by Suzel Ana Reily

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by Suzel Ana Reily
Campanha, like other towns in the 18th century gold-mining regions of Minas Gerais, Brazil, takes
great pride in its musical legacy. The main musical styles commonly identified locally as local are
clustered around two distinct sets of genres: on the one hand, the choirs, the brass band and the fanfarra
(youth percussion-based parading band) associated with the “townspeople,” that is, the sector of the
population living around the central core of the town; on the other, the “folk” traditions of the
underprivileged classes of the peripheries, encompassing the African-Brazilian dance and percussion
ensembles known as congados, the mummer-like folia traditions associated with the Three Kings and the
Divine Holy Spirit, the devotional dances to Saint Gonçalo, the musical styles associated with the
festivities of Saint John, and countless other such traditions.
Whether “central” or “peripheral,” the primary arenas of local musical production are almost
exclusively associated with traditional Catholic religious festivals and celebrations. This should come as
no surprise, for, since colonial times, musical activities in Brazil have been closely linked to the religious
calendar (Béhague 1979, Mariz 2005 [1983] among others). In Campanha, the folias de reis set off on
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their “journeys” at Christmas, emerging again as folias do divino around Pentecost; during the Festival of
Saint Sebastian on January 20, the town band leads the procession with a genre of military marches called
dobrado, as it does for several other saints during the year, particularly for the town patron, Saint
Anthony, in August; during Holy Week the main town choir, the Coral Campanhense, performs the
famed Motets of the Stations [of the Cross] and the Motets of [Our Lady of] Sorrows, by Manoel Dias de
Oliviera (1738–1813), as well as the work of other colonial composers, while the band leads the
processions with slow and heavy dirges; the celebrations linked to Saint John and the music associated to
these festivities mark the month of June; and in October there is the Festival of Our Lady of the Rosary,
which features the drum-based ensembles known as congados.
There is, however, another quite visible sphere of local religious music making, even though it is
rarely mentioned by anyone in Campanha when they are asked to identify the local musical performance
styles. This is the sphere of the animadores do canto litúrgico (lit. “liturgical song animators”), the people
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responsible for leading the collective singing during Catholic mass. Following Vatican II and the Roman
Catholic Church’s attempt to become more “popular,” collective singing started to be encouraged in the
mass, and a legion of priest-composers based in the nation’s main urban centers began generating
accessible songs to accompany the liturgy, which were then disseminated to parishes across the country
through sets of CDs and sheet music. At practically every mass I attended in the town, be it at the
Cathedral or at one of the town’s chapels, there was always a musical ensemble, however small,
responsible for bringing life to the liturgy with this new repertoire.
These ensembles include at least a singer and an instrumentalist, on either an amplified guitar or
keyboard. While some such ensembles are quite small, with two to four members, others involve
considerably more people, constituting what one might call a choir. The largest group of “animators” I
have encountered in Campanha over the years had around twenty members. The ensembles operate a
rotation system, such that each one is responsible for the music of anywhere from one to five masses a
month. Thus, there are generally at least twelve different organized groups of “liturgical animators” in
Campanha at any given time, mobilizing around fifty people on a monthly basis. Despite the numbers
involved in this musical arena, the local Catholic population has not appropriated the genre they perform
as their own. (See Figure 1.)
Figure 1: Group of “liturgical animators.”
Photo by Suzel Reily.
These circumstances raise some interesting questions: Why are the liturgical animators overlooked
when campanhenses (inhabitants of Campanha) assess their musical heritage? How are these ensembles
different from the ones that are immediately identified as local? Given that the liturgical animators are the
main musical leaders within the Church today, how did they achieve this position, and what have been the
implications of this achievement for local traditions?
These questions are surely linked to the age-old frictions between the Catholic Church as a
transnational organization with universalist aims and its local instantiations, where religiosity has
developed over time in relation to local specificities. In Campanha, local music making provides a
particularly fruitful arena in which to investigate these tensions precisely because communal music
making has long been associated with Catholic ritual; in fact, the very experience of Catholic religiosity
in the town has been traditionally linked to music. Today, however, as the clergy strive to promote a new
repertoire aimed at “renovating” the liturgy, the spaces for local traditions are being progressively eroded,
particularly those that are linked to official ceremonies sponsored by the Church. This has led many
campanhenses—along with their fellow mineiros (people from Minas Gerais) more generally—to feel
that their musical legacy is under threat from the Church, such that in Campanha, as in many other former
mining towns, there are heated debates going on regarding music in Catholic ritual. At stake is nothing
less than what it means to be Catholic in Minas today.
Campanha: The Ethnographic Setting
The ethnography for this essay derives from field research in Campanha, a small town located in
southern Minas Gerais. The region was originally populated in the early 18th century by a group of
independent prospectors who formed a series of homesteads along the River Verde, where gold could be
found, albeit only in small quantities. These communities, which together comprised around ten thousand
people, seven thousand black slaves among them, were finally brought under colonial jurisdiction in 1737
(Casadei and Casadei 1989:14).
Even though Campanha soon became the cultural and economic center of the region, fortunes only
started to be made in the region when its economic base shifted from mining to supplying meat and other
produce to the Portuguese Court in Rio in the early 19th century (Andrade 2005). Unlike the region
around Vila Rica (now Ouro Preto), the center of the gold rush, Campanha was situated in fertile rolling
hills. By the turn of the 20th century, the coffee expansion had reached the region; more recently, the
coffee groves have given way to citrus fruits, particularly the poncã (a type of large tangerine). As
elsewhere in southeastern Brazil, the agricultural crisis of the 1960s left the local economy in a state of
relative stagnation, and the population fell dramatically, as locals moved to more prosperous economic
centers such as São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Belo Horizonte. The population of Campanha today stands
at around 14,000 people. Alongside agriculture, which absorbs around 37% of the local work force, a few
small craft-based industries, commercial establishments, the municipal government, and institutions
connected to the Catholic Church are the primary sources of employment.
