A Portuguese and Brazilian sentimental art song cultivated in the 18th and 19th centuries. From the early 1700s it competed with the lundu to be the first truly Brazilian music form. Moda is a generic term applied vaguely to any song or melody. Particularly common in the 18th century were the modas a duo, for two sopranos, sung in parallel motion with harpsichord accompaniment and a possible doubling of the bass line by a low string instrument. In practice most printed modinhas in Portugal were accompanied by the guitar. During the Second Empire in Brazil the modinha acquired the character of the Italian opera aria, while in Portugal the same occurred about 1800. Under such influences the modinha began to lose its original simplicity, acquiring elaborate melodic lines with typically superficial ornamentation. Aspects of the opera aria were retained in the popularization of the modinha and came to be identified later in the 19th century as ‘national’ traits. Eventually the Brazilian modinha became a strongly lyrical folksong incarnating Brazilian romantic spirit. As a love song it was closely related to another popular genre, the lundu, a song and dance born of African origin which, together with the modinha, became the most important salon genre in Portugal and Brazil.
M. de Andrade, ed.: Modinhas imperiais (São Paulo, 1930/R)
B. Siqueira: Modinhas do passado (Rio de Janeiro, 1956, enlarged 2/1979)
M. de Araújo: A modinha e o lundu no século XVIII (São Paulo, 1963)
E. de Alencar: A modinha cearense (Fortaleza, 1967) [score]
G. Béhague: ‘Biblioteca de Ajuda (Lisbon) MSS 1595/1596: Two Eighteenth-Century Anonymous Collections of Modinhas’, YIAMR, iv (1968), 44–81
B. Kiefer: A mondinha e o lundu: duas raizes da música popular brasileira (Pôrto Alegre, 1977)
G. Doderer, ed.: Modinhas luso-brasileiras (Lisbon, 1984) [score]
M. Veiga: ‘O estudo da modinha brasileira’, LAMR, xix/1 (1998), 47–91
GERARD BÉHAGUE