Música Contemporânea para Violão : 1st Part – Contemporary Guitar Music on Books... Graça Alan

There are books releases and others that already became essential to research and performance. I will initially focus on those that approach Heitor Villa-Lobos (Rio de Janeiro, 1887-1959) and his legacy to the guitar on contemporary music.

Heitor Villa-Lobos e Marcos Alan: o discurso musical para o violão de concerto no Brasil.

(Heitor Villa-Lobos and Marcos Alan: the musical speech for the concert guitar in Brazil)

Authorship: Graça Alan

History, Speech and Guitar – Launched in May 2016, this study by Graça Alan is the result of her PhD research. The text reiterates the Brazilian modern art scene for the rise of the guitar as a concert instrument and the fundamental presence of Villa-Lobos. As the central object of study, the research deals with the appearance of the young Marcos Alan (1956-1973), a guitarist of promising career; taking position in favor of avant-garde during the seventies in classical guitar scenario, he has began to devote himself to composition in these terms.

Nice to meet you, Marcos Alan – The career of this talented musician is displayed alongside his search for non-tonal procedures to compose – in this sense, the guitaristic repertoire of Villa-Lobos was his starting point, get carried away by avant-garde creation. At the same time, Alan employed contrapuntal means, studying and transcribing works of Bach, also deepening himself in twelve-tone, serial and electronics music. Along the way, the presence of names like Jodacil Damaceno, Turíbio Santos, Abel Carlevaro and Guido Santórsola, all of them observed in correspondence material, texts and statements organized in such engaging manner, by the author.

Frontpage of Cronomias I by Abel Carlevaro, manuscript with autograph: "To Marcos Alan, and your authentic successes". Alan put Cronomias in his repertoire. Source: Marcos Alan Collection by Graça Alan. Moreover, the Study n.2, by Carlevaro, from a set in homage to Villa-Lobos, is dedicated to Marcos Alan: Carlevaro was impressed when Alan played the score for sight-reading, during Palestrina Seminar.

Writing and Poetics - At the end, a comparative analysis brings the hypothesis of work: the resonance of Villa-Lobos in the works of Marcos Alan, selected by the author. The musical writing, the support of the score, gets a starring role in the study, considering the score gives the initial conditions to perpetuate a ouvre; writing is the trace, potentially, for the analysis of their poetics.

Graça Alan - because being sister of Marcos and a classical guitarist, the author potentiates the task of presenting this intense musical career which she was strong witness, but with proper neutrality of an academic work needs, providing an imperturbable narrative, with subtlety and dignity.