The presence of the Catholic Church is particularly strong in Campanha. Having been the cultural
center of the region throughout the 19th century, the town was chosen as the seat of a new diocese in
1909, attracting several other Church-run institutions, including a seminary; the prestigious Sion Girls’
College, now a retirement home for the sisters of the Order, whilst also housing the local branch of the
State University of Minas Gerais; and a French-Canadian mission.
Catholicism in Brazil
Although Brazil is unquestionably a Catholic country—around 75% of the current population declare
themselves Catholic—to think of Catholicism in Brazil as a doctrinal and institutional unity is highly
problematic (see Connell 2006:22–30); rather, given the diversity of belief systems and practices
conceived as “Catholic,” in Brazil, it might be best to conceptualize this universe as comprising of
“catholicisms” (see Burdick 1993; Hoornaert 1979; Mariz 1994).
This diversity is commonly attributed to the weakness of the Catholic Church in Brazil, at least up
until the latter part of the 19th century, since throughout the colonial and imperial eras it was subordinated
to the state (Bruneau 1974; Hoornaert 1979; Maués 1995). In the early phases of the colonial project, the
state did make some investments in ecclesiastical expansion, but economic interests soon overshadowed
religious concerns, such that as late as the mid 18th century there were still only eight dioceses in the
colony, and the vast majority of secular clergymen were employed independently by large landowners or
urban confraternities. When Brazil gained its independence from Portugal in 1822, the patronage of the
church was transferred to the Brazilian emperor, who also showed only a limited interest in its expansion.
Given these circumstances, lay men and women held considerable control over the institutionalization
of their religious activities. In rural areas, a range of vernacular forms of Catholicism emerged, many
rooted in late medieval Iberian traditions, particularly those directed at the devotion of popular saints.
Such traditions were often propelled by participatory forms of musical performance, engaging all
participants in collective ritual enactments (Reily 2002). In the urban centers, lay confraternities,
brotherhoods, and third orders—often referred to collectively as irmandades (Salles 2007 [1963], Boschi
1986)—were the main agents in the promotion of religious life. This was especially true in the mining
regions, particularly during the 18th century, where the number of clergymen was closely monitored;
indeed, the Crown forbid the establishment of religious orders in the region, as these institutions were
seen as covers for the smuggling of gold out of the mines to avoid the high royal taxes.
It was only when Brazil was declared a republic in 1889 that the church was officially separated from
the state, creating the conditions for stronger clerical influence (Bruneau 1974; Hoornaert 1979). In this
phase, an influential sector of the clergy spearheaded a project of ecclesiastic Romanization (or
ultramontanism,3 as this movement is often also called) that aimed to re-assert the authority of the clergy
within the church and finally instate the edicts of the Council of Trent within it. A first step involved the
eradication of localized popular beliefs and practices that had developed among devotees over the
centuries of neglect. Clerical officials invested heavily against unorthodox practices within the Church
itself, but their efforts were far less successful in stamping out organized vernacular forms of devotion, as
these practices, which involved primarily the marginalized lower classes, were either transferred out into
the churchyard and the street, or removed altogether from the direct gaze of the priests (Brandão 1985),
where they remain, for the most part, to this day. In Campanha, for instance, the congados no longer play
their drums and dance inside the Church as they claim they once did, though, throughout the Festival of
Our Lady of the Rosary, the various troupes in the town parade with impunity through the streets to the
deafening sound of their drums. Similarly, during the twelve days of Christmas, anywhere from fifteen to
twenty folias de reis roam the town bringing the blessings of the Three Kings to the households they visit
in exchange for donations for the Kings’ Day Festival on January 6; there isn’t a single ceremony within
the folia ritual process that requires the participation of a Church official.
While such autonomous vernacular forms of religiosity came to be ignored by the clergy, Church
modernizers were significantly more effective in eroding lay influence within the irmandades, as these
organizations were institutionally linked to the official Church. The main strategy employed here was the
introduction of a series of new associations, such as the Apostolado da Oração (Apostolate of Prayer),4
the Pia União das Filhas de Maria (Pious Union of the Daughters of Mary),5 the Congregação Mariana
(Congregation of Mary), among numerous other associations, that were tightly controlled by the clergy
(Hoogen 1990; Maués 2000).
While the thrust of the Catholic Church in Brazil up to the mid 20th century was directed toward a
reduction in lay control within the church, a shift in outlook during the 1950s brought the plight of the
poor across Latin America to the attention of many clergymen. This orientation received a strong impetus
following the Second Vatican Council (or Vatican II), which ran from 1962 to 1965. Vatican II aimed to
encourage the church to “turn outward toward the world,” whilst the conference of Latin American
bishops held in Medellin, Colombia, in 1968, went even further, declaring the Church’s “preferential
option for the poor.” At a global level, Vatican II was called so that the church could design measures to
curtail the evasion of Catholics to rival Christian churches. This was to be achieved through an increase in
lay participation within the church, and a down-playing of Catholicism’s hierarchical orientation, making
the Church a more “popular” institution. Furthermore, by shifting to the vernacular, the church aimed to
promote a discursive and rational understanding of religion among the faithful, opening space for the
progressive sectors of the clergy.
In Brazil, the implementation of the Vatican II directives has been fraught with contradictions: just as
the Church had been working to weaken the countless lay associations within the institution, it was now
meant to engage lay men and women in the life of the Church. How was it to reconcile the strongly
hierarchical aims of Romanization with the implementation of the new edicts? For many clergymen,
especially those within the progressive sectors of Liberation Theology, vernacular forms of Catholicism
in Brazil, while inherently highly participatory, were considered politically alienating and a primary
ideological support for traditional power structures (Burdick 2004:26). In effect, their messages were seen
as radically opposed to the objectives embodied in Liberation Theology’s political aspirations for the
country. But at the same time, many of these priests understood the popular turn to indicate that the
Church was to be divested of all “elitisms,” such as the use of Latin, choirs, orchestras, and any other
non-popular symbols and modes of expression used within the liturgy.
Because of its centrality in all spheres of lay religiosity, music has been a major focus of debate
surrounding the implementation of Vatican II. In Minas, the main document informing the views of the
Church over the past decades is presented in a small booklet titled Pastoral da música litúrgica no Brasil
(Pastoral on liturgical music in Brazil), produced by the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil
(CNBB) and originally published in 1976.6 This document calls upon priests to engage the congregation
in collective singing during mass and other church celebrations, using a repertoire that is “easy enough for
the humble, and favors the active participation of the whole community of the faithful” (CNBB 1976:21).
