#and pls consider reblogging this post because i spent a whole afternoon on it kasjdhksajdhkajsdkasd

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

#MemoryMonday - a glimpse into Brazilian history: José Maurício Nunes Garcia (1767 - 1830) | Black History Month

Ok. I know this isn’t Monday, much less the first Monday of the month, day of our Memory Monday section. But with the week-long Logoff Protest in the beginning of February, we postponed this, and, having spent much time dedicating to other stuff in the blog, we ended up deciding to skip this month altogether. Only now did my two neurons function to remember it’s Black History Month while I was updating the blog, and that if there’s one (1) month we could *never* skip it's February 🤦 (There’s also Women’s History Month in March, which is also unskippable, but you got my idea). So, to leave the section spaced out at least two-week-fold, we decided to have this delayed and out of usual date Memory Monday. We apologize for the mess we’ve made. Now, without further ado, to our Memory Monday on a Wednesday!

When we think about classical music, we mostly think about composers such as Ludwig van Beethoven, Johann Sebastian Bach, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. If you’re a bigger nerd, you might listen to lesser-known composers such as Antonin Dvorak, Alexander Glazunov, Henryk Gorecki, and others in this wonderful iceberg meme. But regardless of your understanding of classical music, most of the composers you know and remember are probably white and European or Russian. Like everything in our history, our knowledge about classical music tends to be euro & white-centric, the contribution of people of colour erased - and like most “cult” things, classical music might be deemed as a white people thing (it’s not really your fault, it’s the world being racist as usual). So we’re here to try and contribute to your knowledge by introducing you to an awesome Afro-Brazilian classical composer! Yes, such figures exist! And he’s not even the only one ;)

José Maurício Nunes Garcia was a multi-instrumentist, composer, music teacher, regent, and catholic priest born in 1767 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Child of free mixed-race parents and grandchild of black slaves, he lost his father at an early age and was raised by his mother and her sister. When they detected his precocious inclination for music, especially his singing voice and musical ear, they struggled and succeeded in getting a family friend and relatively well-known musician from the time, Salvador José de Almeida Faria, to teach him music. He received a very solid education, not only in music but also in letters and humanities, and composed his first piece, an antiphon with gregorian chants called Tota Pulcra Es Maria, at age 16. 

He worked as a music teacher in his early adulthood. He applied to priesthood in at age 24, upon which an inquiry on his good character, the “purity” of his blood, the “respectability” of his family, and his patrimony was done. His intellectual abilities and good reputation were such that he was exempted from the requirement of “clean blood”. That, together with a house donation from a friend, enabled him to be ordained for priesthood, despite his humble origins and blackness being obstacles for a successful career in an enslaver and discriminatory society. Constantly composing ever since, besides directing his church’s singers and being an organist, he gradually received such praise that he received many brotherhood commissions and was eventually hired by the Senate to play in various celebrations. 

In 1808, the Portuguese Royal Family fled Europe and Napoleon Bonapart’s invasion to settle in Rio de Janeiro, where many reforms and modernizations were made and many institutions (like Brazil’s National Library, Botanic Garden, Brazilian Academy of Fine Arts, and our recently flared up National Museum) were created. Portugal’s Regent Prince Dom João VI eventually listened to performances by José Maurício, and, being rapt by what he heard, he made him the official organist and musical inspector of the Royal Chapel. Many Portuguese religious ministers, who also came with the Royal Family to Brazil, tried to get José Maurício fired for being Brazilian and black, saying the Prince should not go through “the displeasure of finding in the Royal Chapel some person with visible physical defect” (aka his dark skin). Dom João VI, however, kept the composer in his position, and arranged to him a body of musicians and singers recruited among the best in Europe, making the Royal Chapel one of the best musical institutions of America of its time and giving José Maurício some of the best conditions to his musical and intellectual growth. In 1811, Dom João VI even knighted him.

Between 1808 and 1811, José Maurício had his most productive phase in life, during which he composed around 70 pieces. It, however, came to a stop with the arrival of the Portuguese composer (and his rival) Marcos Portugal, whose fame in Europe made Dom João VI prioritize him in encomendations and direction of performances, and who systematically sabotaged and worked to push José Maurício away from Rio de Janeiro’s music scene. At the same time, he was fired from the Senate, and his financial situation declined. He spent 1812 sick and barely composing. He started a modest recovery in 1813, but his golden years would never return, and he lost his house in 1817. He pleaded for and started receiving a pension from the now king Dom João VI, allowing him to settle in a new house. Nonetheless, the king returned to Portugal in 1821 and his son Dom Pedro I declared Brazil’s independence in 1822, which was followed by an economic, political, and institutional crisis in the country. The new monarch, despite having received education from the composer, cancelled his pension, claiming financial reasons. The priest ended up closing his music school in 1822, and his production became rare afterwards. He died in 1830, at age 62, in almost absolute poverty.

He was definitely the most prolific and important Brazilian composer of his time, and over 240 of his works have survived, practically all in the sacred and vocal genres, including masses, matins, vespers, motets, antiphons, and others geared towards Catholic worship. He’s estimated to have composed between 400 and 600 works in total, most of which were lost. His production, in a transition from Barroque to Neoclassicism, showed a variety of techniques and forms and high innovations. José Mauricio was regarded as the best Brazilian representative of Germanic classicist aesthetics and as evidence that the Brazilian civilization was just as capable and in no way inferior to Europe. He was strongly influenced by composers contemporary to him such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Joseph Haydn, and showed clear affiliation with European models, which legitimized his work to the eyes of the old continent and fed national pride. He’s considered one of the biggest Brazilian composers ever; a prize to the best music educators, instituted by the National Library of Brazil in the 1950s, was named after him, and he’s the patron of the chair No. 5 of the Brazilian Academy of Music.

And, of course, you can listen to him on Spotify and YouTube, which we highly recommend you do!

Happy Black History Month!

Sources: x, x