Alberto Nepomuceno

Brazil's Alberto Nepomuceno became the earliest composer to weave national elements into his homeland's classical repertoire. Heitor Villa-Lobos studied under him, while Nepomuceno himself trained with leading European musicians. Born on 6 July 1864 in Fortaleza in northeastern Brazil, he grew up as the son of a violin instructor and cathedral musician. After the family relocated to Recife, he pursued violin and piano lessons and briefly contemplated a legal career that exposed him to republican activists who ultimately ended the Brazilian monarchy. He nevertheless sustained his musical work and, at eighteen, took charge of the Carlos Gomes Club, Recife's principal concert hall. Shortly afterward he began performing his own compositions publicly, many of them written in Portuguese at a time when advocates of Italian opera insisted that the language was unsuited to vocal music. Nepomuceno defended his choices in a heated newspaper campaign, then settled in Rio de Janeiro in 1885 to teach. In 1888, even while supporting his family following his father's death, he sailed for Europe and studied first with Giovanni Sgambati in Italy and later with the virtuoso pianist Theodor Leschetizky in Germany. During those lessons he met Norwegian pianist Walborg Bang, herself a Grieg pupil, and the couple married; they resided for a period in Grieg's Oslo home, where Nepomuceno's resolve to pursue musical nationalism grew stronger. In the closing years of the 1880s he composed several Afro-Brazilian piano dances that rank among the earliest classical works to employ native Brazilian idioms. His String Quartet No. 3, completed in 1890 and subtitled "Brasileiro," advanced that approach still further. Upon returning to Brazil he joined the faculty of Rio's Instituto Nacional de Música, counted Villa-Lobos among his pupils, and actively championed the younger composer's initial efforts. Nepomuceno himself produced the operas Artemis (1898) and Abul (1904), a Sinfonia in G minor, and an orchestral serenade. Declining health later prevented him from accepting Gustav Mahler's invitation to conduct in Vienna. He died in Rio on 16 October 1920, three days after his last appearance at the Municipal Theater. Although his influence is widely acknowledged, his music remains seldom performed beyond Brazil, and the String Quartet No. 3 waited until 2005 for publication.