Scenas nas montanhas: Viana da Mota e os Açores em 1895

Abstract

In 1933, Viana da Mota referred to the use of popular themes from the Azores in his work Scenas nas montanhas, op. 14, published in Brazil in 1908. However, the two pieces included in this work were originally part of the Quartet em G major, composed in the summer of 1895, during the four months that the pianist and composer spent on the island of São.Miguel, after the tour that took him and Bernardo Moreira de Sá to visit the archipelagos of Madeira and the Azores. Beginning with an investigation into that journey, this article aims to contextualize the two works mentioned above, and retrace certain aspects of Viana da Mota’s biography. The connection between the Quartet in G major, which includes a ‘Scena in the Mountains’, and the Azores can be interpreted according to the ideal of the picturesque, and a number of Romantic topics, through which the landscape of São Miguel, in particular the Vale and Lagoa das Furnas, was being shaped, as well as the sound environments to which the composer was exposed on the island. Its aesthetic similarities to the symphony ‘À Pátria’ and the new musical paradigm that Viana da Mota intended to implement in Portugal are also evident, showing the fusion of German symphonic and chamber genres, with a programmatic component and elements of Portuguese ‘popular’ music. The Quartet is thus an important element for understanding the composer’s personal and professional projects in the mid-1890s, when he was thinking about settling permanently in Portugal.