A obra integral para canto e piano de Manuel Faria

Abstract

Manuel Faria was a Portuguese composer and priest who lived between 1916 and 1983. After finishing his studies at Braga’s Seminar and doing a post-graduation in Italy at Pontificio Instituto di Musica Sacra, he returned to the Seminar as a music teacher and he started trying to make some changes over the composing methods of Portuguese Sacred Music. Troubled by the deterioration of the quality of liturgical music due to the introduction of the precepts of Vatican II Council in the country, Manuel Faria acted on several fronts so that he could stop this decline. He wrote in newspapers and spoke and preached on the subject. He also founded Nova Revista de Música Sacra, creating a forum where clergy and laity could meet and discuss their ideas on Portuguese sacred music and also publicise some new scores of this kind of music. He composed and harmonized a lot of music that then he taught to the various choirs he used to work with and that is still heard today in Portuguese churches. Manuel Faria also wrote in other genres, leaving a set of twenty-three songs for solo voice and piano. The work of interpretative analysis of each song, done in the light of the composer’s biographical framework, reveals the most characteristic features of Manuel Faria’s musical language. In the work for voice and piano the musical rhetoric quality is highlighted since it is in the encounter between the text and music that Manuel Faria finds its voice. This thesis aims to bring to light these songs and encourage the study of Portuguese music, here represented by Manuel Faria, a man whose musical heritage deserves great recognition.

Date of Award	30 Jul 2015
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Ana Sofia Almeida Sá Serra Dawa (Supervisor)