Francisco Curt Lange
| Francisco Curt Lange | |
|---|---|
| Born | Franz Kurt Lange 12 December 1903 Eilenburg, Province of Saxony, Kingdom of Prussia, German Empire |
| 💀Died | 3 May 1997 (aged 93) Montevideo, Uruguay3 May 1997 (aged 93) |
| 💼 Occupation | |
| Known for |
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Francisco Curt Lange (12 December 1903 – 3 May 1997), born Franz Kurt Lange, was a German-Uruguayan musicologist.[lower-alpha 1]
He was a major figure in the development of musicology in Latin America and became especially known for his work on americanismo musical,[lower-alpha 2] the musical integration of the Americas, and for his research on colonial music in Minas Gerais,[lower-alpha 3] Brazil.
Biography
Lange was born in Eilenburg, in the Prussian Province of Saxony,[lower-alpha 4] on 12 December 1903. After studying architecture in Munich, he studied music in Leipzig, Berlin and Munich, and completed a doctorate at the University of Bonn in 1929 with a dissertation on polyphony in Dutch motets.[lower-alpha 5][1][2]
In 1930, while visiting Latin America, he was invited by the Uruguayan government to organize musical activities in the country. He became involved with the creation of SODRE[lower-alpha 6] and directed the national sound archives.[lower-alpha 7][3]
His career in Uruguay placed him at the center of efforts to organize musical research, broadcasting and cultural exchange in Latin America.[4]
Lange promoted the idea of americanismo musical, a project of cultural integration across the Americas through music. In 1934, he published Americanismo musical: la sección de investigaciones musicales, su creación, propósitos y finalidades.[5][6]
From 1936 to 1946, Lange edited the Boletín Latino-Americano de Música,[lower-alpha 8] one of the first scholarly periodicals devoted to music in Latin America.[7] The publication included studies, documents and musical supplements from different parts of the continent, and became one of the central vehicles for his Pan-American musicological project.[lower-alpha 9][4]
He died in Montevideo on 3 May 1997.
Research in Brazil
Lange's work in Brazil focused especially on the musical history of colonial Minas Gerais in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.[lower-alpha 10] Beginning with fieldwork in the 1940s, he located manuscripts and parts[lower-alpha 11] connected with generations of musicians active in the mining towns of Minas Gerais.[8]
His 1946 publication on music in colonial Minas Gerais offered one of the first major accounts of that repertory and helped place Brazil within comparative studies of music in the Americas.[8]
The research brought renewed attention to composers such as José Joaquim Emerico Lobo de Mesquita, Marcos Coelho Neto, Ignácio Parreira Neves and Francisco Gomes da Rocha.
Collections and archives
The Coleção Francisco Curt Lange,[lower-alpha 12] held by the Museu da Inconfidência[lower-alpha 13] in Ouro Preto, consists mainly of musical documents from about 1750 to 1930. The collection includes manuscripts, papers and photographs, with scores for religious functions, band music, orchestral and piano works, songs, operatic excerpts, photographs of scores and miscellaneous documents such as letters, receipts and accounts.[8]
In 2017, the collection was inscribed in the Memory of the World Regional Register for Latin America and the Caribbean.[lower-alpha 14][8]
Lange's personal archive was incorporated into the Federal University of Minas Gerais in 1995 as the Acervo Curt Lange – UFMG.[lower-alpha 15] The archive contains records, photographs, books, periodicals, equipment, musical scores, drafts, notes and correspondence documenting musical and cultural life in Latin America across much of the twentieth century.[9] UFMG has described the archive as including about 58,000 letters, most of them professional correspondence with figures from the musical world of his time.[10]
Legacy
Lange is remembered as one of the central figures in the formation of Latin American musicology. His work connected scholarship, broadcasting, publishing and cultural policy, and his research on colonial music in Minas Gerais helped recover a repertory that later became important to the study and performance of Brazilian sacred music.[lower-alpha 16][8][4]
See also
- Music of Brazil, National musical tradition connected to Lange's research on Brazilian colonial music.
- Musicology, Field of scholarship in which Lange worked.
- Pan-Americanism, Wider movement for cooperation across the Americas, related to Lange's idea of musical Americanism.
- Memory of the World Programme, UNESCO programme that recognized the Francisco Curt Lange Collection as documentary heritage.
- Ouro Preto, Historic Minas Gerais city where the Francisco Curt Lange Collection is held.
Notes
- ↑ A musicologist is a scholar who studies music as history, culture, theory or performance practice. Musicology can include archival research, analysis of scores, study of musical institutions and work with old manuscripts.
- ↑ Americanismo musical can be translated as "musical Americanism". For Lange, it meant a project of cultural exchange and musical cooperation across the Americas, especially through research, publishing and institutions.
- ↑ Minas Gerais is a state in southeastern Brazil. During the colonial period, it was one of the main gold-mining regions of Portuguese America and developed a rich tradition of religious music in its towns and churches.
- ↑ The Province of Saxony was a Prussian province in what is now Germany. Lange was born before the modern Federal Republic of Germany existed.
- ↑ Polyphony is music in which two or more independent melodic lines are heard at the same time. A motet is a usually sacred vocal composition, especially common in European church music.