The same booklet also invites the clergy to “examine the works of the past, their genres and
characteristics, but to keep an attentive eye on their relationship to the new laws and needs of the sacred
liturgy” (CNBB 1976:21).
No doubt, the interpretation and implementation of these directives has been varied and uneven across
Brazil, but in the former mining regions it would appear that, since Vatican II, limited attention has been
directed at the countless “folk” forms of Catholicism, frequently referred to by the clergy as “paraliturgical” activity, that take place outside the Church. This stance allows Church officials to preserve an
ambiguous orientation toward popular Catholic practices, whilst minimizing the potential of alienating the
significant numbers of parishioners involved in them.
In contrast, the legacy of the artistic demands of the irmandades, particularly of the wealthy ones,
which is to be found in an extensive world of choral and orchestral ensembles, has posed special problems
for the liturgical renovation in the region. This arena involves performances that are closely integrated
into official Church liturgy, so it cannot be as easily ignored by the clergy. Yet the performances of these
groups are meant to be appreciated by a silent audience, rather than serving as encouragement to
congregational participation. Furthermore, traditional church choirs and orchestras, particularly in Minas,
frequently have repertoires based on Latin texts rather than the vernacular and an Art Music aesthetic
deemed inaccessible to “the humble.” This repertoire and its practitioners, therefore, have become prime
targets of the liturgical renovation, raising considerable anxiety amongst devotees toward the erosion of
their sense of religiosity and over the survival of central emblems of local colonial heritage.
It is worth noting that assessments from within the Catholic Church lament some of the consequences
of some ecclesiastical policies on music (CNBB 1999). Alongside a general assessment of the low quality
of musical performance in many parishes, the bishops expressed their dismay at how the favoring of
collective singing had led to a systematic suppression of choral groups (CNBB 1999:14–15). While
Church officials may now be striving to reorganize choral ensembles, is the ensembles they organize are
generally very different from the pre-Vatican II choirs, which were based around colonial repertoires.
Rather, most have been organized to lead the congregational singing of the Church’s contemporary
repertoire, following practices to be outlined later in the essay.
Moreover, changes in the profile of the priesthood in Brazil have also had an impact on local music
and music making. In the past, parish priests tended to remain in the same parish for a lifetime, but now
they can only stay for a maximum of six years. Moreover, as time goes by, there are fewer and fewer
traditional priests, trained in the pre-Vatican II era, while the post-Vatican II priests now dominate the
Church, and very few of them have personal backgrounds in the social and aesthetic world of the parishes
in which they find themselves. This continuous mobility of priests around the diocese means that they are
often seen as outsiders by parishioners, particularly when they are not from the region. In a context like
that of the former mining towns, new priests are felt to be particularly threatening, as they are likely to
lack a commitment to local traditions and local modes of devotion.
Baroque Sensibility and Lay Religiosity
The discovery of gold in Brazil coincided with the height of the baroque era in Portugal, and the
implementation of Catholicism in Minas Gerais centered around a baroque aesthetic of grand patron saint
festivals and processions, which Caio Cesar Boschi (1986:178–79) has referred to as a “religiosity of
exteriority,” a religiosity directed toward public display.
Strictly speaking, the word baroque comes from the Portuguese term used to identify a mal-formed
pearl, and it was appropriated, particularly in Protestant Northern Europe, to refer to the artistic excesses
of the counter-Reformation. These artistic excesses actually developed following the debates forged
during the Council of Trent, particularly those surrounding the use of religious iconography. The Catholic
Church responded to Protestant accusations of Catholic idolatry by concluding that religious images only
represent the figures they depict; the devotee is not venerating the image per se, but rather the saint
represented through it. The church considered these representations necessary, given the high levels of
illiteracy among the faithful at the time; iconography provided an efficient way of introducing Christian
doctrines to the masses.
Another conclusion taken by the Council that would also have a significant impact on the
development of religious art was the view that humans had no direct access to God other than through
their imaginations. This led some artists to see their work as a means of directing the imaginary of the
faithful, creating representations of the divine sphere in order to provide devotees with experiences of this
domain. In many parts of Europe the search for ways of representing the sacred led to an aesthetic of
excess, grandeur, and dramatic effect—or the baroque—that aimed to promote a sense of awe in the
observer. In confronting the work of art, the faithful would come face-to-face with the greatness of the
Kingdom of Heaven. As Marilyn Stockstad (2002:758) has noted, “Counter-Reformation art was intended
to be both doctrinally correct and visually and emotionally appealing so that it could influence the largest
possible audience.” But even as it favored the grand and the dramatic, it also aimed to draw the audience
inward and elicit powerful emotional responses by promoting identification and empathy with the
suffering of the saints, especially of the martyrs (Skrine 1978). Furthermore, the baroque artists called
upon the faithful to contemplate the transience and precariousness of the human condition in relation to
the infinity of an almighty God (Dottori 1992:52).
Through the work of art, devotees were invited to visualize themselves within the worlds they
depicted, thus experiencing imaginatively the episodes in the lives of the saints they were contemplating
and the feelings of these characters during significant moments of their lives. To enhance the aesthetic
experience, various media were frequently employed simultaneously: iconography, speech acts, music,
smells, bodily movement, among other stimuli, media that conjoined to create the drama of such
collective rituals as processions, funerals, and patron saint festivals. Through the theatricality of baroque
religiosity, devotees entered the sacred domains and participated collectively in powerful affective and
sensory experiences. This religious orientation favored the formation of a baroque religious sensibility
that encompassed bodily posture, sensations, and emotions, and these sentiments could be reinvoked with
each new instance of collective devotion.
It was this aesthetic orientation to religiosity that was taking hold in Portugal when the gold rush to
Minas got underway in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. In the towns around the mines especially,
the baroque sensibility was passionately cultivated. Much of the wealth being extracted from the mines
was invested in the construction and decoration of grand churches, but it was also used to stage
extravagant religious festivals with magnificent processions and ceremonious sung masses, often
involving specially composed music performed by a legion of professional musicians that congregated in
the major mining towns (Lange 1979; Neves 1997).
