Mozart Camargo Guarnieri. Canções para Canto e Piano: Uma edição crítica

Abstract

This edition comprises a musical transcription of fourteen songs for voice and piano by Mozart Camargo Guarnieri (1907-1993), composed between 1950 and 1964, which, until the present date, exist only in manuscript form and have not been published. In addition to the faithful transcription of the manuscripts, this work presents a brief historical contextualization of each song, including considerations about premieres, main performers, existing recordings, as well as a brief musical analysis, phonetic transcription, and translation into English. The phonetic transcription is elaborated according to the International Phonetic Association (IPA) and the norms of Brazilian Portuguese sung (Kayama et al, 2007). This critical edition is the result of the doctoral thesis entitled "The Contrapuntal Texture in the Songs for Voice and Piano by Camargo Guarnieri"; in fact, as we investigated Guarnieri's production in this genre, we found that a significant portion of the respective scores had not been edited. The manuscripts used for this edition belong to the composer's collection, housed in the Institute of Brazilian Studies at the University of São Paulo. While transcribing the musical manuscripts, we identified occasional errors in musical notation, such as ligatures, pauses, among others, which we have addressed in this edition as corrections based on the composer's own writing standard, as the clarity in most of the manuscripts facilitated these observations. The methodological conception of this critical edition ismbased on James Grier, especially when he asserts that critical interpretation and editing are inseparable, defining a critical edition as "the transmission of a text that best represents the historical evidence of the sources" (Grier, 1996, p. 156). Therefore, although this work reproduces the musical text present in the manuscripts as faithfully as possible, we consider it pertinent to correct any potential errors in notation, thus providing both the general public and the academic community with this musical text in an accessible and legible format, accompanied by the aforementioned historical contextualization and musical analysis of the works. Thus, considering that, according to Grier, the critical edition should expose all the necessary content for the performer, researcher, or interested party to make their interpretative and investigative decisions from a complete and readable document, we understand that phonetic transcription and translation from Portuguese to English are tools that assist in research, dissemination, and interpretation of the songs. We believe that this edition will contribute to the rescue of a repertoire that until now was inaccessible to the general public, and which we consider exemplary for the genre of chamber song, both for its elaborate, unpredictable, and independent rhythmic and melodic content in both the vocal line and piano part, resulting in a balanced and original dialogue.