The Portuguese extension of the European Music Center will open by the end of the year in Mafra, this municipality confirmed to Lusa, which signed a protocol to this effect with the institution this Sunday.
The Mafra City Council and the European Music Center (CEM) aim to install the hub “in a worthy space”, the south turret of the Mafra palace, in order to enable the “vain development various activities”, states the agreement, to which the Lusa agency had access.
With this installation, the two entities want to give “greater visibility to the town of Mafra, as one of the world capitals of music”, and to the European Music Center, to promote musical practice and boost the territories in this way .
The project aims to develop cultural activities linked to music, create a positive impact in Mafra, connect the municipality to international music networks and project historical knowledge through music.
According to the agreement, CEM undertakes to develop and launch cultural activities, while the municipality will support the project with 100 thousand euros annually, in 2024 and 2025.
Historical relationship with music
CEM will be based in Mafra, given this town’s historical relationship with music, which dates back to the construction of the National Palace of Mafra, and which includes the future installation of the Museum Nacional da Música, as well as the Musical Sciences hub at Universidade Nova de Lisboa and the Arquivo Nacional do Som, which reinforce this connection.
CEM will, however, have a program that goes beyond Mafra and covers several national territories, working in conjunction with partner cities.
In October, the municipalities of Braga, Faro, Figueira de Castelo Rodrigo, Grândola, Lisbon, Mafra and Porto had already agreed to install the Portuguese extension of CEM in Mafra and cooperate in cultural programming.
CEM will establish itself as a space for research and innovation based on music and already has three programs in development: Via Scarlatti, Music and Oceans and Music and Ecology.
Within the scope of the Via Scarlatti program, the first research and cultural creation project is called “Passarola”, in a direct reference to the reign of João V, the ‘builder’ of the Mafra Palace , a time that José Saramago takes for the “Memorial do Convento”.
The musicians Pedro Emanuel Pereira, Vítor Joaquim and Rui Gato got together and, starting from Scarlatti’s Sonata in B minor K.87, which assimilates several Iberian inspirations, created a musical and visual work, in an approach that brings together the composer’s music and Saramago’s novel, taking into account the passage in which Scarlatti sees the “Passarola” for the first time, an invention by the Portuguese priest Bartolomeu de Gusmão.
Domenico Scarlatti was hired by the Portuguese court of João V, lived in Lisbon and, as harpsichord teacher to Princess Maria Bárbara, accompanied her to Madrid.
Conceived and chaired by the Portuguese Jorge Chaminé as a “musical, pedagogical, scientific and cultural initiative” of an unprecedented nature in Europe, the European Music Center is located in the Parisian suburb of Bougival.