Strongly European in style, the repertoire employed in the baroque festivals in the mining regions
was, for the most part, locally composed, particularly from the latter half of the 18th century onwards.
Musicologists have generally classified the style used in Brazilian colonial music as pre-classical, though
José Maria Neves (1997:17–18) has shown that it actually drew on baroque, pre-classical, and classical
elements. Much of the music is set for one, and in some cases two, four-part choral groups to the
accompaniment of a small orchestra, which could include strings, flutes, French horns, and bass. Many
pieces include solos, suggesting the influence of baroque tendencies toward virtuosity, although the
choral repertoire typically employs homophonic procedures, suggesting accompaniment roles for the parts
that are more closely linked to pre-classical practices than to the baroque. The repertoire also includes
pieces with a continuo, but the clear orientation toward functional harmony indicates that the colonial
composers were gaining familiarity with the classical procedures in vogue in Europe at the time. Yet,
however, one may classify the colonial style, its characteristics articulated with the aims of the sponsors
of the festivals in generating baroque experiences amongst the colonial populations. Thus, many of the
pieces were composed to be sung and played during processions and religious dramas.
Religious devotion was sponsored by two main institutions: the first, representing the power of the
state, were the câmaras do senado ([local] senate chambers), that sponsored the crown’s official
festivities, which included Corpus Christi, Saint Sebastian, Angel Custodium of the Realm, and Saint
Isabel, and a number of events associated with the Portuguese royal family, particularly marriages and
deaths; the other included all the various lay confraternities, brotherhoods, and third orders, and they each
promoted the annual festival in honour of their patron saint (orago). The irmandades openly competed
with one another to stage the grandest festival of the year, as this was one of the few arenas in which the
wealth of the irmandade—and its members—could be publicly and ostentatiously exhibited (Araújo
1993).
As the gold in the mines declined, particularly from the early 19th century onward, local resources for
the production of extravagant festivals became progressively more limited, and many of them could no
longer be staged with the baroque splendour they once had. As the progress of Romanization reached the
mining regions, priests set about trying to replace the traditional irmandades with the new types of
association emerging within the Church. As the number of irmandades in the mining centers began to
decline, so did the festivals they sponsored (Mello e Souza 2008). In effect, the local religious calendar in
many colonial towns was progressively whittled down, leaving only a few major events involving
collective religious mobilization. In many towns in Minas Gerais, the two main festivals formally
sponsored by lay brotherhoods to remain are Holy Week, that was sponsored by the Irmandade do
Santíssimo Sacramento (Brotherhood of the Holy Sacrament), whose membership included the richest
men of society, and the Festival of [Our Lady of the] Rosary, sponsored by the largest black confraternity
in the region.
While today the annual cycle in Minas may no longer be marked by a continuous string of grand
processions and celebrations, local populations still strive to stage the festivals that have survived into the
present with as much grandeur as they can muster. In effect, a baroque orientation to religiosity is still
very much alive in many parts of Minas Gerais, as well as in countless other historic Brazilian towns. The
ability to stage a grand event is seen as a local achievement and a source of considerable pride—and it
continues to renew the links of the faithful to their saints through highly memorable and emotive
collective experiences. This is certainly the case in Campanha, where the town’s main festival, Holy
Week, is still staged in a manner that evinces baroque experiences amongst devotees.
The Baroque Legacy in Campanha
Documentation pertaining to religious festivals in Campanha is limited, but surviving minutes of the
local branch of the Brotherhood of the Holy Sacrament, founded in 1742, indicate that the institution
clearly aimed to emulate the grandeur of the baroque festivals of the major mining centers, though local
funds restricted its pretensions. Nonetheless, payments were made at various intervals during the 18th
century to musicians for their services during Holy Week celebrations, the main event sponsored by the
brotherhood during the year, suggesting that Campanha supported at least a few professional musicians
during the colonial period. In line with the economic development of the town, however, it is from the
early 19th century onward that collective activities become especially visible. During the festivities to
commemorate Brazil’s independence in 1822, for instance, the inhabitants of Campanha “showed their
gratitude to the founder of the Empire with a Te Deum accompanied by the music of two choirs, directed
by the Rev. João Dias.” In the evening there was a “rich procession” followed by a “splendid tea,” at
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which there were “good concerts of music and excellent piano sonatas,” followed by “contradances
beautifully performed by the principal ladies, and also waltzes and other dances that alternated during the
ball.” There was also a wake-up call early the next day, played by a wind band, and the festivities ended
with an “opera” performed by the Latin grammar students. Throughout the night one could hear street
musicians performing to the accompaniment of guitars and tambourines (see Valladão 1940: 56–59).
Although this description pertains to a civic event, it provides a clear illustration of the investments
the local population made to stage their religious festivals as well. The grandest event was, of course,
Holy Week, which by the early 19th century included a series of celebrations that took up the entire week.
Several other festivals lasted three days, but there were also those limited to just one or two days. But
rarely a month went by without a major religious event to mobilize the local population.
Over the years the number of festivals has declined, but Holy Week has not only survived; it has
preserved its core structure, and it continues to promote strong emotions among the faithful. Holy Week
in Campanha could be conceived as an extended collective drama, made up of a complex series of events,
in which the very intensity of the succession of ceremonies contributed toward promoting a “baroque
experience” among devotees. Given the complexity of the event, it is not possible to describe the full
drama, but a quick overview, highlighting the main moments in the ritual process, provides an indication
of the contributions made by local musicians to the theatricality of the collective endeavor.8
Holy Week proper is preceded by the Setenary of [Our Lady of] Pains, a seven-day preparatory
period for the contemplation of Our Lady’s seven pains, but no traditional local ensembles are involved in
these ceremonies; rather, they are accompanied by liturgical animators performing contemporary
repertoires. Palm Sunday involves the blessing of the palms in the morning and the Procession of the
Triumph in the evening; the town band accompanies the evening procession with dobrados, whilst
liturgical animators are recruited for the masses of the day.
