Description Son of Vítor Augusto Nepomuceno and Maria Virgínia de Oliveira Paiva, he was initiated in musical studies by his father, who was a violinist, teacher, band master and organist at the Cathedral of Fortaleza. In 1872 he moved with his family to Recife, where he began to study piano and violin. Responsible for supporting his mother and sister after his father's death in 1880, Nepomuceno was employed as a typographer and began to teach private music lessons, making it impossible for him to continue his studies in the humanities course. Despite the little time he had left, he managed to continue his musical studies with maestro Euclides Fonseca. During his youth, he maintained a friendship with students and masters of the Faculty of Law of Recife, such as Alfredo Pinto Vieira de Melo, Clóvis Bevilaqua and Farias Brito. The Faculty, at that time, was a great intellectual center of the country; there avant-garde social ideas and analyzes seethed, such as the sociological studies of Manuel Bonfim and Tobias Barreto, in addition to the Darwinist and Spencerist theories of Sílvio Romero. It was Barreto who aroused in Nepomuceno an interest in the studies of the German language and philosophy, giving him classes in both disciplines. He became an active supporter of republican and abolitionist causes in the Northeast, participating in several campaigns. However, he did not neglect his activities as a musician, assuming, at the age of eighteen, the direction of the concerts of the Clube Carlos Gomes de Recife. He also acted as a violinist at the premiere of the opera Leonor, by Euclides Fonseca, at Teatro Santa Isabel. Back in Ceará with his family, he connected with João Brígido and João Cordeiro, defenders of the abolitionist movement, and began to collaborate in several newspapers linked to the cause.Due to his political activities, his request to fund the imperial government to study in Europe was dismissed. Court Society.Portrait of Alberto Nepomuceno, ink on paper, March 30, 1904. In 1885, Nepomuceno moved to Rio de Janeiro, moving to the residence of the family of artists Rodolfo Bernardelli and Henrique Bernardelli. He continued his piano studies at Clube Beethoven, where he performed alongside Arthur Napoleão. Shortly thereafter, he was appointed piano teacher at the club, which had Machado de Assis as its librarian. The capital of the empire, in this period, lived a moment of great social, political and cultural effervescence. In the social sphere, there was a vertiginous population growth with the increase of the migratory flow in search of work. At the political level, attacks by the abolitionist and republican campaigns on the monarchy followed. In the literary field, the romantic, symbolist and naturalist movements, in vogue in Europe, influenced several Brazilian writers, such as Olavo Bilac, Machado de Assis, Aluísio Azevedo and Coelho Neto. Nepomuceno's great interest in Brazilian literature and in the appreciation of the Portuguese language brought him closer to some of the most important authors of the time, resulting from the partnership with poets and writers, several compositions such as: Artemis (1898), with text by Coelho Neto ; Sad Heart (1899), with Machado de Assis; In a shell (1913), with Olavo Bilac. In the year before the abolition of slavery, he composed Dança de Negros (1887), one of the first compositions that used Brazilian ethnic motifs. The first hearing of this work, which later became Batuque, of the Brazilian Series, was presented by the author in Ceará. Other pieces were composed at the same time, such as Mazurca, Une fleur, Ave Maria and Funeral March. Despite being viewed with suspicion by the imperial family, due to his political positions, Nepomuceno, due to his importance in the Brazilian music scene, was even invited by Princess Isabel to have tea at Paço Imperial. In Europe. He traveled to Europe in the company of his great friends, the brothers Henrique and Rodolfo Bernardelli, in August 1888, with the aim of expanding his musical training. In Rome, he enrolled in the Liceo Musicale Santa Cecilia, in the Harmonia class, by Eugenio Terziani, and in the piano class, by Giovanni Sgambati; then, with Terziani's death, he continued his studies with Cesare De Sanctis. In 1890 he left for Berlin, where he perfected his command of the German language and joined the Meister Schulle Academy, becoming a composing student of Heinrich von Herzogenberg, a close friend of Brahms. During his vacation, he even attended concerts by Brahms and Hans von Bülow in Vienna. He later moved to the Berlin Stern Conservatory, where, for two years, he took composition and organ classes with Professor Arnó Kleffel, and piano with H. Ehrlich. Nepomuceno also studied with the famous Theodor Lechetitzky, in whose classroom he had as a colleague the Norwegian pianist Walborg Bang, with whom he married in 1893. She was a student of Edvard Grieg, the most important Norwegian composer of the time, the ultimate representative of romantic nationalism . After her marriage, she moved to Grieg's home in Bergen. This friendship was fundamental for Nepomuceno to elaborate a nationalist ideal and, above all, to define himself by a work attentive to the Brazilian cultural wealth. After taking the final exams at the Stern Conservatory (1894), conducting the Berlin Philharmonic with two of his works (Scherzo für grosses Orcherter and Old Suite), he enrolled at the Schola Cantorum, in Paris, in order to improve himself in organ with professor Alexandre Guilmant. At that time, he met Camille Saint-Saëns, Charles Bordes, Vincent D'Indy and others. He attended the world premiere of Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, by Claude Debussy, a work that Nepomuceno was the first to present in Brazil, in 1908, at the Centenary of the Opening of Ports parties. At the invitation of Charles