How La llorona became a Miserere by Willy Corrêa de Oliveira

Abstract

In our research on the cycle of piano pieces called Miserere, by Brazilian composer Willy Corrêa de Oliveira (DE BONIS, 2010) we discuss a series of compositional procedures used in this work and in the composer's production in general, such as borrowings and metalanguage, the relation to visual arts, the condensation of ideas, the superposition of quotations in the manner of an ideogram, musical theater, and the possibility of an structural analysis of each piece side by side with a semantic reading (favored by the score itself). As an open work, the Miserere has received additions by the composer after the publication of this research. The same analytical tools applied to the cycle are here used to study one of the last pieces to join the cycle in 2009.

Willy Corrêa de Oliveira; Miserere; metalanguage; musical memory; Brazilian contemporary music