For many locals, Holy Week really only begins on Monday evening, with the “Procession of the
Deposit” (Procissão do Depósito), as this event sets the mood for the drama of the Passion of Christ. The
“Deposit” takes place soon after dark, with large numbers of people congregating in front of the
Cathedral. Suddenly a huge black box emerges, which contains the image of Our Lord of the Stations
(Nosso Senhor dos Passos). The band positions itself behind the box and strikes up the long, minor chord
of its first dirge. An atmosphere of extreme solemnity takes over, as the crowd makes its way slowly
down the main plaza toward the Church of Our Lady of Sorrows (Igreja das Dores), where the image will
be deposited in preparation for the next day’s procession. Once the procession arrives at its destination,
there is the first of the out-door sermons of the week, around fifty minutes in length, drawing attention to
Christ’s sacrifice for humanity. When the sermon is over, the doors of the church open wide, revealing the
choir, who are standing immediately inside. They begin to sing a Miserere by Manoel Dias de Oliveira,
further heightening the mood of piety, respect, and sorrow. (See Example 1.) The black box is brought
into the church and opened to allow the faithful to kiss the image, whilst the choir and a small
accompanying string orchestra perform their version of two sets of motets by Manoel Dias de Oliveira,
the Motets of the Stations (Motetos de Passos) and the Motets of [Our Lady of] Sorrows (Motetos de
Dores), which will be performed again during the Tuesday and Wednesday processions, respectively.
Example 1: Miserere by Manoel Dias De Oliveira (n.d.).
Transcription by Suzel Reily.
Tuesday evening is marked by the “Procession of the Encounter” (Procissão do Encontro), in which
the men accompany the (deposited) image of Our Lord of the Stations and the women follow the image of
Our Lady of Sorrows. The procession stops along the way at small chapels called stations (passos), where
the choir perform the motet associated with the visual representation contained within the passo. (See
Figure 2) At a specified venue, the two images meet, a dramatic moment that elicits tears from some
devotees. On Wednesday evening there is the “Procession of Our Lady of Sorrows” (Procissão das
Dores). Following the image of Our Lady, the procession stops at each station, where a motet is sung that
pertains to one of the sorrows of Our Lady. In the past, Wednesday marked the first day in the
performance of the Office of Tenebrea (Ofício de Trevas),9 a particularly complex and dramatic ritual,
which has been abandoned, a loss many locals greatly lament.
Figure 2: The passo at which the choir sings the following text: Angariaverunt Simonem Cyreneum ut tolleret
crucem ejus (And they compel one Simon Cyrenian, who passed by, to bear his cross).
Photo by Suzel Reily.
On Thursday, events are contained within the Cathedral. In the morning there is the “Blessing of the
Holy Oils” (Benção dos Santos óleos), which has traditionally involved performances by the choir of an
anonymous repertoire in the colonial style. As this is a ceremony linked to the diocese rather than the
parish, other ensembles within the diocese have been invited to participate in this ceremony in the past
few years, generating friction between the Coral Campanhense and the bishopric. On Thursday evening,
when the proceedings return to the parish, there is the “Sermon of the Commandment” (Sermão do
Mandato), the “Washing of Feet” (Lava-pés) and the “Guard of Honour” (Guarda de Honra); for all of
these ceremonies there is a traditional repertoire involving the choir and the orchestra.
On Good Friday, the ceremonies begin at 3.00 p.m., with the “Adoration of the Cross” (Adoração da
Cruz) and the “Mass of the Pre-sanctified” (Missa dos Pré-santificados). But the highlight of the Week
takes place that evening, with the ceremony of the “Descent from the Cross” (Descimento [or
Discendimento] da Cruz), which is followed by the “Funeral Procession of Our Dead Lord” (Procissão
do Enterro de Nosso Senhor Morto). The “Descent” takes place in front of the Cathedral before a huge
crowd. As one local described it to me, “The Descent is the most moving moment of Holy Week. You can
see how much He suffered. They take off that crown of thorns, and you can imagine the blood that must
have flowed. Then they take out the nails, one by one. How painful! And his arms come down, first one,
then the other. Then the feet. You can just see how much his mother had to bear.” (See Figure 3)
Figure 3: The Descent from the Cross in Campanha.
Photo by Almir Ferreira Lopes; used with permission.
Once the image has been placed in an open coffin, there is the first of the performances of the “Song
of Veronica” (Canto de Verônica), which is repeated at each passo. Veronica’s performance is always
greatly awaited. This non-biblical figure is said to have wiped Christ’s face, his image being retained on
the cloth. As Veronica sings during the Funeral Procession, this image is revealed. Her performance is
followed immediately by the female voices of the choir, singing the parts of “The Three Maries” (As
Beus, or As Três Marias), and then the full choir, enacting the “orphans”, as they sing Pupili.10
On Saturday morning, a parish youth group stages a dramatic enactment of the “Stations of the Cross”
in the morning, and in the evening there is the “Paschal Vigil” (Vigília Pascal), which used to involve the
Coral Campanhese, but has now been turned over to groups performing contemporary liturgical
renovation repertoires.
On Easter Sunday there is a dramatic change in mood with the “Procession of the Resurrection”
(Procissão da Ressurreição) at 5.00 a.m. From time to time, the choir sings Surrexit, again by Dias de
Oliveira, and the band plays dobrados. As the procession arrives back at the Cathedral, the bells begin to
ring and fireworks are set off. Then a solemn mass is celebrated, in which the choir performs a setting of
the mass based on a local adaptation of music by the most celebrated of the Brazilian colonial composers,
Joaquim José Emerico Lobo de Mesquita (Serro, c. 1746–1805), but the mass ends with the choral
performance of Händel’s Hallelujah Chorus, which elicits enthusiastic applause from the congregation.
In the past, Easter Sunday concluded with the “Coronation of Our Lady” (Coroação de Nossa
Senhora) and a Te-Deum, but these events have now been abolished.
