Portuguese contemporary music composers and ensembles: collective heritage preservation

The CESEM project “Portuguese ensembles and composers of contemporary music: collective heritage preservation” aims to digitise, study and preserve collections of some of the most important composers and music ensembles from the last 30 years of the twentieth century, whose documentation is scattered and/or has never been treated. This project has been gaining relevance as many of the works from that period are experimental in several aspects (they include non-conventional instruments and artefacts, improvisation, electronics, etc.), and this documentation being dispersed, inconsistent or lost, it is difficult to put this repertoire back on stage.

The main goal of this project is to make documents, recordings and scores accessible, keeping alive and valuing this relevant heritage of Portuguese contemporary music, thus allowing academics, musicians or other stakeholders to access, study and reinterpret works from this period, which had an impact on the Portuguese music scene.

To achieve this objective, collaboration protocols have been drawn up between Universidade NOVA and the owners of the collections (heirs or others responsible for this heritage, both private and institutional).

This work requires exhaustive research to gather scattered documents, particularly those that are kept by musicians, performers or other participants in work’s premieres. It is also necessary to meet the participants and discuss collaborative strategies with them to access the documents, as well as to obtain additional information regarding the works. This work is carried out by researchers from the Contemporary Music Research Group (GIMC) at CESEM, with the collaboration of students and interns from the Department of Music.

Currently the project focuses on collections of composers such as José Lopes e Silva and Constança Capdeville, but also ensembles such as Quadrifonia, Opus Ensemble and ColecViva. The collections include manuscripts, personal notes and sketches, recordings, images, among others. Documentation, digitisation and registration work is carried out at the Laboratório de Preservação e Restauro de Áudio (LaPRA). After being treated, and in accordance with the specifications of each protocol, the collections will be returned to their owners or, in particular cases, will be stored in the National Library of Portugal.