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Chapter | "Composing the nation: The role of fado in A Severa, the first Portuguese sound film (1931)"
Helena Marinho and Susana Sardo, both researchers at INET-md, are the authors of a chapter entitled "Composing the nation: The role of fado in A Severa, the first Portuguese sound film (1931)". The chapter is part of the book The Routledge Companion to Global Film Music in the Early Sound Era (Routledge, 2024, chapter 13) edited by Jeremy Barham, professor of music at the University of Surrey.
This chapter examines constructing a nationalist narrative through music in the first Portuguese sound film, addressing the creative and technical strategies developed by composer Frederico de Freitas.
This chapter examines constructing a nationalist narrative through music in the first Portuguese sound film, addressing the creative and technical strategies developed by composer Frederico de Freitas.
Abstract of the chapter:
This text describes and discusses Frederico de Freitas’s (1902–80) music for the first Portuguese sound film, A Severa (1931), based on two analytical standpoints: the relevance of the music as a narrative of portugality, in the cultural and ideological context of the dictatorship regime, and the composer’s role in the construction of a repertoire that has survived the film itself. Freitas’s options regarding the combination of music, image and script are analyzed, as well as the aesthetic universes that arise from the presence of the fado genre in this film.
