SÍtio Burle Marx, Guaratiba, Rio de Janeiro 

Colóquio internacional 2004

Global Studies: Culture Nature

Germany-Brazil Forum on Music and Education

City of Leichlingen

Department of Culture

School of Music

in cooperation with the

Brazilian Society of Musicology

supporters:

Brazilian Embassy in Bonn

Brazilian Consulate General in Düsseldorf

Cologne Institute of Musicology

Cologne University of Music

Rhenish School of Music

Saarland University of Music

Inter-American Institute of Musicology (Montevideo)

German-Brazilian Society

Rio de Janeiro Choral Singing Association

Brazilian Folklore Association

The Germany-Brazil Forum on Music and Education took place in 1981/1982 in Leichlingen, a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Federal Republic of Germany. It included the German-Brazilian Music Week, which was held from September 26th to 30th 1982. The Forum was the first multilateral event dedicated to German-Brazilian relations in Musicology and Education. It was organized by the city of Leichlingen through its School of Music and Department of Culture in cooperation with the Brazilian Society of Musicology (SBM). The event was held under the auspices of the Brazilian Embassy in Bonn, Germany, and the Brazilian Consulate General in Düsseldorf. The Forum involved the collaboration of several organizations and institutions, including the Institute of Musicology of the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Cologne, the Cologne University of Music, the Rhineland University of Music, the Association of Music Schools of Germany, the Saarland University of Music, the German-Brazilian Society, the Inter-American Institute of Musicology (Montevideo), the Department of Musical Sciences of the New University of Lisbon, the Brazilian Folklore Association, the Folklore Museum of São Paulo, and the Rio de Janeiro Choral Singing Association. Brazilians residing in Germany collaborated in addressing the themes, in conferences, concerts, and in the organization of an art exhibition.

Self-Images and Reciprocal Images

The Forum's theme concerned the self-images and reciprocal images of Germany and Brazil in studies, public opinion, the press, media, and education in Germany, and the role music plays in them. Meetings and classes sought to discuss stereotypes that mark and restrict views of both countries. These biased portrayals hinder research, multilateral exchanges and cooperation, projects, and the organization of events, with multiple consequences for both sides, which is particularly felt in the different areas of Cultural Studies, Musicology, and Educational Sciences.

The ultimate goal of the Forum was to raise awareness of the need for contextual, regional, and epochal differentiation in overcoming clichés. It sought to highlight the diversity of views and portrayals of both countries from regional and epochal perspectives in overcoming unilateral and reductive conceptions and images. Stereotypes in studies and the arts, in representations of countries at festivals and in education should be questioned, which would also apply to activities, dances and music in migrant communities, of Germans in Brazil and of Brazilians in Germany.

The historical transformations experienced by Germany and Brazil over the centuries, leading to changes in borders and territories, necessarily require that self-images and reciprocal images in different regions and political-cultural contexts also be considered. The projections of images provided by literary and artistic works, by the actions of cultural agents and diplomatic representatives, by political propaganda and the media also contribute to the dissemination of images that come to be seen as characteristic and even ahistorically mutable. The Brazil presented by a scholar like Dom Pedro II in his multiple contacts with scientific and cultural societies, museums and other European institutions, his reserved and serious attitude, differed, for example, fundamentally from images generally associated with Brazil in the present. The same applies to Germany, a country that faced serious problems regarding its image in the period following the Second World War and that sought, through self-criticism, renewals and representations appropriate to new democratic developments.

Performances by national choirs and dance troupes, which glorify scenes from popular life, have served and continue to serve in various countries, even under authoritarian political circumstances, as a means of representation abroad, contributing to the creation of stereotypes. In an undirected manner, images and self-images are also established that do not correspond to the transformations and mutability resulting from cultural processes. Ignoring differences between various regional and social contexts, as well as temporal differences in historical development, these portrayals lead to generalizations and devaluations, to forgetfulness and loss of cultural heritage. Researchers from the Brazilian Folklore Association have long lamented the instrumentalization of folklore for political, religious, and generational purposes, hindering the development of empirical studies and ignoring the transformations of facts considered folkloric.

The image of Germany cultivated and carried by migrants in Brazil bears the mark of the political, regional, and historical contexts of the time in which they arrived. The vast majority came from kingdoms and principalities predating German unification, with their own histories and traditions; others came from regions belonging to other countries, whose borders frequently changed. Understanding Germany or Brazil based solely on their current borders—in the case of Germany, based on the division between West and East Germany at the time of the Forum—often means projecting anachronistic conceptions and visions onto the past and ignoring the mutability of processes that determine changes in self-image and the image of the other.

Recognizing the need to consider contexts and the processes that arise within them implies acknowledging that these processes continue to unfold in a complex dynamic of interactions. Presenting traditional Bavarian dances, music, and costumes as typically German—and therefore also typical of regions in Northern Germany, the Baltic Sea, Meklenburg, Pomerania, and Holstein—is as questionable as presenting Rio de Janeiro samba as having been typical of Acre in the past. This does not imply a failure to recognize diffusion processes through the intensification of exchanges and means of communication, which lead to predominance and situations marked by cultural unity according to current state configurations. This process should be the subject of analysis, and thus the Forum dedicated itself to discussing the relationship between Diversity and Unity from various perspectives. The primary question raised in reflections on the Unity/Diversity and Diversity/Unity relationships concerns the meaning of Unity. This question constituted a guiding theme not only for the Germany/Brazil Forum but also for all the others in a cycle of international forums inaugurated by it, which concluded in 1985, declared the European Year of Music by the European Communities.

