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Creative Trends in Latin American Music-I Author(s): Gilbert Chase Source: Tempo, No. 48 (Summer, 1958), pp. 28-34Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/944117Accessed: 18-09-2015 10:18 UTC

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28 TEMPO

time, not recurrent clue-themes. No routine development of motive could pretend to found Rome in an operatic evening. On the contrary, that focus of heroic effort and compelling re-direction can only be reached by a hazardous route. 0 world! thy slippery turns.

(To be continued.) REFERENCES

1 Transcribed from Jacques Barzun, Pleasures of Music, London, i954. 2 For strong documentary support of this explanation of the controversial conclusion of the Fantastic Symphony, see Professor Barzun's revealing notes in his Berlioz and the romantic century, London, 195 , I., 63. The whole book is an admirable exposition of Berlioz's creative method and personality, and positively corrects many misconceptions from a fresh and thorough study of the music and relevant commentary.

3 Consider, for example, those of Beck, Op. 3, Rosetti, Wanhal, Haydn (39) and Mozart (2g and 40), all maintaining the minor key to a stoic finish, whereas Harold closes in an ironical major.

4 Pending inside explanation, one cannot understand how Scherchen ever agreed to record the work without the Troy Acts, even to the point of playing the Prelude which Berlioz wrote, in desperation, for the mutilated premibre.

CREATIVE TRENDS IN LATIN AMERICAN MUSIC-I

by Gilbert Chase Any survey of music in the area that we are accustomed to call Latin America should begin with certain basic distinctions intended to dissipate the superficial notion of cultural homogeneity. Let us agree at the outset to regard the term " Latin America " as a loose geographical designation for those portions of the Western Hemisphere that lie outside of Canada and the United States. It is better to resort to such circumlocution than to risk the misleading assumption of a fundamental similarity in the twenty countries with which we are concerned.

True, eighteen of these countries have a common language: Spanish (for Brazil it is Portuguese, for Haiti French and Creole). But so do England and the United States have a common language--yet how different is the music of each! The sole presence of a large Negro population in the United States has been sufficient to alter radically the course of music in this country. Far more than language, ethnic, social, historical, geographic and demographic factors influence the development of musical culture. Since these factors are vastly different throughout Latin America, we must look for different conditions and results in each country. Indeed, I anticipate the time when articles will no

longer be written about Latin American music but rather about the music of

Argentina or Brazil or Mexico, just as we write and think about the music of France or Germany or Italy rather than about European music.

Meanwhile, faced with the still prevalent demand for a general survey, I consider it prudent to attempt some sort of regional classification, however tentative and incomplete. I shall begin with those countries whose culture is

predominantly European. Here we may group together Argentina, Uruguay and Chile. The demographic formation of Argentina explains a great deal about the cultural configuration of that country. In 1852 the population of Argentina (excluding Indians and Negroes, of whom there were relatively few) was only 1,200,ooo. The liberal Constitution of I853 opened the way for a steady flow of European immigration, which gathered much momentum after I9o00. Today the population of Argentina is around 20 million, the majority of Italian and

Spanish descent (in that order).



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CREATIVE TRENDS IN LATIN AMERICAN MUSIC 29

In Argentina the relatively recent growth of population, the absence of a

strong native (Indo-American) culture, the scarcity of Negroes, the predominance of Italian immigrants, the marked cultural influence of France, and the rise of a

great cosmopolitan metropolis (Buenos Aires, where almost all musical activity is concentrated) are among the factors that have helped in shaping the course of that country's musical development. In contrast to some other countries, a fairly high level of musical professionalism has been evident since the final decades of the past century. The composer who may be regarded as the founder of the Argentine national school, Alberto Williams (1862-I 9 2), was trained at the Paris Conservatoire and upon his return to Argentina established the Williams Conservatory in Buenos Aires, with branches throughout the nation. Williams, long-lived and prolific, set the pace for the national movement with his pianistic, vocal and symphonic evocations of Argentine scenes and rural rhythms, couched in a post-Franckian idiom.

