Programming Early Portuguese Repertoires beyond the Pyrenees: The Pioneering Contribution of Macario Santiago Kastner

Abstract

Macario Santiago Kastner (1908-92) is recognised as the first to put ‘the name of Portugal on the map of international musicology’ (Manuel Carlos de Brito 1989). Settled in Lisbon from 1934, Kastner’s lifetime focus was on the uncovering of sixteenth to eighteenth-century Portuguese and Spanish music. Captivated by Iberian music from the early ‘30s, he began to programme Portuguese keyboard repertoires across Europe, developing a substantial career as a performer. Kastner was, during that decade, the first to play Carlos Seixas in Sofia, Amsterdam and even Helsinki, the first to publish a modern collection of Portuguese early keyboard pieces—his Cravistas Portuguezes (1935)—and a pioneer in introducing the clavichord to play these repertoires in his vision of the historically informed performance practice. A large amount of unexplored source material (concert programmes, concert reviews, correspondence with his mentor Joan Gibert Camins, his own curriculum and Promotional Brochure), preserved in the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal and in the Biblioteca de Catalunya, document Santiago Kastner’s early career. The purpose of this article is to analyse Kastner’s activity during the ‘30s in championing Portuguese music across Europe with particular emphasis on the way he configured his programmes—both repertoire and organological approach—in order to create a niche in the expanding early music market.