AVEMUS: concertante-style music in the former Royal Monastery of São Bento da Avé-Maria in Porto

During the transition between the 18th and 19th centuries, the nuns of the former Royal Monastery of São Bento da Avé-Maria in Porto created an artistic legacy of inestimable value. The music commissioned and performed by these women during the main liturgical celebrations reached a technical level of high virtuosity that rivalled most of the important musical centres in the country. With the definitive closure of the monastery at the end of the 19th century, the scores were transferred to the National Library of Portugal (BNP) in Lisbon. Although several previous studies have looked at various aspects of the former monastery, none have studied the entirety of the preserved manuscripts, a valuable source of research that is still unknown to both the scientific community and the general public. The AVEMUS project proposes the study and recovery of this corpus of musical scores through the complete transcription and critical edition of the works from Porto’s female Benedictine monastery, as well as the presentation of papers at congresses, and the publication of scientific articles, the holding of a symposium, the production of a record album with a selection of works from the musical corpus dealt with by the project, the organisation of concerts and a themed exhibition. By publicising Porto’s remarkable 18th and 19th century convent music, this project aims to bring the city’s inhabitants and visitors – present and future – closer to its extraordinary intangible heritage.