Analysis of six works by Gilberto Mendes from the perspective of intertextuality
Gilberto Mendes (1922-2016), a prolific Brazilian composer, wrote two books to present his memoirs of what became his compositional work. This can be seen in the recurring intertextual procedures in his works, and this paper aims to demonstrate the intertextuality present in works from the 1980s and 1990s, as well as historically discussing some aspects of intertextuality and originality in compositions. According to Ap Siôn (2007), the use of intertextuality is sometimes criticised because of the categories of originality, artistic genius and the autonomy of the work of art, stating that the roots of the concepts of creative autonomy and artistic genius go back to the time of Mozart. However, intertextuality is nothing new; composers were not afraid to use musical elements from their immediate predecessors or fellow practitioners (Ap Siôn, 2007, p. 6).
During the Romantic era, the demand for originality translated into requiring each composer to create their work from scratch (Goehr, 1992, p. 220). Before that, the musical work was not an indestructible object but rather a malleable structure, in which the parts were considered greater than the whole due to the adaptability and versatility of musical gestures, phrases, turns and figures belonging to the Baroque and Classical styles. Despite these clouds hanging over 20th-century composers, intertextuality has been vitally sustained. Souza (2009) states that musical neoclassicism frequently used intertextuality in the modernist period, observing close similarities between some works’ melodic profile, harmonic structure, rhythms, phrasing and form. It can be seen from these considerations that the use of intertextuality and the question of authorship are guidelines affected by historical and cultural processes.
The theoretical framework of this research is based on authors such as Everett, Hutcheon, Ap Siôn, and Straus, who discuss intertextuality. The methodology used to analyse three works for piano and three works for orchestral formations by Gilberto Mendes was the intertextual categorisations of Straus and Ap Siôn, as well as the use of Hutcheon’s A Theory of Parody (2000) through the analytical view of Everett (2004). As a result, the parodic and ironic layers were revealed in the six works analysed: Três Contos de Cortazar, Último Tango em Vila Parisi, Il Neige de Nouveau!; Für Annette; Abertura Issa and Viva Villa II. According to Hutcheon, the relevance of parody and irony is related to prior knowledge of a code, establishing its evocation through memory and its reuse with difference. It was also important to note the predominance of intertextuality, categorised by Ap Siôn (2007) as intratextual intertextuality, which reflects precisely the mechanism of memory at work in Mendes’ compositional process through reminiscences of previous works by the same composer that are manifested in the works analysed, i.e. when we consider the whole of a composer’s oeuvre as one large text. Finally, Straus’ (1990) categories were also applied in the analyses, revealing the categorisations called Centralisation, Generalisation, Fragmentation and Neutralisation.
Keywords: intertextuality, Gilberto Mendes, music memory
Biography
Rita de Cássia Domingues dos Santos, musicologist, composer, conductor and pianist. She holds a doctorate from the Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso, and postdoctoral degrees from the Universidade Nova de Lisboa – Centro de Estudos de Sociologia e Estética Musical (CESEM), Lisbon, Portugal, and the Universidade de São Paulo Faculdade de Filosofia Ciências e Letras de Ribeirão Preto, Brazil. PhD in Contemporary Culture Studies (ECCO/UFMT), Rita Domingues dos Santos has published “Repensando a terceira fase composicional de Gilberto Mendes” (2019), researches Postopera, Minimalism and Intertextuality, and is a member of the Society for Minimalist Music.
Federal University of Mato Grosso, Brazil, rita.domingues@gmail.com