- ↑ SODRE is Uruguay's national broadcasting and cultural institution. Its full Spanish name is Servicio Oficial de Difusión, Representaciones y Espectáculos. It became important for radio, orchestras, archives and public cultural programming in Uruguay.
- ↑ A sound archive preserves audio recordings and related documents. In the early twentieth century, this could include discs, cylinders, broadcast recordings and catalog information about performers and repertory.
- ↑ Boletín Latino-Americano de Música means "Latin American Music Bulletin". It was a periodical that published research and documents about music from different parts of Latin America.
- ↑ Pan-American projects aimed to connect countries across North, Central and South America. In Lange's case, this meant using music research, publishing and cultural institutions to build ties across the hemisphere.
- ↑ In this article, "colonial" refers mainly to the period when Brazil was part of the Portuguese Empire, before Brazilian independence in 1822. Some musical traditions from that period continued into the 19th century.
- ↑ In music, a "part" is the sheet music used by one performer or one group of performers, such as the violin part, the bass part or the choir part. Older works often survive as separate parts rather than as a full score.
- ↑ Coleção Francisco Curt Lange means "Francisco Curt Lange Collection". In Portuguese, coleção can refer to a collection of documents, artworks, books or other materials kept together because of their shared history or subject.
- ↑ The Museu da Inconfidência is a museum in Ouro Preto, Minas Gerais. It is named after the Inconfidência Mineira, an eighteenth-century anti-colonial conspiracy in Minas Gerais.
- ↑ UNESCO's Memory of the World programme recognizes documentary heritage, such as manuscripts, archives, photographs and recordings. A regional register recognizes material considered important for a particular part of the world.
- ↑ Acervo is Portuguese for a collection or archive held by an institution. Here it refers to Lange's personal and professional papers preserved at the Federal University of Minas Gerais.
- ↑ Sacred music is music written or used for religious worship. In colonial Minas Gerais, much of this music was connected to Catholic churches, brotherhoods and public religious ceremonies.
References
- ↑ "Cronologia Curt Lange" (PDF). Acervo Curt Lange (in português). Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais. Retrieved 14 May 2026.
- ↑ "Lange, Francisco Curt (actually, Franz Curt)". Encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 14 May 2026.
- ↑ "Latin American Music Center Newsletter". Indiana University ScholarWorks. Retrieved 14 May 2026.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Toni, Flávia Camargo; Carozze, Valquíria Maroti (2013). "Mário de Andrade, Francisco Curt Lange and Carleton Sprague Smith: public disco collections, musical knowledge and cultural policy". Revista do Instituto de Estudos Brasileiros (57): 181–204. doi:10.11606/issn.2316-901X.v0i57p181-204. Retrieved 14 May 2026.
- ↑ "Americanismo musical: la Sección de investigaciones musicales, su creación, propósitos y finalidades". WorldCat. Retrieved 14 May 2026.
- ↑ Moya, Fernanda Nunes (2015). "Francisco Curt Lange e o Americanismo Musical nas décadas de 1930 e 1940". Faces da História (in português). 2 (1): 69–88. Retrieved 14 May 2026.
- ↑ "Boletín Latino-Americano de Música". Répertoire International de la Presse Musicale. Retrieved 14 May 2026.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 "Francisco Curt Lange Collection of Musical Documents, 1750-1930". UNESCO Memory of the World – Latin America and the Caribbean. Retrieved 14 May 2026.
- ↑ "Acervo Curt Lange". Rede de Museus e Espaços de Ciências e Cultura da UFMG (in português). Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais. Retrieved 14 May 2026.
- ↑ "Acervo Curt Lange tem novo espaço na UFMG". UFMG Online (in português). Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais. Retrieved 14 May 2026.
Further reading
- Alge, Barbara (2014). "A influência da musicologia alemã na obra de Francisco Curt Lange". OPUS (in português). 20 (1): 9–38.
- Cotta, André Guerra, ed. (2005). Guia Acervo Curt Lange (in português). Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais. ISBN 9788570415028. Search this book on
- Duprat, Régis; Baltazar, Carlos Alberto, eds. (1991). Acervo de manuscritos musicais: Coleção Francisco Curt Lange: compositores mineiros dos séculos XVIII e XIX (in português). Editora UFMG. ISBN 9788570410559. Search this book on
- Fugellie, Daniela (2018). "¿El "embajador de Schoenberg" en Sudamérica? Francisco Curt Lange como promotor de la música de vanguardia (1933–1953)". Latin American Music Review (in español). 39 (1): 53–88. doi:10.7560/LAMR39103.
- Fürst-Heidtmann, Monika (1991). "Francisco Curt Lange: Pionier, Mittler, Nestor der Musikwissenschaft in Lateinamerika". Ibero-Amerikanisches Archiv (in Deutsch). 17 (2/3): 245–258.
- Merino Montero, Luis (1998). "Francisco Curt Lange (1903–1997): tributo a un americanista de excepción". Revista Musical Chilena (in español). 52 (189): 9–36. doi:10.4067/S0716-27901998018900002.
- Palomino, Pablo (2020). The Invention of Latin American Music: A Transnational History. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780190687403. Search this book on
External links
- Francisco Curt Lange Collection of Musical Documents, 1750-1930 at UNESCO Memory of the World
- Acervo Curt Lange at the Federal University of Minas Gerais
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