Sound Aesthetics in Fernando Curado Ribeiro

Resumo

After giving up on an engineering degree, Fernando Curado Ribeiro (1919-1995) started his career as a singer and joined Emissora Nacional as an announcer. Later, he was an announcer for radio stations in Angola, the former Belgian-Congo, Belgium, France and Great-Britain, he was a sound editor, radio producer and director, in particular of Leitura, a programme for literary promotion. Ribeiro also gave a boost to radio theatre, translated and adapted plays, represented and directed actors, along with his other passions in the cultural and creative industries: cinema (O Costa do Castelo, Menina da Rádio, O Leão da Estrela) and stage theatre, as an actor in the cast of Teatro Nacional (Portuguese National Theatre) (Raimundo, 2005). In terms of books, he published Diário duma Voz. Inconfidências, Críticas, Programas, Entrevistas (1947) and Rádio. Produção, Realização, Estética (1964). In the latter, he proposed: We will study what is assumed to be the preparation of professionals who are involved in the making of Radio Art. And we will create, whenever possible, new angles or unusual aspects in radio-production and its problems, in an effort to enable a direct or indirect study of the new radio aesthetics (Ribeiro, 1964, pp. 8-9).
The aim of this paper is to analyse the main points of the book published in 1964, especially those related to sound aesthetics and the links with works on radio published internationally which influenced his writing. Fernando Curado Ribeiro’s internships in Brussels and in Paris were essential to understand the book. The theoretical and practical weight of his book is quite obvious when compared with French texts identified further on. To arrive here, I asked the following questions: what is the scope of the theoretical field? Which are the central elements in his aesthetics? Which radio genres were more important in his work?