As this overview demonstrates, Holy Week is staged to promote high levels of sensory intensity in
order to generate powerful and memorable experiences among participants. These practices articulate
with a religious sensibility that values affective encounters with the sacred. It establishes a relationship
between the devotees and the saints which is renewed through annual participation in the collective drama
played out over several days. Just as the opportunity to rekindle these potent sentiments brings huge
crowds of devotees back to the celebrations each year, the musicians, who play a critical role in creating
this atmosphere, also volunteer year after year to perform to a great extent because of the experiences they
have during collective music making for the rituals.
Musical Practices and the Coral Campanhense
The most prestigious ensemble in Campanha today is, without doubt, the main town choir, the Coral
Campanhense, whose most esteemed performances take place during Holy Week. The Holy Week
repertoire is almost exclusively in Latin, and however functionally linked it may be to the phases of the
ritual process of Holy Week, it draws on the aesthetic orientations of Western Art Music. Even though its
role within Holy Week is extremely intense, several members remember when they also performed for the
Palm Sunday celebrations, the Office of Tenebrae, the Paschal Vigil, and the celebrations on Easter
evening, repertoires that are now no longer familiar to most members of the choir; choir members now
fear they will lose their role during the Blessing of the Holy Oils as well. Indeed, since Vatican II, there
has been a progressive whittling of the choir’s participation in the Holy Week celebrations, lending
credence to the anxieties of many choir members that they may eventually completely lose their
performance space and the source of an intense sense of local achievement.
This has happened already with the orchestra. Up until the mid 1970s there was a large enough
number of local string players to accompany the choir, but the decline in performance opportunities for
these musicians meant that few new trainees came forward to carry on the tradition as older members died
or became unable to sustain the pace required by the Holy Week performance schedule. Nowadays, the
string players are drafted in from professional orchestras in Belo Horizonte or Campinas.
The choir, however, is sustained entirely by volunteers who engage in the ensemble’s activities
because they find singing together to be a rewarding endeavor. Furthermore, they see their singing as a
contribution to the preservation of an important domain of local musical heritage. As a voluntary
association, the group must be able to sustain the interest of its membership, both in the act of singing and
in the moments of extra-musical sociability. The ensemble, as it is currently constituted, has been in
existence now for over fifty years, suggesting that it has been quite successful in striking this balance. By
assessing the choir’s practices, one may gain some understanding of how this has been achieved.
The Coral Campanhense was formed in 1957, encouraged by the then parish priest, Monsenhor João
Rabelo de Mesquita, in an effort to ensure that the repertoire associated with the town’s Holy Week
celebrations would be performed competently. A group of young people was recruited and prepared by
the sisters Maria g Musa Pompeu (1915–2005) and Lucília Musa Pompeu (b. 1917). The sisters were
familiar with the repertoire, as their father, Marcelo Pompeu, and grandfather, José Luiz Pompeu da Silva,
had been the musical directors of Holy Week before them. In the fifty years of the choir’s existence, the
membership of the choir has fluctuated as some members have left or died, and others have been recruited
to replace them. Today there are around twenty-five members, with a ratio of approximately three women
to each man. (See Figures 4 and 5.)
Figure 4: The Coral Campanhense in 1960.
Photo in the public domain.
Figure 5: The Coral Campanhense performing during Holy Week in 2003.
Photo by Suzel Reily.
Although the choir’s Holy Week repertoire is almost all set for a four-voice choral ensemble
(soprano, alto, tenor, and bass) and instrumental accompaniment, either for a small string orchestra or
keyboard, very few of the singers have had any formal musical training, and what music literacy skills
they now have were acquired through participation in the choir. Therefore, they had to painstakingly
memorize their parts. The full repertoire, if sung continuously, constitutes around five hours of music.
The choir sings from sheet music, but it is used primarily as an aide-memoir and to assist the performers
in singing the correct texts.
Each year, immediately following carnival, the choir re-group to begin to prepare for the up-coming
Holy Week. During this period, new recruits learn their parts, and old members remind themselves of
theirs. Rehearsals are held twice a week, and as Holy Week looms, three, or even four rehearsals a week
can take place. Once the instrumentalists arrive, special rehearsals are set with them.
The choir stand in choral formation before the conductor. However, unlike a professional choir, the
conductor rarely stops the ensemble to correct or work on a particular passage. Rather, pieces are
generally sung from start to finish, and then assessed. If deemed successful, the choir move on to another
piece; if there is a problem, they simply sing the piece again from start to finish to see if they are able to
get it right on a second trial. While from a trained musician’s point of view this may not be considered the
most efficient way of achieving a faultless performance, the choir members find it difficult to enter in the
middle of the piece, as their experience of the music, and the way they have embodied it, is as a complete
entity. Furthermore, if the director’s attention shifts to a particular part, those with other parts start to chat
with one another. The singers trying to get their part right have difficulty hearing themselves, and once
they are sorted, the others have to be asked to be quiet so that the collective singing can resume. To
simply sing through the whole piece over and over again, then, has proved to be the most effective
rehearsal procedure in this setting.
The Holy Week repertoire is not the only repertoire the choir sings. They also know a number of
arranged folksongs, many derived from Villa-Lobos’s collections for school choirs. They also perform a
few (predictable) European classics, such as Mozart’s Ave Verum, Bach’s Jesus bleibet meine Freude
(Jesus, alegria dos homens), Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance (Pompa e circumstância), among others.
There are also a few popular tunes in the repertoire, such as a few modinhas, including Chiquinha
Gonzaga’s Lua Branca, Facinação (F.D.Marchetti / M. de Feraudy), and various popular songs, such as
Como é Grande o meu Amor por Você (Roberto Carlos and Erasmo Carlos), and others. When Dona Ilza
was involved with the choir, the ensemble tended to learn around three or four new pieces a year. Each
part was recorded on cassette so that the choir members could sing their parts along with the recording at
home to learn them. Rehearsals began with the new pieces, but then proceeded with the singing of old
favorites. The acquisition of new pieces helped sustain interest in the collective activity, but by
continuously returning to pieces that were well known, the choir could experience the joy of singing that
comes with the repetition of the familiar. After she left the group, there was no one with a strong enough
musical background to teach new pieces, so rehearsals centered on the revision of the known repertoire to
meet the requirements of the ensemble’s next engagement.
