Mário Vieira de Carvalho

• PhD in Musicology
• CEO at Universidade NOVA de Lisboa

Two major works of nineteenth-century Portuguese music, the Requiem to the memory of Camões, by João Domingos Bomtempo (1819), and the Sinfonia À Pátria, by Viana da Mota (1894), summon Camões and Os Lusíadas at moments of national crisis: one appears on the eve of the 1820 Revolution and is inseparable from the liberal cause; the other is born out...

Thinking about music in its evolution from the origins of human communication to digital networks: this is how the content of this book could be summed up. The issues addressed - creation, performance, reception, the intersection of music and philosophy, relations with language, etc. - are articulated in a theory of musical communication that is al...

I attempt to revisit here from an interdisciplinary perspective the debate about music and language. The discussion starts from the denial of the language character of music, defended by a certain musicological canon, and is oriented towards its refutation. It postulates the interdependence of performance, context and meaning, both in verbal langua...

Starting from the idea of “work” as opposed to ‘inspiration’, a parallel is drawn between Schoenberg's concept of “evolving variation” (Entwicklungsvariation) and José Saramago's style. The parallel is articulated with the opposition between “painting” and “writing” that emerges in Saramago's Manual de Pintura e Caligrafiia.

The notion of musical heritage and its historical and social relevance; its intersection with ideologies, religion and politics; its hegemonic and counter-hegemonic dynamics; and its role in both the clash of cultures and the intercultural dialogue, from silent testimonies of the past to the digital reproducibility of sound in our era, are themes t...

The constellation in which Adorno’s unity of thought comes to light –the critique of science as ideology, the overcomingof the distinction between phi-losophy and sociology, the concept of art as the beginning and end of philo-sophy, knowledge (Erkenntnis) as constituens of both (art and philosophy), presupposes a close relationship between his the...

This paper begins to address the complex problems posed by the transposition of José Saramago's novel "Memorial do Convento" to an opera libretto. José Saramago took the charge of this task with the collaboration of the Italian composer Azio Corghi, who had invited him to join the project. The opera - sung in Italian and entitled "Blimunda" -, was...

This paper deals with the analysis of the film Fidelio, created by Walter Felsenstein with the collaboration of Hanns Eisler, published on DVD in the scope of the monumental edition that marked the thirtieth anniversary of the director’s dead (1901-1975). The circumstances that gave rise to the project and its final outcome demands a brief restrope...

Objetivo deste trabalho é analisar o filme Fidelio, realizado por Walter Felsenstein com a colaboração de Hanns Eisler, recentemente publicado em dvd no á‚mbito da edição monumental que assinalou o trigésimo aniversário da morte do encenador (1901-1975). As circunstá‚ncias que deram origem ao projeto e o seu resultado final exigem uma breve retrosp...

When the continuum of history is abruptly interrupted by a revolutionary event, the inclusion/exclusion dialectic arises from the fracture between before and after, from the tension between continuity and rupture. In revolutions such as the French, in 1789, or the Russian, in 1917, the political confrontation is accompanied by a cultural confrontat...

A partir de processo que se iniciou no século XVIII, temos a discussão das re- lações entre temas da Teoria Crítica, Ópera e Mass Media.

What notion of “patrimony” have we inherited for centuries? Not a neutral notion. The very etymological origin of the word – Latin: patrimonium – indicates its ideological load: it designates the legacy of the pater. It consists of the patriarch's set of goods, on which he disposes, transmitting it by inheritance. The property of goods determines t...

«Oh word, thou word that I lack!» - Reflections on music and language Taking as a starting point the theses of Eggebrecht (1999) that negate the language character of music, I revisit here some aspects of the debate about music and language, by seeking to expand the interdisciplinary approach to the matter. The discussion is oriented towards the re...

Le Théâtre Nacional de São Carlos (TNSC) à Lisbonne – le seul théâtre d’opéra au Portugal – est porteur d’une histoire qui dévoile des connections structurelles d’une si longue durée entre le système de communication opéra et la société portugaise qu’il faut remonter à l’époque de Gil Vicente pour la comprendre. En effet, après sa mort (environ 153...

The introduction of the Inquisition in 1536, and of the Jesuit Order in 1540 in Portugal has influenced for centuries the power structures in the country. A kind of “religious fundamentalism” has coined even stronger and longer than in other countries, eg. B. Spain, social and cultural life. The hostility to theatre belongs to such constellation. G...

In this extensive critical review of the second volume of the monumental History of Music Theory (Geschichte der Musiktheorie, edited by Frieder Zaminer, Darmstadt, 2006), dealing with the most ancient testimonies of musical thought, some aspects of music theory from ancient Mesopotamia, ancient Greece, Byzantium, the Roman Empire, and medieval Ara...

The introduction of the Inquisition in 1536, and of the Jesuit Order in 1540 in Portugal has influenced for centuries the power structures in the country. A kind of “religious fundamentalism” has coined even stronger and longer than in other countries, eg. B. Spain, social and cultural life. The hostility to theatre belongs to such constellation. G...

Peter Konwitschny's approach as Opera Staging Director is analysed under the perspective of Walter Benjamin's theses on History.

