Pixinguinha: Rio Exhibits One of Brazil’s Most Popular Composers

By Harold Emert

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Considered one of the greatest composers ever of Brazilian pop music’s “Chorinhos,” Pixinguinha (1897-1973) is the featured mainstay of a worthy exhibition at Rio’s Moreira Salles Institute (IMS), Rua Marquês de São Vicente 476, Gavea.

Music and Brazilian culture lovers will delight to see and hear the exhibit entitled “Pixinguinha – in that Time, Today and Forever” (Pixinguinha – Naquele Tempo, Hoje e Sempre) until November 3rd (the IMS is closed on Mondays) from 11 AM to 8 PM.

On display are not only the composer’s original neat manuscripts of “Chorinhos”
(translation: little lamentations or cries), in original recordings by flutist and saxophonist Alfredo da Rocha “Pixinguinha” Vianna Jr.

Revealing artistic photographs of the Brazilian musician by Walter Firmo, 81, shed new light on a beloved national musical idol.

“This personal archive of Pixinguinha has never been on display because it required a long-time project of cataloging and organization,” says the exhibit’s invited curator Luiz Fernando Vianna.

Pixinguinha’s most famous Chorinho, “Carinhoso” (Affectionate, 1918/19) with lyrics by Braguinha, has become Brazil’s second national anthem with almost everyone spontaneously joining in to sing the ditty whenever it is played or sung.

“Carinhoso’s” original recording by Pixinguinha and his band was less lilting than it is played today and closer in state to American ragtime.

The composer’s Italian-made flute, restored for the exhibition, is on display with a video by Rio’s artisan Franklin “da Flute” Correa showing how he revived the instrument from the trash. The flute was played on April 23rd, National Choro day, by António Rocha at the exhibition’s opening.

A video of how some of Brazil’s best known popular musicians – including Chico Buarque, Joyce, Monarch, and Elizabeth Duncan singing Pixinguinha – displays why his music will outlive all of us. There is also a video of a contemporary Brazilian orchestra performing Pixinguinha’s subtle arrangements, showcasing another side of this musical genius.

Born in 1897 in Rio’s northern district of Piedade, Pixinguinha began his studies with his father, a flutist and chorinho enthusiast. At 14 years of age, he composed his first opus.  After performing in cabarets in Rio’s Lapa district, he formed an interracial group called “The Eight Amazing Players” (“Os Oito Batutas”).

Sponsored by Brazilian musical patron Arnaldo Guinle, owner of Rio’s Copacabana Hotel, the group made highly successful tours in 1922 to Europe, startling Paris, and a five-month season in Buenos Aires.

In 1940, according to the Moreira Salles exposition, the virtuoso stopped playing the flute professionally and switched to the saxophone “because he felt he wasn’t playing the flute as well as he could.”

Joining the band of flutist and composer Carlos Lacerda as a saxophonist, Pixinguinha began a partnership which produced some of the loveliest chorinhos in a repertoire played today not only in Rio, Tokyo, and New York, but around the world.

Pixinguinha died at 75 years of age at the Nossa Senhora de Paz church in Ipanema where he was attending a baptism of a friend’s child. It was Rio’s Carnaval epoch, and the Banda da Ipanema paid homage to a musician one admirer called a “Saint in front of the church singing and playing Carinhosa”.