The Brazilian Flute Topic

Abstract

This dissertation studies the connection between the flute, in its materiality and function, and ideas on Brazilianness. A question permeates the narrative I propose: why has the flute become an instrument so representative of Brazilian culture? By presenting a general overview of discourses on Brazilian musical nationalism in relation to social, political, and racial configurations, I analyze how the always-shifting concept of Brazilianness was transformed throughout history, and how the flute can be understood as one of its most distinctive symbols. To this end, I offer several perspectives from modernist authors such as Mário de Andrade to contemporary scholars such as Maria Eugênia Boaventura. Drawing on ideas proposed by music scholars such as Melanie Plesch, Raymond Monelle, and Michael Klein with regard to topic theory, I analyze how the flute and its sonority appear represented and/or used in Brazilian iconography, literature, and musical practices from colonial times up to the 1940s, also paying attention to issues of class, race, and politics. Through this broad cultural analysis, I build a network of signs, a code for what I call the Brazilian Flute Topic. Although the study of the Brazilian Flute as a cultural unit is an end in itself, I also develop analyses of three twentieth-century works for flute solo by composers deemed as nationalist: Melopéias n.3 (1950) by César Guerra-Peixe (1914-1993); Fantasia Sul América (1983) by Claudio Santoro (1919-1989); and Improviso (1974) by Osvaldo Lacerda (1927-2011). My goal is to explore the ways in which we can interpret such works through the cultural code I develop, suggesting new perspectives for their study, and with it, illustrating the potential of topic theory and semiotics in the study of Brazilian art music.