On 5 July, at 2pm, the Soares dos Reis National Museum will host the ‘Musica Monialium’ Symposium, one of the initiatives of the project ‘Music in concertante style in the former Monastery of São Bento da Avé-Maria in Porto (1764-1834)’, funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology and carried out by the Centre for the Study of Sociology and Musical Aesthetics at the New University of Lisbon.
The meeting aims to present to the scientific community and the general public the results of the various lines of research that make up the project, from the transcription and availability of musical scores belonging to the former monastery, as well as the study of musical practice, pre-compositional models and influences on the music produced in the city’s female Benedictine monastery.
During the transition between the 18th and 19th centuries, the nuns of the former Royal Monastery of São Bento da Avé-Maria in Porto gave rise to an artistic legacy of inestimable value. The music commissioned and performed by these women during the main liturgical celebrations reached a technical level of high virtuosity that rivalled that of the most important musical centres in the country.
With the definitive closure of the monastery at the end of the 19th century, the music scores were transferred to the National Library of Portugal in Lisbon. Although several previous studies have looked at various aspects of the former monastery, none have studied in depth the entirety of the preserved manuscripts, a valuable source of research that is still unknown to both the scientific community and the general public.
The AVEMUS project proposes the study and recovery of these musical scores, through the complete transcription and critical edition of the works from Porto’s female Benedictine monastery, as well as the presentation of papers at congresses and the publication of scientific articles, the holding of a symposium, the production of a record album with a selection of works from the musical corpus dealt with by the project, the organisation of concerts and a themed exhibition.
By publicising Porto’s remarkable 18th and 19th-century convent music, this project aims to bring the city’s inhabitants and visitors – present and future – closer to its extraordinary intangible heritage.