Levy, Alexandre (1864–1892)

Alexandre Levy (b. 10 November 1864; d. 17 January 1892), Brazilian composer, pianist, conductor, and critic. A composer of French and Swiss descent, he enjoyed the musical advantages of being a member of one of São Paulo's most renowned musical families. His father was a clarinetist and owner of Casa Levy, a music store as well as a recital hall in which concerts of local and visiting artists took place. Alexandre Levy performed in public for the first time at the age of eight in a concert in which he and his brother played the piano, and his father the clarinet. Since his father owned a publishing business, several of the compositions he wrote as a teenager were published.

The last two decades of the nineteenth century in Brazil were marked by rising republican sentiment which culminated in the end of the empire and the establishment of the republic in 1889. The importance of Levy's work as a composer consisted of the fact that a respected Brazilian musician with excellent European training began to employ systematically the use of Brazilian folk and popular music in his compositions at a time when Brazilian musicians were attempting to break the bonds of European artistic domination. Levy also introduced Brazilian audiences to a significant number of European works unknown to them in his programming of works for the Haydn Club, of which he was program director and frequent conductor. Two of Levy's best-known works are Variations on a Brazilian Theme (Vem cá, Bitú [1887]), and Suite brésilienne (1890). On 17 January at a dinner on the country estate of his family, he complained of feeling unwell and died before the family was able to summon a physician. He was only thirty-one years old.

See alsoMusic: Popular Music and Dance .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

David P. Appleby, The Music of Brazil (1983).

Gérard Béhague, Popular Musical Currents in the Art of Music of the Early Nationalistic Period in Brazil (Ph.D. diss., Tulane Univ., 1966).

Additional Bibliography

Lago, Manoel Aranha Correa do. "Brazilian Sources in Milhaud's Le Boeuf sur le Toit: A Discussion and a Musical Analysis." Latin American Music Review 23:1 (Spring—Summer 2002): 1-59.

                                    David P. Appleby