Carmen Sylvia Vieira de Vasconcellosaus modern

Carmen Sylvia Vieira de Vasconcellos (* 20 February 1918, Alvinópolis, Minas Gerais, Brazil; died 2001) was a Brazilian composer, conductor, pianist, singer and teacher.

Life

Carmen Sylvia Vieira de Vasconcellos was born on 20 February 1918 in the interior of Minas Gerais, in the town of Alvinópolis. As the daughter of Caetano de Vasconcellos and Francisca Vieira de Vasconcellos, she was exposed to music from an early age. Her maternal grandfather, the farmer Manuel Vieira de Sousa, had a particular interest in music and art, which led him to bring over a teacher from Germany to teach the violin, guitar, piano and mandolin on his farm, so that Carmen Vasconcellos’s mother learnt to play the piano and mandolin. Her paternal grandfather, José de Vasconcellos Monteiro, was a poet and composer and even composed several ‘modinhas’.
At the age of four, Carmen was playing the piano by ear and soon afterwards began composing her first melodies.
As an adult, whilst studying at the Conservatório Mineiro de Música – which became the UFMG School of Music in 1962 – Carmen Vasconcellos attended teacher training college, now known as the Instituto de Educação, which offered a teacher training programme for primary school teaching. In 1942, she graduated from the conservatoire as a music teacher and in 1943 as a piano teacher.
Whilst studying, Dona Carmen, who came from a traditionally Catholic family, also combined her religious upbringing and faith with her artistic work, initially as a singer in the ‘Pro Hostia’ choir at Boa Viagem Cathedral from 1937 to 1944. From 1944, she took on the role of choir director.

In 1945, Dona Carmen began teaching as a supply teacher at the Conservatório Mineiro de Música and took up the post permanently in 1946. In 1950, she became a full professor of music theory and solfège. She continued to teach at this institution until 1983, the year she retired.

In 1955, Carmen conducted the Boa Viagem choir at the inauguration of TV Itacolomi. The following year, she performed at the inauguration of Juscelino Kubitschek as President. For this occasion, the Boa Viagem church choir was temporarily renamed ‘Coral Brasília’.

With this very choir, she had the opportunity to travel internationally to take part in festivals and present her arrangements and compositions to other nations.

Dona Carmen built her career in the field of education and became a leading figure in music education in Minas Gerais; she was a member of the Co-ordinating Committee for Studies on Pedagogical Issues in Music Education; she served as deputy director of the Conservatoire of Music and later as coordinator of the teaching staff and academic programme coordination for the Conservatoire’s courses; she was head of the public relations department of the Society for Music Education of Minas Gerais – SOMEM; executive director of the Research Council at UFMG and coordinator of the music education programmes at the university’s School of Music; she took over as head of the Department of General Music Theory at the same college and was also tasked with devising the practical examinations for the selection process to appoint a professor of musical perception at UFMG; she served as acting director of EMUFMG for two months and retired in 1983 as a full professor of musical perception.

Despite her intensive work in the fields of pedagogy, didactics and administration, Carmen Vasconcellos continued to compose melodies, which led to the development of her solfège methods, as well as a considerable number of songs, hymns, choral works, pieces for solo piano and other compositions. For her chamber songs, she set to music poems by Belmiro Braga, João Etienne Filho, Emílio Moura, Edison Moreira, Mercês Maria Moreira, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Cecília Meireles, Bastos Tigre, Tasso da Silveira and others.

Carmen Vasconcellos’s best-known works include songs for voice and piano, as well as her works for solo piano, some of which were published whilst the composer was still alive.

Source DEZ ESTUDOS VOCALISADOS DE CARMEN VASCONCELLOS: https://repositorio.ufmg.br/server/api/core/bitstreams/32ac9311-3783-4941-bcb2-93e4ad896076/content