The non-monumentalized musical practices of Minas in the history of music in Serro and Diamantina by Francisco Curt Lange

Abstract

Francisco Curt Lange's research in the mid-twentieth century was essential to situate Minas Gerais as a relevant documental center in colonial Brazil. The course of the historiographical narrative was reoriented, new musicians were highlighted and other musical practices and contexts were emphasised. Recurring particularly on the research that this musicologist developed on eighteenth-century Serro and Diamantina, and made available in the Curt Lange Collection of the UFMG (Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil), this paper examines the role of Curt Lange in relation to the musicological narrative and the construction of local music history based on the documentation he accessed. Thus, based on the revisiting and rereading of the documentation selected by Curt Lange, this article is centred on the perspective and contextual discourse found in travel reports and memorialist writings, where records of musical practices and manifestations were identified that enable new interpretative horizons in the light of current musicology.