Book Chapter on Évora Historical Soundscapes

I have published the text “A antífona Recordare, Virgo Mater: Prática musical mariana na Sé de Évora no final do século XVII e século XVIII” in the ebook Paisagens Sonoras Urbanas: História, Memória e Património, edited by Antónia Fialho Conde and Vanda de Sá and published in the Publicações do Cidehus in October 2019. This is the first publication of the research project that is working on Évora’s historical soundscape and gathers the papers presented at the international congress organized at the University of Évora in 2017.

This book chapter examines the setting of the antiphon Recordare, Virgo Mater and its presence at the Évora Cathedral music archive. The text was widely used throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, applied to the celebration of the novenas and litanies, most notably the feast of Our Lady of the Sorrows and a local feast known as the Milagre da Cera (meaning literally the miracle of the candles).

One of such settings is the double-choir with continuo motet by Diogo Dias Melgaz, chapel master of the Cathedral from 1679 to 1700. It is a very interesting setting combining the traditional polyphonic and polychoral writing with the new features that began to appear in compositions used at Évora Cathedral in the beginning of the 18th century, with the presence of instrumental parts and a increasingly more vertical approach to choral writing as well as the introduction of more dissonant intervals.

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