The power of the sacred in the work of the composer Luiz Costa In the 140 years since his birthday (1879-1960)

Abstract

The point of view of this text is that of the anthropology of art or, more precisely, that of the anthropology of music, which aims to clarify, in the light of the contexts in which the life of the composer and his interpreters is shaped, the symbolic meaning of his work. If it is true that anthropology has the analytical, digital, diachronic and syntagmatic language of science, it is also increasingly evident that it is also endowed with the synthetic, analogical, synchronic and metaphorical language of art. If the first, dominant in the history of anthropology, tends to create an “objective” discourse about the artist as an actor and about his work taken as a distant “other”, the second seeks to create an understanding of his being as a “close”. By what processes does pure or program music acquire meaning in its interaction with the contexts (natural/cosmic included, psycho-socio-cultural, historical-political) of its creation and interpretation? This is the theoretical problem of this text. Critics and musicologists seem to converge on one point: the “bucolic”, “nostalgic” or “melancholic” character of much of Luiz Costa's program music, arguing with the composer's love for nature as a source of inspiration for these works. This is their point of arrival. As an anthropologist, this is for me the starting point for a more general question: how does the artist's music acquire meaning for his performers and his listeners? Just for your love of the nature of your homeland?