Camargo Guarnieri

Mozart Camargo Guarnieri (February 1, 1907 – January 13, 1993) was a Brazilian composer.

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 and subject to puns. 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. One of his brothers was named Rossine (a Portuguese misspelling of Rossini) Guarnieri, another one Verdi Guarnieri.

Life

He studied piano and composition at the São Paulo Conservatório, and subsequently worked with Charles Koechlin in Paris. 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 canções. He is universally recognised as the most important Brazilian composer after Heitor Villa-Lobos. 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.

He was a National Patron of Delta Omicron, an international professional music fraternity.

Works

Opera

• Pedro Malazarte (comic opera in one act, libretto by Mário de Andrade, premiered in May 1952 at the Theatro Municipal in Rio de Janeiro)
• Um homem só (tragic opera in one act, libretto by Gianfrancesco Guarnieri, premiered on November 29, 1962, at the Theatro Municipal in 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)
  • Suite IV Centenario (1954)
  • Suite Vila Rica (1957), taken from the music for the film "Rebelião em Vila Rica"

Concertante

• Piano
  • Piano Concerto No. 1 (1931)
  • Piano Concerto No. 2 (1946)
  • Piano Concerto No. 3 (1964)
  • 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)
  • Violin Concerto No. 2 (1952)

Chamber/instrumental

• String Quartets
  • String Quartet No. 1 (1932)
  • String Quartet No. 2 (1944)
  • String Quartet No. 3 (1962)
• Cello Sonatas
  • Cello Sonata No. 1 (1931)
  • Cello Sonata No. 2 (1955)
  • Cello Sonata No. 3 (1977)
• Violin Sonatas
  • Violin Sonata No. 1
  • Violin Sonata No. 2
  • Violin Sonata No. 3
  • Violin Sonata No. 4
  • Violin Sonata No. 5
  • Violin Sonata No. 6
  • Violin Sonata No. 7
• Viola Sonata (1950)

Sonatina for Flute and Piano (1947)

See also

• List of Brazilian musicians

Further reading

• Silva, Flávio. Camargo Guarnieri: o tempo e a música. Rio de Janeiro: Ministério da Cultura, FUNARTE; São Paulo, SP: Imprensa Official SP, 2001 ISBN 85-7507-009-6.
• 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. ISBN 0-253-34475-1.

External links

• About Camargo Guarnieri in Larousse