Symphony No. 2 (“Brasiliana”) by Walter Burle Marx

Abstract

Abstract: This article on the Brazilian composer Walter Burle Marx ( b . São Paulo, 1902; d . Akron, Ohio, 1990) is part of an ambitious project which aims at publishing a performing edition of all four of Burle Marx’s symphonies. His Symphony No. 2 (“Brasiliana”), written in 1950, reflects Burle Marx’s national and cosmopolitan influences. The early twentieth century in Brazil was an effervescent period, during which nationalism was the watchword. This climate caused some hesitation when it came to accepting Burle Marx into the Brazilian musical scene as a composer and conductor. Burle Marx’s musical background forged an undeniable bond between music tradition and artistic nationalism, which was imperative to the composers of the time. Nonetheless, for the Brazilian modernist movement in the 1920s, Burle Marx’s German training in the 1920s turned out to be an anathema. This article investigates two aspects of Brazil’s cultural and political environment between 1922 and 1945, a critical period that had a great impact on the development of Burle Marx’s career, and this article also concludes by presenting the most characteristic and distinctive compositional processes that make this work noteworthy in Burle Marx’s symphonic output. This era embraces two significant moments in the cultural and political history of Brazil: A Semana de Arte Moderna (“The Week of Modern Art”), which was a watershed development toward a new aesthetic orientation for Brazilian artists, and the end of Era Vargas, Getúlio Vargas’s dictatorship (1930–45).