(b São José del Rei [now Tiradentes], c1735; d São José del Rei, 19 Aug 1813). Brazilian composer, organist and conductor. He was active in the province of Minas Gerais during the late colonial period and worked as a scribe in several brotherhoods in São José del Rei and São João del Rei. In the register of death certificates and wills at the church of S Antônio in his native city he is described as ‘mestre compositor de muzica’. According to research by J.M. Neves, Oliveira was also a captain and a mulatto. His rather extensive output includes a Mass, Te Deum, Magnificat, novenas, litanies and motets. The works are preserved chiefly in the archives of the Lira Sanjoanense Orchestra and the Lira Ceciliana, though few of the manuscripts are autograph. Several of his pieces were recorded in the 1980s. (J.M. Neves: Música sacra mineira: catálogo de obras, Rio de Janeiro, 1997)
GERARD BÉHAGUE
Oliveira, Willy Corrêa de
(b Recife, 11 Feb 1938). Brazilian composer. After early studies in music with local private teachers he studied theory and composition with Olivier Toni in São Paulo until 1961. He taught at the Lavignac Conservatory in Santos (1962) and worked as music director and composer for Jotafilmes (until 1964) and two other publicity agencies. Under a scholarship from the Brazilian and German governments he spent several months in Europe in 1962, attending the Darmstadt summer courses and studying with Henze, Stockhausen and Boulez. Subsequent sojourns in Europe allowed him to study with Pousseur, Berio and others. He taught information theory and poetics at the Escola Superior de Propaganda in São Paulo (1969) and then composition at the University of São Paulo. From the mid-1960s he participated in the annual New Music Festival (at Santos, and later in São Paulo), where several of his works were first performed. In 1973 he undertook research in Buenos Aires on the work of Shreker, then gave lectures in Rio de Janeiro on modern compositional techniques. A year later he gave an introductory course on contemporary musical thought within the First International Music Biennial of the University of São Paulo. His first compositions (1955–9) are based on features of north-east Brazilian folk music. After about 1961 he began working with 12-note and ‘total serial’ techniques, later developing an interest in aleatory procedures but maintaining a tight control of all parameters. In the late 1970s he suffered an existential crisis, questioning the meaning and aims of art-music composition, especially the music of the ‘bourgeois avant garde’. He wrote very little and dedicated himself more to theory and teaching. Since the early 1980s he has been writing music for commercial films, documentaries and plays, and piano pieces of a deliberate simplicity.
WORKS
(selective list)
Orch: Preludio e fuga, 1959; Ouviver a música, str, pf, 1965; Sinfoniasignos, 1968; Adagio, 1973
Choral: Paixão de Cristo, solo vv, chorus, str, 1958; 3 canzonetti, 1958; Semi di Zucca, 1961; Um movimento, 1962; Life, madrigal, 1971
Solo vocal: 2 canções, B, fl, tpt, cel, bongos, va, vc, 1960; Homage to Joyce, 1v, hpd, str, 1964; Divertimento, spkr, female announcer, orch, str qt, 1967; 3 canções, A/B, pf, 1969; Und wozu Dichter in dürftiger Zeit, S, str qt, gui, db, 1971–2; Phantasiestück, A, hn, trbn, 1972; Cicatristeza, S, 1973; Cantio ad laudem Sancti Francisci, S, vn, 1991
Chbr: Invenção, str trio, 1957; Mùsica per Marta, pic, eng hn, tpt, trbn, perc, 1961; Duo, fl, gui, 1974; Phantasiestück no.2, wind qnt, 1974
Solo inst: Cinco kitsch, pf, 1967–8; Impromptu per Marta, pf, 1971; 2 intermezzi, pf, 1972; Claviharpsicravocembalochord, hpd, 1974; Materiales, perc, 1980; In memoriam Andrei Tarkóvski, pf, 1988; Pequena peça zen, pf, 1989; Recife, infânica: espelhos, pf, 1989; Estudio in memoriam Hans Eisler, pf, 1990; Lendo Thomas Wolfe, pf, 1992
Principal publisher: Ricordi (São Paulo)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
G.Béhague: Music in Latin America: an Introduction (Englewood Cliffs, 1979)
J.M.Neves: Músic contemporânea brasileira (São Paulo, 1981)
V.Mariz: História da música no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro, 4/1994)
G.Mendes: Uma odisséia musical: dos mares do sul à elegância pop/art déco (São Paulo, 1994)
M.Marcondes, ed.: Enciclopédia da música brasileira: popular, erudita, folclórica (São Paulo, 2/1998)
GERARD BÉHAGUE
Oliver [Olyver]
(flc1410). English composer. His four surviving compositions are in the old layer of the Old Hall Manuscript, although internal evidence suggests that they arrived after much of the other music had been copied. Although they are all in score, they have more in common stylistically with the second-layer music than with the first-layer descant settings.