The choir draws upon its wider repertoire at independent concerts and “choir meetings” (encontros de
corais), that are hosted by local municipalities, as well as for weddings, graduation ceremonies, and other
celebrations to which they are invited. Participation in the choir, therefore, provides the members with
travel opportunities; in 1986 they even flew to São Luiz do Maranhão, a trip that is still remembered
fondly by many choir members. As there are charges for some of their engagements, at the end of the
year, the choir hold a dinner and any funds left over after all expenses have been met are divided among
the members. For many, this extra pocket money comes in handy in meeting Christmas expenses.
Liturgical Singing
The role of the “animadores do canto litúrgico” is to lead congregational singing during the mass.
Within the mass there are a few instances in which short fixed musical phrases are used to punctuate
significant moments in the ritual and others in which more extended performances are called for. The
short pieces are used at every mass, so mass attendants know them well, but they are so short, they hardly
allow participants to truly engage with them as music. The main focus of the song animators, therefore, is
directed toward the longer performances, particularly those that use entirely new musical material, such as
the “entry songs” and the “communion songs.” In Campanha, the congregation receives a published
program (folheto) that contains the text of the songs for the mass along with an indication of the CD on
11
which the melody can be found. The parish owns the CDs and has make copies of the songs to
distribute to the various groups of song animators. The musicians then learn the pieces for the mass(es) to
which they contribute.
The liturgy is structured around a three year cycle, such that the entry and communion songs may
only be repeated three years later. The only time in which an entry song is used more than once in a cycle
is during the “Fraternity Campaign” (Campanha da Fraternidade), for which a special song is composed
each year and used for four consecutive weeks. These songs, then, do become somewhat familiar to massgoers, though for the following year, a new song must be learnt and the songs from previous years are not
likely to be sung in mass ever again.
The folheto repertoires, or cantos do folheto (folheto songs), as they are known by Catholic
congregations in Brazil, are generally structured in a way that makes the songs fairly easy to learn, at least
if one speaks Portuguese and has embodied the basic Western musical grammar upon which Brazilian
vernacular traditions are based. Whilst there has been some effort to generate some songs with a Brazilian
character, the concept of “Brazilian-ness” used by the folheto song composers is based predominantly
around canonical notions that derive from the popular musics of Rio de Janeiro and Northeastern Brazil.
The bulk of the repertoire, however, is geographically indistinct and more or less “placeless.” The pieces
tend to have a clear strophic structure; they use a fair bit of melodic repetition; the harmonic sequences
are generally predictable (tonic/dominant/subdominant and occasionally parallel minors); binary or
ternary time signatures are the most common. In effect, most people could catch on fairly quickly, if they
so wished.
While musically this repertoire may be easy to sing, many of the songs have extensive texts, such that
they could require some effort to memorize. The text is chosen precisely for its religious message, linking
it to the Bible readings of the mass at that moment in the liturgical cycle. See, for instance, Example 2, the
song intended to be the opening song for the Corpus Christi mass, which takes place ten days after Easter
Sunday; its politically engaged content is typical of the progressive wing of the Catholic Church, and the
march-like melody may well have been chosen to inspire militantism.12
Example 2: Excerpt of a folheto song: Cristo pão dos pobres [Christ, bread of the poor], the opening song for
the celebrations of Corpus Christi.
CNBB’s Liturgical Songs collection.
Because songs change on a weekly basis, no common repertoire is formed through which a sense of
familiarity can be forged among Catholic congregations. The outcome is that, even though the pieces are
easy to perform, few people make the effort to learn them, and the animators, more often than not, sing on
their own. Not surprisingly, the turnover of animators is quite high, since the groups are unable to create a
sense of community around a shared repertoire. Every rehearsal has to be dedicated to the learning of new
pieces, which, once assimilated, are not likely to be sung again for some time, if ever. Musicians,
therefore, feel little incentive to generate elaborate arrangements for the pieces, since they are experienced
as transitory.
One of the priests in Campanha was keen to engage as many people as possible as liturgical song
leaders, and he began inviting all the choirs of the town, asking them to take responsibility for at least one
mass a month. The Coral Campanhense declined the invitation, as did another local choir, the Coral
Aleluia, a splinter of the main choir, flatly claiming they considered the music of the folheto an offense to
their aesthetic sensibilities. However, another choir involving many members from these two choirs
formed with the explicit aim of attempting to generate “good music” for the mass by arranging the pieces
of the folheto for four-part choir and instrumental accompaniment. The ensemble was allocated the 7:00
p.m. mass on each fourth Sunday of the month, which would give them a month to prepare for each
performance. Because of their experience in other choirs, the members of this group used the repertoire
they had learned in the other groups to complement the liturgical material. The choir was active for about
one year, and then dissolved. According to some of the participants, they split up because the system
under which they had to operate left them frustrated. Since very few of the choir members could read
music, they had to memorize their parts for every song, but there wasn’t enough time for the group’s
director to make the arrangements, teach everyone their parts, and rehearse the pieces to the musicians’
satisfaction. People started missing rehearsals, and slowly the group disintegrated, until the director
finally approached the priest to say the choir would no longer be leading the singing on the fourth
Sundays. Similarly, other groups have formed and dissolved, such that most masses are animated by a
few dedicated individuals who persist often in pairs, taking several masses a week.
Conclusions
The musical styles that campanhenses claim as their own are predominantly traditions linked to
Catholicism. However, these traditions emerged and developed within lay organizations with stronger or
more tenuous links to the institutionalized church. From the mid 19th century onwards, the church has
been striving to re-establish its control over lay religiosity in a process of continuous Romanization, and
the implementation of the liturgical renovation, as it has been taking place in some parts of Brazil, could
be seen as just one more step in the effort to “Catholicize” the Brazilian catholicisms. But integrated, as it
is, to the directives of Vatican II, it is also premised on a set of ideas about what constitutes the
modernization of the Church within a country like Brazil, where there are extreme disparities in the
distribution of wealth. The Church has made a preferential option for the poor, and to reach the poor it has
concluded that it must become “popular.”
