Sounding Brazilianness: Race, Nation, and Ideology in the Music of Antônio Carlos Gomes Pubblico
Batterman, Christopher (Spring 2019)
Abstract
This thesis examines the music of Brazilian composer Antônio Carlos Gomes (1836-1896) with respect to the nation-building project of the 19th century. Gomes, hailed today as one of Brazil’s greatest composers of art music, frequently found himself in the company of some of Brazil’s most powerful men—politicians, nobles, intellectuals, and even the Emperor corresponded with and supported the composer’s music. Taking this elite network as a point of departure, this thesis examines the way Gomes’ music operated within political and ideological spheres. In particular, the study examines the way the composer’s music engaged with notions of “Brazilianness,” a discourse that encompassed the various racial, national, political, and social identities that were at play during the enterprise of nation-building.
My focus is on Gomes’ most seminal works—Il Guarany (1870), Lo Schiavo (1889), and Colombo (1893). The study examines the place of these pieces in the historical development of Brazil, and the way in which dominant society engages with music as a means of reproducing and reifying ideological notions of race and nation. I consider music, then, as a site in which concepts of “Brazilianness” can be constructed, negotiated, and contested. This thesis argues that music is mutually constitutive with the political and ideological contexts in which it is produced, performed, and consumed—the dominant societal discourses regarding race and nation inform musical articulations of “Brazilianness,” which, in turn, act to support, validate, and embolden the initial discourse. In situating his compositions in the discourse of the late 19th century, I argue that his operas produced a specific, racialized notion of “Brazilianness” that mediated notions of nationalism, modernity, and cosmopolitanism.
Table of Contents
Introduction 1
Chapter 1: Projections of Other: Indigeneity, Exoticism, and the Brazilian Opera in Italy 29
A Brazilian Composer in Italy: Gomes in Milan and the Context of Il Guarany’s Premiere…...33
Indians, Portuguese, and Spanish: Il Guarany…………………………………………………...42
Indigeneity as “Other” and the Exoticization of Brazil………………………………………….47
Projections of “Brazil”: The Brazilian Landscape……………………………………………….59
Chapter 2: Projections of Self: Race, Nation, and Il Guarany’s Premiere in Brazil 77
From O Guaraní to Il Guarany: Indianismo’s Literary Roots…………………………………..81
In Search of Nation: The Paraguayan War and its Antagonisms………………………………...89
“Selvaggi” e “Cristiano”: Musical Antagonisms and Constructions of Brazilian Indigeneity….97
Gomes, Brazil, and Europhilia: Towards a Definition of the “Brazilian Self”…………………113
Contestations of Il Guarany’s “Brazilianness” in Brazil and Beyond………………………….120
Chapter 3: “The Glorious Composer of Abolition!”: Lo Schiavo, Modernity, and the Construction of Race in Brazil 132
Towards a “Brazilianate” and “Modern” Sound: Carlos Gomes in the 1880s…………………137
Lo Schiavo: The Abolistionist Anthem That Was Not…………………………………………147
In Search of Race: Racial Thought in the Nation-Building Project……………………………154
“A Raça Brasileira”: Musical Constructions of Race and Indigeneity…………………………162
Musical Negotiations of “Brazilianness” and Modernity………………………………………174
Chapter 4: Once More on the Worlds Stage: The First Republic, Colombo, and Brazil’s Cosmopolitan Desires 189
Of Peripheries and Margins: The Intricacies of Nation-Building and Cosmopolitanism………193
The 1893 World Columbian Exposition and an Exported Image of “Brazil”………………….202
A Shift in Paradigm: Colombo and a Universal “Brazilianness”………………………………212
Conclusion 227
Epilogue: On the Musicological Canon and Exclusion 243
Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………247
About this Honors Thesis
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