Among the monuments of Brazilian modernist architecture, the Catetinho, built in 1956 near the construction site of Brasília, is one of a kind. The only surviving work by Oscar Niemeyer built out of wood, it was intended to be a temporary office for the President of the Republic during the construction of the new capital city. This work discusses…[Read more]

Musical celebrations of the feast of St Cecilia were common in Europe since the fifteenth century and throughout the sixteenth century. Of the many composers who wrote music for this festivity we find four mid-sixteenth-century compositions by French composers. Two motets Cantantibus orgnis and Cecilia virgo gloriosa – by Pierre Certon which…[Read more]

Traditional towns in Portugal and Brazil have evolved a finely tuned coordination between, on the one hand, modular dimensions for street widths and lot sizes, and on the other, a typology of room shapes and layouts within houses. Despite being well documented in urban history, this coordination was in the last century often interpreted as…[Read more]

Edition of the motet “O magnum mysterium”, for six voices, by the Spanish composer Francisco Garro (c.1556-c.1623). Garro was active in Lisbon as master of the Portuguese Royal Chapel from 1592 to 1623, and this motet was published in one of his 1609 collection of masses, printed in Lisbon at the Pedro Craesbeeck workshop.

António de Oliveira was a Portuguese composer active in the last decades of the sixteenth century. He was a pupil of Manuel Mendes at Évora and made his musical career in the church of São Julião in Lisbon moving afterwards to Rome, where he died. Like Manuel Mendes, his musical production is scarce. This brief post aims to summarize what is kno…[Read more]

Edition of the “Magnificat Primi Toni”, for four voices, by the Italian composer Francesco Soriano (c.1548-1621). This work sets the polyphony for the odd verses of the canticle. It was published in Soriano’s collection “Passio D. N. Jesu Christi secundum quatuor evangelistas… Magnificat sexdecim…”, printed in Rome by Luca Antonio Soldi in 1619.

Edition of the “Magnificat Sexti Toni”, for four voices, by the Portuguese composer Filipe de Magalhães (c.1571-1652). This work sets the polyphony for the odd verses of the canticle. It was published in Magalhães’s “Cantica Beatissimae Virginis”, printed in Lisbon at the Craesbeeck workshop in 1636.