Music to see, theater to listen: idiomatic aspects of Gilberto Mendes’ music theate

Abstract

Gilberto Mendes (1922-2016) was one of the most important Brazilian composers of the second half of the 20th century and beginning of the 21st century. His work is multifaceted and does not follow a specific aesthetic program. Concerning music theater, a genre that consists of the scenic creation from the musical compositional practice, Gilberto Mendes was, along with his companions of Música Nova Group, pioneer in Brazil, besides being among the first composers of the genre at the international level, together with Mauricio Kagel and others. In this article, we first make a brief contextualization of the composer, and then present a bibliographical review on the history and practices of music theater, adding our contribution as researchers of the genre in the Brazilian contexto. Finally, we present the main characteristics found in Gilberto Mendes' music theater, verifying which are his idiosyncratic procedures and which are those that, more comprehensively, are integrated to the bases of this practice. This work, as part of a wider research, aims to rescue an important and not yet investigated part of the work of Gilberto Mendes, besides collaborating for the insertion of Brazilian music theater in the international debates about the genre.