(Humanitas 55, 2003, 315-340) Música para o Teatro Humanístico em Portugal - Dom Francisco de Santa Maria, Miguel Venegas SI e o Colégio das Artes de Coimbra (1559-1562)

Abstract

XVI century's Jesuit Theatre brought about the rising of a new musical genre in Portugal, which was a conscious attempt at restoring certain characteristics of te Music for Chorus in ancient Greek drama. An unpublished letter found in the Jesuit Roman archives, written by the same time in which the earliest plays by M. Venegas S.I. were being written in Coimbra, says that the Chorus performs optime more tragico. The cantus parts of Venegas' Tragoedia Achabi were written by Dom Francisco de Santa Maria, and the extant pasts of that work have recently been found in the Biblioteca Geral da Universidade de Coimbra (MM70). Dating from 1562, these parts are the earliest of Humanistic Theatre. After a short analysis of this music composer, the sort of music that was composed for performances at the Jesuit schools, rather than being a simple theatrical ornament, was profoundly shaped after classical Rhetoric principles.