Please join us in congratulating Eleonora Perretta, who was granted an FWO PhD fellowship and will be conducting her project at CLIC in the coming 4 years, in collaboration with the Koninklijk Conservatorium Brussel (KCB), under the supervision of Kurt Bertels. She will also be associated with the research group RES#19+ – Practice-Based Research on Long 19th-Century Music – at KCB, part of Erasmushogeschool Brussel (EhB).
Restaging Chiquinha Gonzaga (1847–1935): Reception and Performance Practice of Choro for Guitar
This project studies the constitutive role of performer-composer Francisca “Chiquinha” Gonzaga (1847-1935) in the development of choro, Brazil’s first instrumental urban popular music. Building on postcolonial theories of creolization and Gonzalez’s concept of Amefricanidade, it examines how Gonzaga’s compositions and performances related to Afro-Brazilian and European musical traditions, as well as broader cultural narratives of gender, class, race, and musicianship of late 19th- and early 20th-century Brazil. This project argues that Gonzaga not only engaged with and strategically disrupted gendered, class-based, and racial norms of choro, but also participated in processes of musical creolization through which key stylistic materials (rhythm, melody, harmony) were transformed into a new urban genre, thereby defining choro’s musical language. The research combines (1) Gonzaga’s reception in historical newspapers and periodicals to explore how public discourse framed her musicianship; (2) her distinctive musical aesthetics within choro, examining how race, gender, and class shaped her compositions and music performance; and (3) the creation of historically informed performances of her choro guitar repertoire. By highlighting the contributions of a woman in the Global South, this project advances a more profound understanding of historical choro performance and challenges established Eurocentric and male-focused music studies.