This book is about listening culture in Portuguese literature. Object of analysis are not only the relations of intertextuality between music and literature, but also the importance of sound universes in literary writing. The culture of listening also implies what is beyond the sound: the interaction contexts to which it refers to, the interpellati...

Although opera is understood from its origins as musical drama or theatre, the communication systems of its production, mediation and reception historically contributed to the hegemony of the opposite concept or practice: the negation of opera as theatre. Starting from this assumption, different approaches to opera performance and staging are discu...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to discuss Stockhausen's comment that the destruction of the twin towers in New York in September 11, 2001 was “the greatest work of art that ever existed” – a comment that raises crucial questions about the relationship between art and politics, art and ethics, also on the very concept of “artwork”. Design/m...

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to discuss Stockhausen’s comment that the destruction of the twin towers in New York in September 11, 2001, was "the greatest work of art that ever existed" – a comment that raises crucial questions about the relationship between art and politics, art and ethics, also on the very concept of "artwork". Design/...

Critical edition of fragments of a never performed operette (about 1869) by Eça de Queirós with Jaime Batalha Reis (text) and Augusto Machado (music). Including essays and notes by Irene Fialho, Mário Vieira de Carvalho, José Brandão.

This chapter deals with the amazing relationship between Luigi Nono's and Walter Benjamin's thought, which precedes - as it is shown - Nono's reading of main essays by Benjamin (notably "On the Concept of History"). Operative key-concepts like "Idiom", "Tragedy" (related to Benjamin's approach to German Barock "Trauerspiel"), and "Dialectic Listeni...

Music is one of the "universals" inherent to human cultures. It can be said that it is so intertwined as the spoken language with the evolutionary process of the Anthropogenesis. No less universal is also the idea of the power of music on the human being, extensively documented by archaeological evidence, narratives, mythologies, empirical observat...

In this article the highly contested relationship between art and politics in the twentieth century is discussed by way of the life and work of the Portuguese composer Fernando Lopes-Graça (1906–94). Lopes-Graça, who described himself as ‘a communist from birth’, lived for almost fifty years in Salazar's ‘New State’, a Fascist-type dictatorship, wh...

José Eduardo Martins é um artista de raro perfil, tanto mais quando o consideramos no contexto da tradição luso-brasileira. Uma tradição que se fragmentou e se perdeu desde que os dois países seguiram o seu próprio rumo há perto de dois séculos. Decerto, tem havido contactos, algum intercâmbio, alguma cooperação, mas nada que faça de Portugal ou do...

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/230752438_La_partitura_como_espritu_sedimentado_En_torno_a_la_Teora_de_la_Interpretacin_Musical_de_Adorno_in_Azafea_Rev._filos._11_2009143-161

This is the Portuguese version of de journal article in German language, by Mário Vieira de Carvalho, “Parsifal oder der Gegensatz zwischen Theorie und Praxis als Dilemma der herrschenden Klasse”, in: Beiträge zur Musikwissenschaft, XXVIII/4 (1986): 309-319. It develops a dramaturgical analysis of Wagner's Parsifal as a political allegory. Three ma...

The premiere at the Lisbon Opera House (1880) of Carlos Gomes opera "Il Guarany" gave rise to a large controversy in the press, which sheds light on the performance praxis and the whole communication system of opera in its structural coupling with the social environment. The search for a "Braziian" otherness in the context of the conventions of Ita...

Em dois discursos recentes, Nikolaus Harnoncourt (1995) pôs radicalmente em questão as suas próprias convicções de há muitos anos, quando era o campeão da autenticidade na interpretação da música barroca e dava uma contribuição decisiva para fazer do seu ideal de reconstrução «exacta» e «objectiva» da praxis antiga (incluindo instrumentos, tipos vo...

Starting from Brecht's notion of "epic theater" this paper focuses on the deconstruction of the illusion - estrangement effect (Verfremdungseffekt) - in film, particularly, in two filmed operas: Bergmans filmmaking of Mozart's "Magic Flute", and Manoel de Oliveira's film "the Cannibals", a film-opera (originally created for the cinema) with librett...

Este livro é um cais de partida para viagens por sonoridades que nos ecoam desde os tempos em que Pedro Álvares Cabral aportou na baía Cabrália e as buzinas dos índios Tupiniquim se cruzaram com as trombetas dos navegadores portugueses. Teremos ressonâncias do Brasil musical dos tempos coloniais e do Império. Iremos ao encontro de danças a musicali...

Wozzeck at the doctor's office - the fourth scene of the first act of Alban Berg's opera is the focus of this paper. The author expresses the view that the construction of the whole scene on the basis of a twelve-tone series (the only one that appears in the score) can only be interpreted - also because of its caricatural aspect - as an ironic refe...

"Autopoiesis", a concept coined by Maturana and Varela in the context of their biochemical theory of living organisms and later adopted by Luhmann in his theory of social systems, has also become the key concept of the latter’s theory of art as a particular system of communication (Luhmann 1996). Although Luhmann insists that "from the unique bioch...

Starting from Brecht's notion of "epic theater" this paper focuses on the deconstruction of the illusion - estrangement effect (Verfremdungseffekt) - in film, particularly, in two filmed operas: Bergmans filmmaking of Mozart's "Magic Flute", and Manoel de Oliveira's film "the Cannibals", a film-opera (originally created for the cinema) with librett...