sources, Lacerda also took after his teacher Guarnieri in the latter’s neoclassical use of traditional European forms, such as sonata form or theme and variations. Like Guarnieri, Lacerda also drew from broader currents in twentieth-century Western art music, including contemporary techniques in areas of harmony, rhythm, and atonality. Lacerda believed that it was important for nationalist composers to be open to new techniques so that their music could be a source of pride for their country.
Works lists
A list of Lacerda’s works can be found in Gerard Béhague’s entry on the composer in ''
Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart
''Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart: Allgemeine Enzyklopädie der Musik (MGG)'' is one of the world's most comprehensive encyclopedias of music history and musicology, on account of its scope, content, wealth of research areas, and reference t ...
''. A selected works list is also available in Béhague’s entry in
''Grove Music Online''.
[Gerard Béhague, “Lacerda, Osvaldo (Costa de),” in ''Grove Music Online'', Oxford University Press, 2001, https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.15771.]
References
Sources
#Appleby, David P. ''The Music of Brazil''. Austin: The University of Texas Press, 1983.
# Audi, Carlos Eduardo. “Osvaldo Lacerda: His Importance to Brazilian Music and Elements of His Musical Style.” PhD diss. Florida State University, 2006.
# Béhague, Gerard. “Lacerda, Osvaldo (Costa de).” In ''Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart''. Vol. 10, ''Personenteil Kem-Ler''. Edited by Friedrich Blume''.'' Kassel: Bärenreiter-Verlag'','' 2003.
# Béhague, Gerard. “Lacerda, Osvaldo (Costa de).” In ''Grove Music Online''. Oxford University Press, 2001.
https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.15771.
# Béhague, Gerard. ''Music in Latin America: An Introduction''. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1979.
# "Centro de Música Brasileira.” ''Centro de Música Brasileira''. 2018. Accessed 18 November 2018.
http://centrodemusicabrasileira.blogspot.com.
# Di Cavalcanti, Maria José Bernardes. “Brazilian Nationalistic Elements in the “''Brasilianas''” of Osvaldo Lacerda.” PhD diss. Louisiana State University, 2006.
# Fukunaga, Sallie Diane Price. “Music for Unaccompanied Clarinet by Contemporary Latin American Composers.” PhD diss. University of Kansas, 1988.
# Gimenes, Marilia Gabriela do Nascimento. “Osvaldo Lacerda’s Sonata for Flute and Piano (1959): a Performance Guide With Historical Background of Brazilian Genres ''Embolada, Seresta,'' and ''Baião''.” PhD diss. University of North Texas, 2012.
# McCarthy, Keri. “Oboe Music Reviews: Osvaldo Lacerda.” ''The Double Reed'' 36, no. 1 (January, 2013): 165–166.
# Miranda, Clayton Juliano Rodrigues. “The Inception of Trumpet Performance in Brazil and Four Selected Solos for Trumpet and Piano, Including Modern Performance Editions.” PhD diss. North Dakota State University, 2016.
# Montgomery, Patricia. “The Latin American Piano Suite in the Twentieth Century (Performance)''.''” PhD diss. Indiana University, 1978.
# “Osvaldo Lacerda.” ''Academia Brasileira de Música''. 2015. Accessed 18 November 2018.
http://www.abmusica.org.br/academico.php?n=osvaldo-lacerda&id=84.
# “Osvaldo Lacerda (1927–2011).” ''Ava Musical Editions''. 2018. Accessed 29 October 2018.
http://www.editions-ava.com/store/composer/218/.
# Reily, Suzel Ana. “Brazil: Central and Southern Areas.” In ''The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music''. Vol. 2, ''South America, Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean''. Edited by Dale A. Olsen and Daniel E. Sheehy. New York: Garland, 1998.
# Sá, Gustavo de. “Two Centuries of Brazilian Choral Music.” Liner notes for ''Saudade: Choral Music from Brazil''. Kammerchor Apollini et Musis. Vinzenz Weissenburger. Rondeau Production ROP6049, 2011, compact disc.
# Smith, Kristen Lia. “The Influence of Folk and Popular Music on Twentieth-Century Flute Music of Brazil.” PhD diss. University of Cincinnati, 2000.
# Souza Santos, Rubia C. “Selected Piano Trios By Brazilian Composers in the Succession of M. Camargo Guarnieri.” PhD diss. Arizona State University, 2004.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lacerda, Osvaldo
1927 births
2011 deaths
Brazilian composers
Musicians from São Paulo
Pupils of Aaron Copland