Notes of a sub-sub librarian
n June 2005, I received an email from Dr. Gerhard Stradner, the Curator Emeritus of the Sammlung Alter Musikinstrumente (Collection of Historic Musical Instruments) at the Kunsthistorisches Museum at the Neue Burg in Vienna. He had read my article, “A few words about the Madeiran Machete,” in the Galpin Society Journal and wanted me to know he had an old machete, and I had a standing invitation to examine it.
If I was ever in Vienna.
A couple of days later he sent this description …
Machete (Machete de braco), Octavianno João Nunes, Madeira, Anfang 19. Jhdt.
Portugiesische Diskantgitarre mit 4 Saiten, SL 333, CL 224
Originalzettel: “Octavianno Joao Nunes / Artista de Violas Francezas / Guitarras, Rebecas, Rabecoes / e Machetes / Rua de S. Paulo No. 35 A / Madeira.”
In originaler Schatulle 540 x 160 x 90, innen mit rotem Samt, handgeschriebenes Notenheft und Notenblätter in Notenschrift und Ziffern für die betreffenden Finger: “Estudos para machete, arranhados por Manuel Joaquim Monteiro”. Das Instrument, seine Schatulle und die Noten sind älter als 100 Jahre.
English Translation:
A Machete (Machete de braco) by Octavianno João Nunes, Madeira, early 19th century.
Descant Guitar from Portugal with four strings, string length 333mm, body length 224mm
Original label: Octavianno Joao Nunes / Artista de Violas Francezas / Guitarras, Rebecas, Rabecoes / e Machetes / Rua de S. Paulo No. 35 A / Madeira.
In original box, 540mm x 160mm x 90mm, red velvet inside, manuscript notebook and leaves in standard notation with instructions for proper fingering: “Estudos para machete, arranhados por Manuel Joaquim Monteiro” [Studies for the machete arranged by Manuel Joaquim Monteiro]. The instrument, its box and the music-paper are older than 100 years.
… and indicated he was willing to sell.
Because the instrument had bridge pins, end pins, and tuning-peg ornaments made of ivory an export license had to be purchased; then proper shipping and packing arranged—and the purchase money raised and wired to Europe. In mid-September, a Monday, I stopped by the air freight terminal at Tampa International and picked up the machete on my way home from the UCF library in Orlando. It arrived the previous Friday but since Customs didn’t work weekends I had to wait until Monday for it to clear.
Back at the house I removed the lid of the wooden packing crate and pulled out the cased machete; it was swaddled in bubble wrap and packing tape. The case looked to be vinhatico—persea indica—but it could have been mahogany. On his first voyage in H.M.S. Endeavour in 1768, Capt. James Cook stopped at Madeira and for six days his naturalist, Joseph Banks, trekked about the environs of Funchal collecting samples of the fauna and flora. Banks was particularly interested in a type of lumber he had seen in England said to be from Madeira:
“We tried here to learn what species of wood it is which has been imported into England, and is now known to cabinetmakers by the name of Madeira mahogany, but without much success, as we could not learn that any wood had been exported from the island by that name. The wood, however, of the tree called here Vigniatico, Laurus indicus, Linn. [Persea indica, Spreng.], bids fair to be the thing, it being of a fine grain and brown like mahogany, from which it is difficult to distinguish it, as is well shown at Dr. Heberden’s house, where, in a book-case, vigniatico and mahogany were placed close by each other, and were only to be known asunder by the first being of not quite so dark a colour as the other.”1
The machete was exquisite. The turned ivory appointments, back and sides of Juniperus oxycedrus, spruce soundboard, rosewood bridge with finely wrought moustaches of miniature oak leaves and acorns, and the remains of a strap of colorful, twisted silk still attached to the peg head. It weighed in at fewer than seven ounces. The maker, Octaviano João Nunes da Paixão (1812-1874), is considered to be the most important among a handful of violeiros—stringed-instrument makers—known to have lived and worked in Madeira in the 19th century; a few of Nunes’ instruments survive in museums in Europe and in private collections in the U.S. However, the real treasure was not the machete, remarkable as it was, but the cache of old paper folded double on top of the instrument—the Estudos so casually described in Dr. Stradner’s email.
Estudos para Machete
Until recently, written music for the machete wasn’t rare; it was non-existent. With the exception of a few tantalizing bibliographic ghosts, the closest anyone could come to knowing the 19th century repertoire of the machete was from reading descriptions of the performers and the music they made in contemporary travel guides and memoirs. “Among the instruments which bear a prominent part in concerts and serenades, is the machete,” the American John Dix wrote in 1843. “There are two or three performers in Funchal who have attained a wonderful proficiency in playing on it. Their execution is astonishing.”2 Long-time English resident Robert White agreed: “… in the hands of an accomplished player, the machete is capable of much more pleasing harmony; and one is sometimes agreeably surprised to hear the fashionable music of our ball-rooms given with considerable effect, on what appears a very insignificant instrument.”3
All of that changed in late 2003 when Manuel Morais published a newly discovered manuscript collection of pieces for machete and guitar dated 1846. The music was just what Dix, White, and other visitors to Madeira described: fashionable dance music (and several themes with variations) of a high musical standard requiring a virtuoso technique. The music was composed by Cândido Drumond de Vasconcelos (fl. 1841-188?) and arranged by Manoel Joaquim Monteiro Cabràl (fl. 1846-1850) “for the use of” Joanna Mathilde Beda de Freitas (ca.1833-1864), possibly a student of Cabràl.4
Little is known of either man. In 1841 Drumond took part in a concert at the Sociedade Philarmonica in Funchal which was reviewed in a local newspaper, O Defensor. In the critic’s opinion “… it would be difficult to find a rival to Mr. Drumond.” He “played exquisitely” and the audience judiciously rewarded the performer with “thunderous applause.”5 Cabràl was born ca. 1800 and married on April 27, 1850, about the time he set his Estudos down on paper.6
In the 1930s, no fewer than four methods for the machete, (or braguinha, as it was then known) were reported to exist. One was owned by a violinist and the other three were dispersed by their owner to three Madeirans, one of whom emigrated to Hawai‘i. One of these methods ended up in the possession of Carlos Santos, a journalist and folk historian who described the primer in his book Trovas e Bailados da Ilha: Estudo Folclore Musical da Madeira:
Principios de Machete, arranjado
Por A.J. Barboza
Fx.al Madeira.
