O integralismo musical de Luís de Freitas Branco: De Viriato a Camões

Abstract

Luís de Freitas Branco (1890-1955) was, during the decade of 1910, connected with the Portuguese monarchist movement Integralismo Lusitano, and from this relationship, important writings and musical works emerged. Besides the composition of works based on texts (poems and stories) written by the main thinkers of Integralismo Lusitano – O motivo da planície, Soneto dos repuxos, Minuete, three songs based on António Sardinha’s sonnets; Viriato, a symphonic poem based on the tale Funerais de Viriato by Hipólito Raposo; and Canto do mar, for tenor and orchestra, with a text by Alberto de Monsaraz – other non-programmatic musical works seem to match the ideologies of the movement, such as the Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, Balada for piano and orchestra and the first Alentejo Suite. In this article we discuss and analyse part of Luís de Freitas Branco’s production of the 1910s, relating it to the ideals of Integralismo Lusitano. We aim to demonstrate in which ways Integralismo, founded, in the first place, as a literary and political movement, could have had its musical counterparts, and how Freitas Branco’s connection with it influenced his later work. Selecting two of his major works, the Symphony no. 1 and Madrigais camonianos for mized choir a cappella, we will try to explain Freitas Branco’s neoclassicism from the 1920s and 1930s  according to what we consider to be its roots: the composer’s ideals from the 1910s, related chiefly to his collaboration with Integralismo Lusitano’s activities and propaganda.