City in Brazil. It was founded in 1554. The first documented musical references date from 1611 when the cathedral was established; from its foundation it maintained a mestre de capela, whose duties included musical composition and teaching; Manoel Pais Linhares, Vieira de Barros and Lopes de Siqueira were mestres in the 17th century and Manoel Lopes de Siqueira and Angelo de Siqueira in the 18th. They and their pupils contributed to the development of religious brotherhoods initiated by the Portuguese metropolis. When São Paulo was raised to a diocese in 1745 the mestre de capela was Matias Alvares Torres; he was replaced in 1774 by André da Silva Gomes, who occupied the post for 50 years, concurrently teaching Latin in the city. Some 200 of his sacred compositions in the cathedral archives are the oldest known musical documents of São Paulo. In the 19th and 20th centuries the cathedral continued to be a centre for the cultivation of sacred music, from Antonio José de Almeida, who succeeded da Silva Gomes, to Furio Franceschini, appointed in 1908.
Within the state of São Paulo several communities developed intense musical activity, evident from the many works of 18th-century mestres de capela, of whom the most important included Faustino Prado Xavier (1709–1801) in Mogi das Cruzes, André da Silva Moura (1725–1809) in Santos, Manoel Gonçalves Franco (1740–1814) in Guará, José Ribeiro de Siqueira (1700–72) in Parnaíba, Manoel Julião da Silva Ramos (1763–1824) in Atibaia, Jesuino do Monte Carmelo (1764–1819) in Itú, Pedro de Alcântara (1722–96) and his son Antonio do Rosário (b 1759) in Sorocaba.
In the 18th century in South America ‘opera’ was a generic term for theatrical performance. By 1750 São Paulo had a Casa da Ópera, under the direction in 1774 of the Bahian musician Antonio Manso da Mota; the Teatro da Ópera in the Pátio do Colégio was also established in the 18th century. Travellers reported local performances of opera excerpts, particularly on the occasion of the acclamation of the first Emperor of Brazil in 1822. Augusta Candiani was the first important European opera singer to perform in São Paulo (1847), and she was followed a few years later by many European artists presenting the standard Italian operatic repertory; in 1860 the Companhia Buffa Francesa presented the music of Offenbach and Delibes. In the following year the Teatro da Ópera produced Fortunato G.P. Andrade’s comic opera Palavra de Rei, strongly influenced by Donizetti, and at about that time Brazilian opera emerged, with the first presentations in Rio de Janeiro of works by Elías Álvares Lôbo and Carlos Gomes, both born in São Paulo. The Teatro S José in the Largo S Gonçalo was inaugurated in 1864, preceding by ten years the city’s first well-organized lyric company, that of José Ferri. With the inauguration of the Teatro Santana and the Teatro Municipal (1911) regular annual music drama seasons began.
Concert life started in the 1850s, when visiting soloists appeared with the first local orchestras. After 1880 a substantial Italian colony grew up in São Paulo; in that year Luigi Chiaffarelli (1850–1923), founder of the city's piano school and teacher of Guiomar Novais, Antonieta Rudge and others, settled there. He initiated regular concert life in his famous musical soirées (continued later by Agostino Cantù); at one of these in 1899 he presented Henrique Oswald’s Quartet in G, in the presence of Saint-Saëns. In 1883 the Haydn Club was founded under the direction of the composer Alexandre Levy (1864–92), organizing chamber music and symphonic concerts until 1887; it was succeeded by the Mendelssohn Club, mostly dedicated to choral music. The Sociedade de Cultura Artística (1912) and the Sociedade de Concertos Sinfônicos de São Paulo (1921) reflected the development of concert life in the city. The short-lived Sociedade Sinfônica de São Paulo (1930–31) had Heitor Villa-Lobos and Lamberto Baldi as its conductors.
The Sociedade Bach, under Martin Braunwieser, the Seminários de Música da Pro-Arte, under Hans J. Koellreutter, and the Orquestra Sinfônica de Amadores were founded in the 1940s. The sphere of professional activity widened with the creation of the Orquestra Sinfônica da Rádio Gazeta, the Orquestra de Câmara do Angelicum do Brasil (1951) under Mario Rossini, the Orquestra Sinfônica Estadual de São Paulo (1952) and the Associação Paulista de Música (1956) with its chamber orchestra under the direction of Olivier Toni, its string quartet and Coral Piratininga under Eunice Catunda. The movement of Juventude Musical Brasileira (Brazilian Musical Youth) was also initiated in the 1950s. The Manifesto de Música Nova (1963) brought together avant-garde musicians, including Damiano Cozzella, Rogério Duprat, Régis Duprat, Gilberto Mendes and Willy Corrêa de Oliveira, who advocated and presented concerts of new music. The state educational television (Anchieta Foundation) emerged concurrently with the Movimento Villa-Lobos, which sponsored the creation of mixed choral groups throughout the state, such as the distinguished Coral da Universidade de São Paulo under Benito Juarez.
One of the most far-reaching accomplishments in the city's music history was Mário de Andrade’s organization of the Departamento Municipal de Cultura during the 1930s. He initiated regular symphony concerts, which became possible with the founding of the Orquestra Sinfônica Municipal, and founded the Coral Paulistano, the Quarteto Municipal and the Discoteca Municipal. Under his supervision composition contests were instituted and monographs published.
The Conservatório Dramático e Musical de São Paulo (1906), which developed from piano teaching in the city, soon became a centre of musical studies and composition; its teachers included Chiaffarelli, Cantù, João Gomes Araujo, Alfério Mignone, Samuel Arcanjo, Francisco Casabona and Savino de Beneditis, and later Mário de Andrade. Among its students were Francisco Mignone, Artur Pereira, Camargo Guarnieri and Frutuoso Viana. The Academia Paulista de Música was founded in the 1960s. In 1928 João Gomes jr, Francisco Casabona, Félix Otero and João Julião organized the Instituto Musical de São Paulo, which underwent considerable reforms in 1971 under the direction of Neide Rodrigues Gomes. In 1970 the department of music of São Paulo University was established at the Escola de Communicações e Artes with a staff of 17 under the direction of Olivier Toni. It offers undergraduate and postgraduate courses in composition, conducting, instrumentation and musicology, and publishes Revista Musica (from 1990).
The existence of the conservatory prompted the establishment of the Edições Ricordi, which published Italian didactic works and Brazilian works. Publishing ventures expanded with the founding of the Editora Casa Vitali. Musical periodicals published in São Paulo have included the Gazeta musical (1893–5), the review Música (1896), the Gazeta artística (1909–14), Ariel (1923–5) and Resenha musical (1938–45). From the early 20th century daily newspapers such as the Estado de São Paulo, the Diário de São Paulo and the Diário popular had regular music columns. A regional council of the Ordem dos Músicos do Brasil (National Musicians' Union) was established in 1960.
M. de Andrade: Pequena história da música (São Paulo, 1929, 8/1977)
C. Penteado de Rezende: Um século de ópera em São Paulo (São Paulo, n.d.)
L.H.C. de Azevedo: 150 anos de música no Brasil (1800–1950) (Rio de Janeiro, 1956)
R. Stevenson: ‘Some Portuguese Sources for Early Brazilian Music History’, Yearbook, Inter-American Institute for Musical Research, iv (1968), 1–43
R. Duprat: Música na sé de São Paulo colonial (São Paulo, 1995)
RÉGIS DUPRAT