According to Santos, the Barbosa Principios included “… an illustration of the neck of the instrument and an indication of the tuning, followed by various exercises, which the author entitled ‘Leap of 3rds‘ and ‘Leap of linked 3rds‘ (double notes), Slurs and others of various intervals” as well as thirty-three pages of music. António José Barbosa (fl. 1870) was a teacher of the machete but nothing else about him—such as his dates of birth and death—is currently known.7
The Manuscripts
Cabràl, Manoel Joaquim Monteiro (ca. 1800-18??). Autograph musical manuscript, signed. Estudos para Machete / Arranjados / Por / Manoel Joaquim Monteiro Cabràl, ca. 1850. An unrecorded method for the Madeiran machete. Oblong quarto, (215 x 295 mms.). Sewn. 8 pages, including title. Notated in black ink with annotations in pencil on laid, hand-ruled 10-stave musical manuscript paper bearing the partial watermarks of Italian papermakers Giacomo and Cosimo Cini. Together with: Autograph musical manuscript. Pieces for one and two machetes, ca. 1850. Folio, (242 x 302 mms.). Single leaf, 2 pp. Notated in black ink on wove, hand-ruled 12-stave musical manuscript paper.
The Estudos manuscript includes exercises in chromatic and diatonic scales and trills in addition to five pieces of music (seven if we include the separate folio leaf) and all of the items as detailed in the Barbosa Prinicipios by Santos, with identical headings and in the exact same order. Is it possible the Estudos represent an earlier version of the Principios since the Cabràl manuscript precedes the Barbosa by about 20 years? How likely is it that both used an even earlier proto-machete method as their source? The similarity in the two primers would seem to be more than a coincidence.
The Paraph
In his earliest email to me, Dr. Stradner identified the author of the Estudos as Monteiro Mabral, a point on which I didn’t question him, chalking it up to a typo in his missive or illegibility or simply a misreading of the manuscript. The description of the items I received (in German and English, as referenced above) dropped the last name entirely. I was reasonably certain the author’s name was Cabràl, and equally sure he was the same person who had arranged the Vasconcelos pieces for machete and guitar. If it was Cabràl, that was great and my hunch would be correct; if not, it was somebody new and unknown and that was fine, too.
When I examined the manu-script the source of the spelling “Mabral” became clear. A casual perusal of the last name seemed to have a crossed-out letter “M” at the beginning, followed by “Cabràl.” I scanned the signature at 300dpi and looked at it in full resolution: the scratched out “M” was really an elaborate paraph or rubric made up from Cabràl’s initials, MJMC, the last of which ends in a flourish underscoring the other letters in the last name. The paraph is significant because it identifies the manuscript as an autograph, not merely the work of a copyist.8
Conclusion
A modern edition of the Estudos is being prepared for publication; the music is engraved and a facsimile of the manuscript has been created for inclusion. All that is lacking is the appropriate front matter, of which this monograph is a first, albeit incomplete, draft. The reinstatement of a definitive machete repertoire by Dr. Morais, along with the discovery of this sole-surviving pedagogical manual are exciting developments in the quest for deeper knowledge and understanding of what was arguably the most significant musical instrument of the 19th-century Madeirense.
Endnotes
- Joseph Banks, Journal of the Right Honorable Sir Joseph Banks, Sir Joseph D. Hooker, ed. (London, 1896) 6-7. ♠
- John A. Dix, A Winter in Madeira; And a Summer in Spain and Florence, 2nd Edition (New York, 1851) 72-73. ♠
- Robert White, Madeira, Its Climate and Scenery (London, 1851) 38. ♠
- Manuel Morais, ed., Cândido Drummond de Vasconcelos: Colecção de Peças para Machete (1846) (Casal de Cambra, 2003) 101-104. I am grateful to Prof. Morais for presenting me with a copy of this important publication. ♠
- “A Sociedade Philarmonica”, O Defensor, Vol. II, No. 102, December 11, 1841. Drumond was also mentioned in passing in Platon de Vakcel’s articles about Madeiran music published in the Gazeta da Madeira, in 1866.♠
- Morais, Cândido Drumond de Vasconcellos, 101. ♠
- Morais, Cândido Drumond de Vasconcellos, 43, 105. ♠
- Paraphs were common in the 19th century and before, serving to authenticate a person’s autograph. The most famous American example is that of John Hancock whose name is synonymous with the word “signature.” ♠
Text and images © 2007 by John King