Chabault, professor of Greek at the Sorbonne, he wrote the incidental song for the Electra tragedy. Beginning of the 3rd mov. "Dance of the veil" from Suite Abul In 1900 he set up an interview with the director of the Vienna Opera, Gustav Mahler, to negotiate the presentation of his opera Artemis; however, he became seriously ill, going to recover in Bergen, at the home of his friend Edvard Grieg. In 1910, financed by the Brazilian government, he held several concerts with music by national composers in Brussels, Geneva and Paris. During the tour, she visited Debussy at her residence in Neuilly-sur-Seine, being presented with an autographed score by Pelléas et Mélisande. Nationalism On August 4, 1895, Nepomuceno held a historic concert, marking the beginning of a campaign that earned him a lot of criticism and censorship. He presented, for the first time, at the National Institute of Music, a series of songs in Portuguese, of his authorship. The war for the nationalization of Brazilian classical music was unleashed. The concert directly reached those who claimed that the Portuguese language was unsuitable for bel canto. The controversy took over the press and Nepomuceno waged a real battle against the critic Oscar Guanabarino, an ardent defender of Italian singing, stating: "There is no homeland of a people who do not sing in their language". The struggle for the nationalization of classical music was amplified with the beginning of his activities at the Association of Popular Concerts, which he directed for ten years (1896-1906), promoting the recognition of Brazilian composers. At the request of Visconde de Taunay, he restored several works by the composer Padre José Maurício Nunes Garcia and supported popular composers such as Catulo da Paixão Cearense. His collection of twelve songs in Portuguese was released in 1904 and edited by Vieira Machado & Moreira de Sá. Garatuja, a lyrical comedy in three acts, based on the work of the same name by José de Alencar, is considered the first truly Brazilian opera in terms of music, setting and use of the Portuguese language. Popular rhythms are also present in this work, such as habanera, tango, the syncopated marking of the maxixe, the lundu and rhythms characteristic of popular 19th century composers, such as Xisto Bahia, in addition to the polka dots of Callado and Chiquinha Gonzaga. In 1907 he began the reform of the Brazilian National Anthem, both in the form of execution and in the lyrics of Osório Duque Estrada. In the following year, the performance of the guitar concert by the popular composer Catulo da Paixão Cearense, at the National Institute of Music, promoted by Nepomuceno, caused a great revolt among the most orthodox critics, who considered the event "an accent to that temple of art". Still as a supporter of national talents, he worked with Sampaio Araújo to edit the works of a controversial composer who appeared at the time: Heitor Villa-Lobos.Nepomuceno even demanded that the editions of his works, distributed by Casa Arthur Napoleão, contain, on the back cover, some score by the young Villa-Lobos. He performed several works by the young composer in concerts with orchestras he conducted. And he left him a collection of about 80 popular songs, cataloged and analyzed. The National Institute of Music Portrait of Maestro Alberto Nepomuceno in 1895, by Eliseu Visconti. Alberto Nepomuceno started his activities at the National Institute of Music as an organ teacher in 1894. After the death of Leopoldo Miguez in 1902, he was appointed director. Due to countless political and administrative pressures and divergences, he requested resignation the following year. However, as an important reference for local classical music, he was appointed by the Institute itself to welcome Saint-Saëns on his visit to the country. In 1906 he resumed his post as director after Henrique Oswald's resignation. In his second term, he developed a series of projects aimed at institutionalizing Brazilian classical music. One of the first projects initiated by Nepomuceno was the reform of the Brazilian National Anthem and the regulation of its public performance. He ordered a headstone to be placed in the Institute in honor of Francisco Manuel da Silva, with the following inscription: "To the founder of the Conservatory and author of the anthem of his country". He was also appointed musical director and principal conductor of the Symphonic Concerts of the National Exhibition of Praia Vermelha, in commemoration of the Centenary of the Opening of the Ports. In these concerts, he presented for the first time to the Brazilian public the contemporary European authors Debussy, Roussel, Glazunow and Rimsky-Korsakov, in addition to the Brazilians Carlos Gomes, Barrozo Neto, Leopoldo Miguez and Henrique Oswald. In 1909, he sent a bill to the National Congress in order to create a government-sponsored Symphony Orchestra. As director of the Institute, he welcomed, along with Rui Barbosa and Roberto Gomes, the pianist Paderewsky on his visit to Brazil. In 1913 he conducted, at the Municipal Theater of Rio de Janeiro, the great Wagner Festival, with tenor Karl Jorn, from Bayreuth, as soloist. Responsible for translating Schoenberg's Harmony Treaty, Nepomuceno tried, in 1916, to implant it in the Institute, but met with strong opposition from the faculty. Feeling that the academic pressures against his projects grew, he resigned in the same year. Separated from Walborg and with serious financial difficulties, he moved in with Frederico Nascimento in Santa Teresa. His last concert at the Teatro Municipal took place in 1917. Very sick and weak, he died in 1920, at the age of 56. According to the testimony of his great friend Otávio Bevilacqua, the composer began to sing when he realized the proximity of death: "... he sang into the night until the last breath in the middle of the day".