José Viana da Mota e as instituições da vida musical lisboeta na década de 1910

Abstract

Knowledge about the figure of José Viana da Mota has been enriched, in recent years, and already after the pioneering study of João de Freitas Branco, with the publication of several musicological works collecting and analysing data on certain phases of his biographical and professional trajectory. However, in what concerns the 1910s, the extent of his involvement with the process of renewal of Lisbons’s musical life and its institutions—an issue that has long been identified in musical historiography—continues to await more detailed research, a situation that finds justification, in part, in the dispersion and unavailability of systematised primary source materials relating to this specific period. This article aims to contribute to filling this gap, exploring in a historical perspective, through the analysis of a vast set of hitherto unknown sources, coming in particular from an exhaustive survey in the press of the time, the institutional changes underway and the contours of Viana da Mota’s participation in this process, without forgetting the turbulent political scenario which at that time had profound implications for the entire cultural field. In this sense, it examines closely the situation of the Teatro de São Carlos at the beginning of the new republican regime, the circumstances in which Lisbon witnessed the establishment of a first series of symphonic concerts at the Teatro da República, the process that would culminate in the reform of the Conservatory in 1919, and also some aspects of Viana da Mota’s collaboration with the symphonic concerts held by the Teatro Politeama at the end of this decade.