BRINGING UP THE HIDDEN BRAZILIANESS OF HENRIQUE OSWALD

BLAME IT ON THE NOTATION OF “SERRANA”!

Resumo

This case study departs from the elaboration of an arrangement to challenge a consolidated and biased musicological perspective about Henrique Oswald (1852-1931), one the most important Brazilian composers of all times. It involves three interconnecting issues: (1) the dilemma between Brazilian versus European music after the 1922 “Semana de Arte Moderna” (Week of Modern Art); (2), the limitations to notate choro performance practices in music scores, and (3) the adaptation of Henrique Oswald’s “Serrana” from a trio (violin, cello and piano) to a duet (double bass and piano) instrumentation. Despite the historical belief that Oswald refused to embrace the emerging Nationalism in his music, I argue that there is a Brazilian essence not only in the programmatic title of “Serrana”, but also in the 5 cyclic motifs, especially the syncopated rhythms that he uses to organize the quasi-choro rhapsodic A-B-C-Coda form. Documental and analytical data suggest that “Batuque” [“Drumming”], an early choro by Ernesto Nazareth dedicated to Oswald, inspired “Serrana”, his most Brazilian work; “Serrana”, in turn, possibly inspired Villa-Lobos’ “Trenzinho do Caipira” [“The Little Train of the Countryside Man”]. The main results indicate that (1) Oswald’s thick contrapuntal textures, (2) his predominant legato and detaché articulation, (3) the absence of a clear choro groove, (4) the challenges in notating popular music performance practices, and (5) the tradition of playing and recording the work at slow tempos may have contributed to the work’s poor reception and ostracism. I hope this arrangement of “Serrana” provides not only an opportunity to develop Brazilian chamber music and the idiomatic writing for the double bass, but also to discuss the need to better notate performance practices of popular music and change the musicological perspective about Henrique Oswald’s alleged lack of Brazilianess.