Fernando Magre

Campinas University

Wandering routes and new terminologies: from “Musiktheater” to “Música-teatro”

“Musiktheater” is a scenic-musical genre that emerged in the early 1960s as a form of disarticulation of the dominance of Integral Serialism. In general terms, the “Musiktheater” consists of the creation of scenic-musical works from a compositional musical thought and the exploration of the scenic possibilities of the gestuality of the musical performance. In the course of its translation to the English language, the definition of the term “Musiktheater” began to become diffuse, and its use gained new meanings. In this context, the term “Music theater”, which originally referred to avant- garde music, was appropriated by Broadway producers as a substitute for the “musical comedy” expression, unsuited to its marketing interests (Salzman & Desi, 2008). Thus, the word “Music theater” has become a generic term for divergent scenic-musical expressions. To correct this terminological confusion, Salzman and Desi (2008) established a way of differentiating artistic expressions. On the one hand, there is an effort to reappropriate the term “Music theater” for the denomination of experimental works, and on the other hand, the authors propose the expression “Musical theater” for the denomination of musicals like Broadway. In Brazil, the term “Teatro musical” appeared as a translation of the American version, and went through the same terminological problems. This is because “Teatro musical” was used both to refer to the avant-garde expressions and to the practices of popular music. Similarly to Salzman and Desi, the Brazilian poet Florivaldo Menezes (2006) differentiated between the expressions, through a new translation, directly from the german word. “Música-teatro”. It is a poetic translation, not a literal one, creating a kind of neologism that is easily understandable in Brazilian Portuguese. Menezes coined this new term for the need to refer to Gilberto Mendes’s work, the most important Brazilian composer of this genre. The question of terminology and the different translations of the term is of paramount importance for academic research on this musical genre. In our research, we have come across the difficulty of finding papers about this genre in databases through keywords. The problems are different in each language. In English-language searches, a misrepresentation of the term “music theater” to popular musicals is still perceptible. Already in searches in the German language, the results for “Musiktheater” are more accurate, facilitating the recognition of works in the area. In the Brazilian Portuguese language, the search for keywords is a hindrance. On the one hand, the term “Teatro musical” leads to very different results, mostly related to American musicals; on the other hand, the use of the term “Música-teatro” is still very incipient, so searches are not effective. This type of situation makes it difficult to observe the current context of Brazilian studies in Music theater, so that the dialogue between researches in the area is still narrow. Despite this, we are insisting on the use of the term “Música-teatro” in Brazilian Portuguese language. We believe that through the systematic use of this terminology, it will be more effective to develop dialogues between Brazilian and foreign researchers about the genre.

Keywords: Musical terminology; Music theater; “Música-teatro”.

Biography

Fernando Magre is currently developing PhD research in Music at the University of Campinas (Unicamp). He holds a master’s degree in Musicology from the University of São Paulo (2017), with de thesis “Gilberto Mendes’s music theater and his compositional processes”. He is a specialist in Choral Conducting (2015), and has a teaching degree in Music (2013), both by the Londrina State University. He did a research internship at CESEM-FCSH-UNL under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Maria João Serrão, with the assistance of FAPESP. Currently, he is collaborating with this institution. As a musicologist, he participated of several conferences in Brazil and abroad, with special mention to the RIdIM conferences of 2015 (Columbus-USA) and 2016 (Saint Petersburg- Russia), Essence and Context Conference (Vilnius-Lithuania) in 2016, and EIMAD (Castelo Branco), in 2017. He is currently an Art teacher at Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of São Paulo (IFSP).