Tessituras da Memória: a constituição do arquivo do Coral Mater Verbi no tempo

Abstract

This thesis investigates the relationships between memory, archive, and musical performance through the study of the archive of the Coral Mater Verbi, founded in 1953 in Juiz de Fora, Brazil, conceiving it as a living archive constituted by musical practices, photographic images, sound recordings, and processes of intergenerational transmission. The central objective is to examine how music, images, and archival documents operate as technologies of memory, articulating multiple temporalities and enabling the reinscription of the past into the present. The research adopts a qualitative and interdisciplinary approach, combining theoretical inquiry, documentary analysis, and observation of the group’s musical practices, with particular attention to the materiality of the archive and the performative dynamics that sustain its collective memory. In parallel with the written component, the dissertation develops a theoretical-practical dimension through the conception and production of a short documentary film on the Coral Mater Verbi, understood as a practical outcome of the research and as a methodological experiment in archive activation. The film mobilizes images, sound recordings, and musical performance to elucidate, through audiovisual language, the issues discussed throughout the text, treating the archive not merely as an object of analysis but as a space of creation and memory renewal. As a conclusion, it is argued that the archive of the Coral Mater Verbi does not function as a static repository of the past, but rather as a dynamic field of negotiation between remembrance and forgetting, in which memory remains alive through musical practice, performance, and the documentary gesture, producing sensitive and transformative readings in the present.