But what, exactly, does the official church understand by “popular”? Musically, it has been
interpreted as the use of songs within the liturgy that are “easy enough for the humble, and favor the
active participation of the whole community of the faithful.” But the practices employed by the Church
actually mitigate against its objectives to promote collective participation, even though the repertoire
itself is indeed easy enough for most people to sing. Enthusiasm within communal singing depends, to a
large extent, upon a sense of familiarity with the repertoire, and sufficient continuity of communal
engagement to promote a sense of oneness with one’s fellow performers.
While a disengagement with the liturgical repertoire can be noted across Brazil, in the former mining
regions, where a strong local tradition of Catholic music making has been sustained since the colonial
period, it has heightened tension between the official Church and local parishes, highlighting differences
in the very conceptions of what it means to be Catholic across this divide. While the Church aims to
ensure that musical performance within the mass conforms to official liturgy, promoting a rational
understanding of religious doctrine, devotees pursue religiosity though experiences that elicit strong
emotions and mobilize their senses: experiences understood as encounters with the sacred.
It is certainly true that there are those in Campanha who feel that the musical repertoire now being
offered by the Church is unworthy of their discerning tastes. To many of these people, the liturgical
renovation constitutes an effective threat to their aesthetic sensibilities as well as a threat to local
traditions. And, to a greater or lesser degree, the liturgical renovation has indeed been targeting genres
considered to be elitist. In Campanha the members of the Coral Campanhense feel they are losing control
over their performances. Given that their performances are so functionally related to the celebrations of
Holy Week, should a priest be nominated to the town who finally decides to ban the choir altogether
because of its use of Latin, there would be no other performance context for their core repertoire. Thus,
the efforts of the singers in memorizing such a large body of music could be simply disregarded, and a
distinctly community-based musical universe, functionally linked to its locality and the source of
considerable aesthetic satisfaction, would buckle under the onslaught of the “popular,” as dictated by a
central and global ecclesiastical authority.
To be sure, in most parts of Minas Gerais today, the modern repertoire of the liturgical renovation has
become the dominant style used in ordinary masses. However, the Church’s concern with textual content
rather than performance experience has meant that it has been extraordinarily ineffective in generating an
affective identification with the musical material it is offering. Its performance does not involve sufficient
repetition to generate a level of familiarity with and embodiedness of the music to promote a sense of
shared experience among singers during music making. Given the Church’s universalist orientation and
top-down hierarchical stance, despite its declared commitment to the popular, the future of local liturgical
music making is uncertain. Should the clergy decide that the choir’s repertoire is no longer appropriate
within ecclesiastical rituals, its performance will have to be moved outside Church-sponsored
celebrations, such as to concerts promoted by local government. But if this happens, only time will tell
whether such events can be sufficiently emotionally rewarding for both musicians and audiences to ensure
continuity in the performance of the choir’s Holy Week repertoire in a secular setting.
Acknowledgements
The data used in this essay was drawn from research projects funded by the Economic and Social
Sciences Research Council (ESRC), the British Academy, and Queen’s University Belfast. I am grateful
to all these institutions for their support.
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Notes
1
For an extended discussion of the folias de reis of southeastern Brazil, see Reily (2002).
It is worth noting that within the various Protestant churches in Campanha, there are choirs and instrumental
ensembles which are also omitted in local identifications of “local” musics.
3
Ultramontanism was a term used by the Jesuits in their defense of papal authority. Romanization in Brazil was
closely linked to this order, which was allowed to return to the country in 1829, after seventy years of expulsion.
The term originated in the medieval period, when it referred to a non-Italian pope, that is, one from beyond the (Alp)
mountains.
4
The Apostolado da Oração was originally founded in 1844 in France by the Jesuit priest Father Frances
Gautrelet. The movement arrived in Brazil in 1867 with the Jesuit Father Bento Chembri, but it was with the
founding of a centre for the organization in Itu, São Paulo, that its expansion in the country got underway (Maués
2000:4–5).
5
The Pious Union of the Daughters of Mary was an association for young Catholic women dedicated to the
devotion of Mary Immaculate and Saint Inis. The order was first established in the early 12th century, but it
remained dormant until it was revived in 1864 by Pope Pious IX (1846–1878), through a number of indulgences he
bestowed on participants. The movement reached Brazil in latter part of the 19th century, where it was strongly
encouraged by the progressive clergy. See Brion (2009) and Oliveira (2009).
6
On various occasions in which I asked members of the clergy in Campanha about the role of music in the
Church, I was referred to this booklet, indicating that it is still the primary source of information for priests in the
diocese.
7
The first pianos are thought to have arrived in Brazil in 1808, with the entourage of the Portuguese crown,
which relocated to Rio de Janeiro to escape the Napoleonic threat. Their popularity was such that, within a few
decades, the instrument became a requirement almost for any family with the means to acquire one.
8
An extended representation of the Holy Week experience in Campanha, including photos, recordings,
liturgical texts and translations, can be found at: www.qub.ac.uk/sa-old/resources/HolyWeek/index.html.
9
The Office of Tenebrae was celebrated in the Catholic Church until 1977, when it was removed from the
liturgical calendar. On the Wednesday, Thursday and Friday before Easter, the same rites were repeated each
evening within the church, in which fifteen candles would be lit and successively extinguished, leaving a single one
burning. This candle would then be hidden under the altar, and in the darkness of the nave, the congregation would
begin to stamp their feet, making as much noise as possible, symbolizing the chaos in the world following the death
of Christ. The lit candle would then be brought out from under the altar, indicating that Christ had risen from the
dead, returning light to the world.
10
This set of pieces has also been attributed to Maonel Dias de Oliveira.
11
The folheto used in Campanha is published by Edições Paulinas and is the most widely used folheto in
southeastern Brazil. Edições Paulinas also produces the CDs with the music accompanying the folhetos.
12
The musical scores of CNBB’s liturgical repertoire are available for open access at
http://www.cnbb.org.br/site/component/docman/cat_view/279-hinario-liturgico; for Cristo, pão dos pobres, go to
http://www.cnbb.org.br/site/images/arquivos/03_flii/FLII.pdf.
2