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Guarnieri, Camargo
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Guarnieri, (Mozart) Camargo

(b Tiet, So Paulo, 1 Feb 1907; d So Paulo, 13 Jan 1993). Brazilian composer, conductor and teacher. A Sicilian immigrants son, he studied first with a local teacher and then, in So Paulo, he took piano lessons with Ernani Braga and Antonio de S Pereira. While a composition pupil of Baldi, he was decisively directed by Andrade towards folk and popular music, and so to composition in the nationalist aesthetic. In 1927 he was appointed to teach the piano at the So Paulo Conservatory and, with the foundation of the So Paulo Department of Culture in 1935, he took charge of its choral and orchestral conducting, particularly distinguishing himself as director of the Coral Paulistano. A Council of Artistic Orientation fellowship took him to Paris in 1938, and there he studied composition and aesthetics with Koechlin and conducting with Ruhlmann; he also had fruitful contact with Boulanger and secured some performances, returning to Brazil at the outbreak of war. In 1942 he received the first prize of the Philadelphia Free Library Fleischer Music Collection for his Violin Concerto. The Pan American Union then invited him to visit the USA; many of his works were performed in New York, and he conducted the Boston SO in the Abertura concertante. The Second Quartet won him a prize from the Chamber Music Guild of Washington, DC, in 1944, and in 19467 he made another visit to the USA, giving the Symphony no.1 with the Boston SO. He had been made a life member on the foundation of the Academia Brasileira de Msica (1945) and was later its honorary president. After returning from the USA he was made permanent conductor of the So Paulo SO, and from that time he appeared with most of the leading European and American orchestras. In 1960 he was appointed director of the So Paulo Conservatory, and in 1964 teacher of composition and conducting at the Santos Conservatory. Among the many honours he received in the 1950s and 1960s were the first prizes of the So Paulo Fourth Centenary Competition (1954) and the Caracas International Competition (1957), and the Golfinho de Ouro Prize (1973). He founded then directed the string orchestra of the University of So Paulo (197692). Guarnieri occupies a paramount position within the Brazilian national school. In over half a century of intense activity, he was one of the most prolific and creative Brazilian composers, writing in all the major genres with a consistent and sustained concern for national musical expression. In 1950 he took a firm stand against atonality and serialism and their chief proponent, H.J. Koellreutter, in a famous Open Letter to the Musicians and Critics of Brazil , though he had modified his stance by 1970, when he combined material from urban popular dances (sambas and chros) with 12-note serialism in his Piano Concerto no.5. His first uncontestedly successful piece was the Piano Sonatina (1928), a piece that won the praise of Andrade, who was probably stimulated by the appearance of a militant nationalist composer in opposition to the prevailing European-directed academicism. The Sonatina is more subjectively national than such earlier works as the Cano sertaneja or the Dansa brasileira; clear, neo-classical counterpoint is combined in the second movement, Modinha, with a reconstruction of a popular guitar ostinato accompaniment, and in the last with a rhythmic vitality quite reminiscent of certain folk and popular dances. In the 1930s there followed a group of chamber pieces and the first of a series based on the popular chro. Of the latter, Curu and Flor do Trememb are imaginatively orchestrated, with, in Flor, effective use of typical Brazilian percussion instruments, including the cavaquinho (a variety of ukulele), the cuca (a friction drum) and the agog (a cowbell). From the association with Andrade there resulted a one-act comic opera, Pedro Malazarte (1932), introduced with great success in Rio de Janeiro in 1952; his one-act lyric tragedy Um homem s (1960), on a libretto by the poet Gianfrancesco Guarnieri, was produced in Rio in 1962 to moderate acclaim. But it was in the many solo songs that Guarnieri excelled at this time. Impossvel carinho, the 13 canes de amor and Vai, Azulo are characteristic in their essential lyricism, and in some numbers (e.g. Sai aru and Acuti-par) Guarnieri employed features from Afro-Brazilian and Amerindian folksong.

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Guarnieri, Camargo in Oxford Music Online

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After his first stay in Europe Guarnieri approached the orchestra with greater confidence. The two symphonies of 1944 are among his best works and, together with the third (1952), they typify his individual style: nationalist but anti-exotic in its stylization of folk elements, and technically refined, particularly in development procedures and form. In the orchestral suites Brasiliana, Suite IV centenrio, written for the 400th anniversary of So Paulo, and Suite vila rica he incorporated Brazilian folk or popular dance types. The violin concertos are transparently contrapuntal and neo-classical traits predominate in the piano concertos. Guarnieris numerous solo piano pieces have been taken up with enthusiasm by most Brazilian pianists; the title given to the five albums of Ponteios refers to melodic pizzicato. During the 1960s Guarnieri interrupted his compositional activity for a period of reflection. After overcoming doubts he decided to continue in the same aesthetic direction; subsequent works, such as the Homenagem a Villa-Lobos, show a more direct involvement with national sources. His inspiration returned in the 1970s and 80s, and he presented two symphonies, choral works and numerous other works. His contribution as a teacher was paramount: among the several generations of composers he taught and influenced are Osvaldo Lacerda, Vasconcellos Corra, Almeida Prado and Aylton Escobar.

Copyright Oxford University Press 2007 2009.

Bibliography
M. de Andrade: Uma sonata de Camargo Guarnieri, Revista brasileira de msica, ii (1935), 1315 M.C. Guarnieri: Mestre Mrio, Revista brasileira de msica, ix (1943), 1523 Compositores de Amrica/Composers of the Americas, ed. Pan American Union, iv (Washington DC, 1958) Ministrio das Relaes Exteriores, Diviso de Difuso Cultural: Catlogo das obras de Camargo Guarnieri (Braslia, 1976) G. Bhague: Music in Latin America: an Introduction (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1979) Universidade de So Paulo, Escola de Comunicaes e Artes: Catlogo das obras de Camargo Guarnieri (So Paulo, 1979) V. Mariz: Histria da msica no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro, 1981, 4/1994) J.M. Neves: Msica brasileira contempornea (So Paulo, 1981) B.C. de Mendona: Comentrios sobre a obra pianistica de Camargo Guarnieri, Boletim da Sociedade Brasileira de Musicologia, iii (1986), 2546 National Institute of Music of the National Foundation for the Arts (FUNARTE): Camargo Guarnieri, a vida e a obra (Rio de Janeiro, forthcoming)

Gerard Bhague

See also from The New Grove Dictionary of Opera: GUARNIERI, CAMARGO ; PEDRO M ALASARTE .

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