Santoro, Cludio in Oxford Music Online

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Santoro, Cludio
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Santoro, Cludio
(b Manaus, Amazonas, 23 Nov 1919; d Braslia, 27 March 1989). Brazilian composer, conductor and violinist. He studied the violin and theory at the Conservatrio de Msica do Distrito Federal, Rio de Janeiro, graduating in 1936. After making some first attempts at composition in 1938, he became a pupil of Koellreutter, who introduced 12-note techniques to him. He co-founded and played the violin in the Brazil SO (19417), and in 1946 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, but, unable to secure a visa for the USA, he travelled instead to Paris under a French government fellowship. There he studied with Boulanger and was a conducting pupil of Bigot at the Conservatoire. In 1948 he was the Brazilian delegate to the Prague Congress of Progressive Composers, and the meetings condemnation of dodecaphony as bourgeois decadence influenced his development. Back in Brazil he worked as music director of the Radio Club do Brasil in Rio (19513), professor of composition at the Santos School of Music (19534), chief conductor of the Brazil SO and artistic director of Radio Ministrio da Educao e Cultura (1956). He also taught composition at the Pro Arte seminars in Rio and Terespolis. In 1962 he was appointed professor and coordinator of music at the University of Braslia, and director of the music section of the Federal Cultural Foundation. The 1964 military takeover, however, created an untenable situation for many faculty members, and Santoro decided to accept a fellowship from the West German government and the Ford Foundation. He moved to Berlin in 1966, and the following year he was invited by the West German government to assist in the organization of the Information and Diffusion Centre for Latin American Music within the Institut fr vergleichende Musikstudien und Dokumentation. After a period as music director of the Teatro Novo, Rio (19689), he returned to Germany as professor of composition and conducting at the Heidelberg-Mannheim Hochschule fr Musik (197078). He consolidated his reputation in Europe during this period of creative activity; on his return to the University of Braslia in 1978 he developed intense activity in the capital city, including his foundation and direction of the symphony orchestra of the Teatro Nacional, which was renamed after him upon his death. A member of the Academia Brasileira de Msica and of the Brazilian Academy of Arts, he received numerous prizes and commissions. Santoros early music, that written between early 1939 and about 1947, was orientated towards atonality, evolving under Koellreutters influence into a pragmatic 12-note technique and from this to a freer, more flexible serial style. One exception to the abstract work of this period is the semi-programmatic Impresses de uma fundio de ao for orchestra (1942). Some pieces of the years 19457 anticipate a second phase in Santoros music: the Symphony no.2, the Msica para cordas, the 6 peas for piano and the Trumpet Sonata are all more subjective and lyrical, more spontaneously nationalist. Santoro began serious studies of Brazilian folk and popular music in 194950, and he embraced a nationalist style during the period 194860 approximately. His socialist views at this time had an effect on his music there was some affinity with Prokofievs Soviet phase and with the symphonic writing of Shostakovich. Canto de amor e paz for string orchestra (1950) received the International Peace Prize of the World Peace Council in Vienna (1952), the Symphony no.4 (1953) was recorded by the USSR State SO and praised by Soviet critics and composers. Although this latter work calls for Brazilian percussion instruments, it has no other nationalist character, but rather resembles Prokofiev in its rhythmic drive. At the same time Santoro was writing overtly nationalist pieces, such as the Third Quartet and Ponteio, and this tendency prevailed in the Symphony no.5. In the next two symphonies he tried to transcend his previously direct folk and popular style, developing a somewhat subjective nationalism in the late 1950s. In the mid-1960s Santoro returned to a qualified serialism and went on to use aleatory and other new techniques. The Symphony no.8 (1963) was a major turning point in the return, and a clear indication of his concern to free his materials from the restrictions of folk rhythmic and other

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Santoro, Cludio in Oxford Music Online

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formulae. Characteristic of what Santoro termed a universal form and language are the Quartets nos.6 and 7 and Interaes assintticas, which shows a detachment from conventional orchestral writing, compounded by micro-tuning mixed with impassive static blocks of tone and random noise of scraping instruments (London). His use of aleatory methods and graphic notation began in 1966. Intermitncias II, for example, includes random percussive elements and limited improvisation, as well as new performing techniques in the solo piano part; and the Cantata elegaca, commissioned by the Gulbenkian Foundation, has improvised choral and instrumental passages. In the late 1960s and 70s Santoro further developed, in an unorthodox manner, his earlier interest in electro-acoustic music, as displayed in his electronic ballet Strukturen (1976) and the Mutationem series for solo instruments and tape. He wrote some of his most solidly crafted works in his later years, such as the well-received cantata Aus den Sonnetten an Orpheus (1979), the Requiem para JK (1986) and his Symphony no.14 (1989). Among the many works written between 1940 and 1963 that he later withdrew are over 13 orchestral works, including four ballets, and numerous chamber, vocal and piano pieces. However, the impressive quality of his output puts him, with Villa-Lobos and Guarnieri, among the foremost Brazilian composers of the 20th century.

Copyright Oxford University Press 2007 2009.

Bibliography
Compositores de Amrica/Composers of the Americas, ed. Pan American Union, ix (Washington DC, 1963), 1267 E. London: Four Scores by Cludio Santoro, YI-AMR, vii (1971), 518 Ministrio das Relaes Exteriores, Diviso de Difuso Cultural Catlogo das obras de Cludio Santoro (Braslia, 1977) G. Bhague: Music in Latin America: an Introduction (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1979) J.M. Neves: Msica brasileira contempornea (So Paulo, 1981) V. Mariz: Histria da msica no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro, 1981, 4/1994) E.M. Vasconcelos: The Symphony no.4 Braslia by Camargo Guarnieri and the Symphony no.6 by Cludio Santoro in Brazilian 20th-Century Nationalist Symphonic Music (diss., U. of Texas, 1991) M. Godoy: Cludio Santoro: Overview of his Piano Works and Analysis of the Fourth Piano Sonata (diss., Boston U., 1994) V. Mariz: Cludio Santoro (Rio de Janeiro, 1994)

Gerard Bhague

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