Orientation according to processes

The realization of the Forum and its theme were the result of long-standing developments in thought, theoretical reflections, and practical initiatives in the fields of research and education. The orientation towards processes aimed at overcoming categorizations of objects, transcending boundaries in different senses, inter- and transdisciplinary, inter- and transcultural, was the scope of the Center for Research in Musicology of the Nova Difusão Society, founded in São Paulo in 1968. The relationships between research in the areas of Musicology, Cultural Studies, and Education were, from the beginning, the subject of reflections and experiences in teaching practice. This orientation determined the treatment of ethnomusicological, historical, and aesthetic issues in teacher training and undergraduate courses at the Faculty of Music and Art Education of the Musical Institute of São Paulo, from 1972 to 1974.

The possibilities of a musicological orientation in this theoretical-cultural sense for Music Education were also addressed in other Brazilian states. The discussions were marked by the concept of polyvalence and thus of inter- and transdisciplinarity in the training of educators, leading to an expansion, in many respects questionable, of the Music Degree into a Bachelor's Degree in Art Education. These theoretical debates and experiences continued internationally from 1975 at the University of Cologne. From there, the potential and risks of polyvalence in Art Education were considered, a topic also being discussed in Portugal at that time. These debates, conducted jointly with researchers and educators in Brazil, also preceded the founding of the Brazilian Society of Musicology in 1981.

Differentiation and Diversity

The question of the necessary differentiation of perspectives and the appropriate orientation of society in correspondence with the richness constituted by Brazil's cultural and musical diversity led to the realization of a large-scale project of observations and verification of research and education in a large number of Brazilian states. The results of these observations and the dialogues conducted with researchers and institutions in different regional contexts led to the creation of an audiovisual presentation on Diversity in Musicology and Education in Brazil, which was presented at the opening of the Germany-Brazil Forum. The International Symposium on Sacred Music and Brazilian Culture, held in São Paulo in 1981, had as its motto Unity and Diversity and, also considered by theologians, demonstrated the problems that could result from conceptions of Unity when it is treated from a national-political or ecclesiastical perspective. At the Forum, this debate was to be resumed from other perspectives and foundations.

Guiding Principle: Human Rights

Guiding Principle: Human Rights and Duties

The question of the meaning of Unity in Diversity/Unity relations, of fundamental importance in the debates, was also previously raised and discussed. In colloquia conducted in university circles in Bonn and Cologne, starting in 1978, a conception of Culture, Art, and Education oriented according to Human Rights was reached, also encompassing their Duties. Human Rights, as an ethical principle of a universal nature, would thus constitute the basic criterion for the meaning of Unity in the Unity/Diversity complex. The Lusitanist Thomas Freund (1958-2019), a scholar of the Enlightenment in the Portuguese-speaking world, recorded the results of these debates in a text that became a guiding principle for the work of the Germany-Brazil Forum and those that followed it.

Multilateral Forum and Musicology

The idea for the series of multilateral forums to discuss issues concerning music research in Brazil stemmed from a suggestion by Luís Heitor Correa de Azevedo (1905-1992) (UNESCO) in a speech at the Independence Room of the Paulista Museum on the occasion of the founding of the Brazilian Society of Musicology (SBM).

According to him, the city of Cologne offered ideal contexts for studies concerning Brazilian musical research in international collaborations in Europe. Cologne was already a center for Luso-Brazilian and musicological studies of international renown. The University, the Higher School of Music, and the School of Music or Conservatory of Cologne had long maintained relations with Brazil. These contacts had intensified since 1975, when a group of scholars dedicated to the renewal and development of research related to music in the Portuguese-speaking world and to the institutionalization of a culturally oriented musicology in Portugal and Brazil established themselves there. Ali had presented her dissertation on music in São Paulo, which had led to her being included in the program of the 1981 International Symposium, made possible by the São Paulo State Government's Department of Culture.

One of the leading representatives of German musicology, Karl-Gustav Fellerer (1902-1984), former rector of the University and former director of its Institute of Musicology, actively participated in the founding of the SBM (Brazilian Society of Musicology). The proximity to Bonn, then the capital of West Germany, home to universities, international organizations, and the Brazilian Embassy in Germany, as well as its proximity to the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France, made North Rhine-Westphalia a particularly promising region for cooperation and exchange.

Leichlingen - Forum Headquarters

Among the cities in the Cologne region, Leichlingen offered itself, for several reasons, as a particularly suitable location to house the project for a center dedicated to the study of German/Brazilian relations. The links with Brazil were present in the city's cultural history and were constantly remembered. It was there that Julius Pohlig (1842-1916), the engineer who worked alongside Brazilian engineers on the construction of the Sugarloaf Mountain cable car, was born. His monument stood in the main square of Leichlingen. The choral and instrumental groups of the local Evangelical Church had supra-regional renown, and their conductor dedicated himself to revealing the works of little-remembered composers from the beginning of the 20th century who were part of the same historical and cultural context as Martin Braunwieser (1901-1991), a prominent figure in the history of musicological and empirical-cultural studies, music education, and the Bach movement in Brazil.

The sessions included a tribute to Martin Braunwieser (1901-1991) on his 80th birthday. During the conference, his work as a researcher of popular Christmas cycle traditions within the Mission to Northeast Brazil in the 1930s was considered, along with its consequences for his activity as a composer, responsible for music in kindergartens in São Paulo, which was pioneering and exemplary in many aspects for its time, as well as his work as a teacher in music education teacher training courses.