Te deum by Maria Firmina dos Reis

A Musical and Social-Statement Instrument

Abstract

Music and poetry have singularities that have converged and marked the history of arts, as music has become closer to poetry than any other literary genre. The study of the relationship between poetry and music based on Te deum, by Maria Firmina dos Reis, is justified by the understanding that the artist had a purpose with her literature and by the need to investigate Firmina dos Reis’s unregistered music. Her poetry and the musicality of her verses have been kept away of the public for decades. This article shows that memory can carry traces of music where there is no score, and therefore, suggests the encounter of unregistered music with the registered art of Firmina dos Reis. The writer from the State of Maranhão brings aspects of musicality to her poems, further expanding the boundaries between poetry and music and establishing herself in the artistic memory of the Brazilian culture.