INTRODUCTORY NOTE

A Madeira é um encanto
bela cidade é o Funchal
do Oceano é a perola
a joia de Portugal.

According to the testimony of two nineteenth-century British authors, quoted below, we have attempted to reconstruct a musical soirée in Funchal in the mid-nineteenth century. The repertory here recorded was chosen from various extant manuscripts from Madeira, dated 1844 to 1890, assembled by local composers and instrumentalists of this period. For the present recording we have used, besides two “machetes” from Madeira--playing either solo, in duo or accompanying the Soprano voice--, a guitar and a flute. The pieces selected are of various genres, including, besides the famous “romances” from Madeira, collected and arranges for voice and “machetes” by Manuel Joaquim Monteiro Cabral, a “modinha” by Cândido Drumond de Vasconcelos, an anonymous English song, several salon dances of the period, such as the waltz or the cotillion, Thomas Arne’s famous Rule Britannia, adapted for solo “machete”, a Swiss song, Ranz des Vaches, played here instrumentally, a theme and variations, a hymn and a Viennese waltz by Johannes Strauss, the Elder.

M a n u e l M o r a i s
(Investigador integrado do C.H.A.I.A./Universidade de Évora)