Studies of Instrumental Music in Portugal: 1755 - 1834

The instrumental music during the Old Regime has been the object of only partial or indirect study, because the greater importance of sacred music and opera in Portugal at this time has meant that the majority of musicological research into this period has been dedicated to these fields. In the sequence of this imbalance state of musicological knowledge in Portugal, it’s urgent to study in a systematic way the instrumental music.The appearance of new models of sociability and the introduction of new cultural practices and consumerism (Weber, Leppert, Berg, Bermingham) had a deciding influence on the emergence of the modern age.

            This systematic study must have two major fields, (1) the survey and cataloguing of a consistent amount of musical sources, (2) the critical study of the most interesting compositions representing the principal genres of the period. The critical edition of a representative amount of instrumental repertoire, in an anthology mainly for keyboard, will be a major contribution to the renovation and actualization of our cultural view about the reigns of D. José, D. Maria I and the period of emergence of Liberalism in Portugal. We expect also that the edition of this music will contribute to the renovation of the repertoire.

We believe that the information and data to be collected in such a study will greatly enrich our historical perception of the Old Regime. It was a period of fundamental changes brought about by the importation of new cultural practices, including the involvement of women in the promotion of music. It was with instrumental music that contact was first made with modernism, in a complex context of negotiations that drew their inspiration from the tensions between Portuguese-Brazilian culture and European cosmopolitanism. The minuet is one of the genres most clearly reflects some of the most paradoxical but interesting answers and “solutions” in this process and which we intend to use as a case study.