Mozart Camargo Guarnieri (February 1, 1907 – January 13, 1993) was a Brazilian composer.
Guarnieri was born in Tietê,
São Paulo. He studied piano, composition, and conducting in São Paulo and Paris. His compositions received significant recognition in the United States during the 1940s, leading to conducting opportunities in major American cities.
A key figure in the Brazilian national school, Guarnieri served as a conductor, a member of the
Academia Brasileira de Música, and Director of the
São Paulo Conservatório. His extensive oeuvre includes symphonies, concertos, operas, chamber music, piano pieces, and songs.
Regarded by some as the most important Brazilian composer after
Heitor Villa-Lobos, Guarnieri was awarded the
Gabriela Mistral Prize shortly before his death.
Name
Guarnieri was born in
Tietê, São Paulo, and registered at birth as Mozart Guarnieri, but when he began a musical career, he decided his first name was too pretentious. Thus he adopted his mother's maiden name Camargo as a middle name, and thenceforth signed himself M. Camargo Guarnieri. In 1948, he legally changed his name to Mozart Camargo Guarnieri, but continued to sign only the initial of his first name.
Guarnieri's Italian father, Michele Guarneri?, a lover of classical music, named one of Camargo's brothers Rossine (a Portuguese misspelling of
Rossini), and two others Verdi and Bellini.[citation needed]
Life
Guarnieri studied piano with Ernani Braga and
Antonio de Sá Pereira [
pt] and composition with
Lamberto Baldi [
pt;
de;
es] at the
Conservatório Dramático e Musical de São Paulo. In 1938, a fellowship from the Council of Artistic Orientation allowed him to travel to Paris, where he studied composition and aesthetics with
Charles Koechlin and conducting with
François Ruhlmann.[1] Some of his compositions received important prizes in the United States in the 1940s, giving Guarnieri the opportunity of conducting them in New York, Boston, Los Angeles and Chicago. A distinguished figure of the Brazilian national school, he served in several capacities; conductor of the São Paulo Orchestra, member of the Academia Brasileira de Música, and Director of the São Paulo Conservatório, where he taught composition and orchestral conducting. In 1936 he was the first conductor of the
Coral Paulistano choir. His œuvre comprises
symphonies,
concertos,
cantatas, two
operas,
chamber music, many piano pieces, and over fifty
songs. In 1972, in
Porto Alegre, his compatriot
Roberto Szidon gave the first performance of the Piano Concerto No. 4.[2] In 1962 the
Soviet Union invited him to participate in the third Congress of Composers in Moscow.[3] Shortly before his death in
São Paulo in 1993, he was awarded the
Gabriela Mistral Prize by the
Organization of American States as the greatest contemporary composer of the Americas.
Um homem só (tragic opera in one act, libretto by
Gianfrancesco Guarnieri, premiered on November 29, 1962, at the Theatro Municipal (Rio de Janeiro))
Orchestral
Symphonies
Symphony No. 1 (1944)
Symphony No. 2 "Uirapuru" (1945)
Symphony No. 3 (1952)
Symphony No. 4 "Brasília" (1963)
Symphony No. 5 (1977)
Symphony No. 6 (1981)
Overtures
Abertura Concertante (1942)
Abertura Festiva (1971)
Suites
Suite infantil (1929)
Tres Dansas para Orquestra (1941). The first dance is "Dansa Brasileira" (originally composed for piano in 1928), which is his best-known and most-recorded piece outside South America.
Suite IV Centenario (1954)
Suite Vila Rica (1957), taken from the music for the film Rebelião em Vila Rica
Homenagem a Villa-Lobos (1966) for Winds, Piano and Percussion
Concerto for Orchestra and Percussion (1972)
Concertante
Piano
Piano Concerto No. 1 (1931)
Piano Concerto No. 2 (1946)
Chôro for piano and orchestra (1956)
Piano Concerto No. 3 (1964)
Seresta for Piano and Orchestra (1965)
Piano Concerto No. 4 (1968)
Piano Concerto No. 5 (1970)
Piano Concerto No. 6 (1987)
Variations (Variações sobre um tema nordestino) for Piano and Orchestra (1953)
Violin
Violin Concerto No. 1 (1940). This concerto won a Latin-American violin concerto contest in 1943 sponsored by the
Pan American Union, prize money donated by
Samuel Fels.[4]
Chôro for violin and orchestra (1951)
Violin Concerto No. 2 (1952)
Viola
Chôro for viola and orchestra (1975)
Cello
Chôro for cello and orchestra (1961). Written for
Aldo Parisot, premiered in Carnegie Hall in 1962.[5]
Anon. n.d.a "Liner notes" for Naxos 8.572626, 8.572627
Silva, Flávio. Camargo Guarnieri: o tempo e a música. Rio de Janeiro: Ministério da Cultura, FUNARTE; São Paulo, SP: Imprensa Official SP, 2001
ISBN85-7507-009-6.
Verhaalen, Marion. Camargo Guarnieri, Brazilian Composer: A Study of his Creative Life and Works, with a preface by José Maria Neves. With CD recording. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005.
ISBN0-253-34475-1.