How Does The Brazilian Culture Shape The Development Of Musical Performance?

Sônia Goulart is a scholar from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. As a pianist and researcher in performance and practice, Goulart wrote remarkable articles related to piano performance and the Brazilian piano music. In Marlos Nobre, Um Representante da Música Brasileira (Marlos Nobre, a Model for the Brazilian Music), Goulart points out specific cultural elements that shaped the development of the Mankind and of the musical performance through the ages. According to her, historical, analytical, and psychological concepts could clarify the development of musical performance. Therefore, Goulart’s purpose is to show how culture can shape the development of nationalism in music. Nevertheless, Goulart’s thesis is that the Brazilian culture

Goulart opens her article with a brief commentary on Civilizations and its Discontents by Sigmund Freud, who explores the origins and facts that marked the development of the civilization. (45). She explains the influences of culture on the development of creativeness on the musical arts, such as the Brazilian musical art. Moreover, the author explains the significance of the Brazilian culture as a tradition based on Western values. A brief Marlos Nobre’s biography is illustrated in the second part of the article. Goulart’s writings focus on how Nobre’s career started. She does that by exploring his creativeness and the composition competitions that Nobre won early in his career in Brazil and abroad. The author also considers the three periods of Nobre’s musical style as a composer. She explains each period and how these periods influenced the development of his

The author achieves his goals by showing a list of elements that facilitates readers’ understanding of the Brazilian culture and Nobre’s musical style. Her sources of study are reliable and solid since those elements are presented by music scholars that are particularly involved with Brazilian music currently. Goulart asserts that the cultural element is still the best way to analyze Nobre’s musical style. Positively, the analysis of each cultural element could clarify reader’s understanding on Nobre’s compositional style. According to Goulart, the cultural reality, the interaction with its regional and folkloric elements are responsible for an artistic identity and its production (47). Goulart’s thesis is also strongly developed, where she focuses on cultural elements that reveals the intention of the composer. Therefore a successful musical performance involves the interpretation of the score according to the composer’s intentions. Today, most scholars support also the same philosophy where the cultural elements adopted in the past are crucial for today’s performance