During the first half of the present century this trend was continued by a number of composers, among them JuliAn Aguirre (1868-I924), two of whose Argentine dances for piano, Hueya and Gato, were orchestrated by Ansermet; Carlos L6pez Buchardo (1 88 1- 1948), composer of Escenas Argentinas for orchestra; Constantino Gaito (I878-194g), with his symphonic poem El Omb' (the characteristic tree of the Argentine pampa); Luis Gianneo (i 897-), the present Director of the National Conservatory in Buenos Aires; Juan Jose Castro (189 -), composer of Sinfonia Argentina (1936) and Sinfonia de los Campos (1939); and Alberto Ginastera (I916-), whose work was discussed in a recent issue of Tempo (Summer, 1957).

Among the composers of his generation, the most prominent is Juan Jose Castro, who is also very active as a conductor. In spite of numerous contributions to the national movement, Castro is inclined towards international eclecticism and has made his strongest bid for fame with several operas, of which the most recent, Bodas de Sangre (after the play by Garcia Lorca), was produced at the Col6n Theatre in 1956. One of Castro's most ambitious works is the Sinfonia Biblica (1932), for chorus and orchestra, in three parts: Annunciation, Entry Into Jerusalem, Golgotha. His two brothers, Jose Maria and Washington Castro, are also active as conductors and as composers, chiefly in the neo-classical vein.

Juan Carlos Paz (1897-) began as a cultivator of neo-classicism but was soon converted to dodecaphony, of which he has long been the most consistent exponent and most articulate spokesman in Argentina. In 1929 he was one of the founders of the Grupe Renovaci6n, spearhead of the modernist movement in Argentine music, and in 1936 he founded the society La Nueva M6sica, serving as a platform for composers of advanced tendencies, particularly in the twelve- note idiom. Utterly rejecting the entire aesthetic basis of folkloristic nationalism, Paz vehemently advocates a frankly international, urban, and intellectual approach to musical composition, from which regional and topical elements are rigidly excluded. For him, " the genuinely cultured . . . is always a product of the cities ". In his recent book, Introduction to the Music of Our Time, he urges composers to break away from " the anonymous tutelage of the vernacular"

It is a fact that most of the younger Argentine composers, while far from adopting such a doctrinaire attitude, are actually drawing away from folkloristic nationalism, which, as a dominant trend, may be said to have run its course in Argentina. Roberto Caamafio (born in Buenos Aires, 1923) is a representative example of a composer of the newer generation whose work has been accomplished



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30 TEMPO

entirely outside the orbit of nationalism. From his already impressive catalogue, we may mention the two String Quartets (1945 and 1946), Psalm CXLIX for soli, chorus and orchestra (Op. 7, 1947-49), Suite for String Orchestra (Op. 9, I9go), Prelude, Adagio and Fugue for orchestra (Op. 11, I952), American Variations for orchestra (Op. 15, 1953), Magnificat for chorus and orchestra (Op. 20, 1954), and Concerto for piano and orchestra (Op. 22, I19Q7; com- missioned for the Inter-American Music Festival in Washington, D.C.). Caamafio's Concerto for bandoneon and orchestra (Op. 19, I954) may be regarded as his one concession to nationalism (the bandone6n is an Argentine type of accordion).

The contemporary Argentine school is flourishing, but space permits mention of only one more among the younger composers, namely Antonio Tauriello (born in Buenos Aires, I931), pupil of Ginastera and author of Symphonic Overture (19qo), Concerto for piano and orchestra (I9 2), and Sinfonietta for orchestra (i 9 3).

Uruguay, Argentina's small, progressive neighbour, has had a somewhat similar musical evolution, but with a later start in professional standards of composition, since its National Conservatory of Music was founded only a few years ago. Leading exponents of musical nationalism were Eduardo Fabini (1882-I9go), Luis Cluzeau Mortet

(I889-I9-7), and Vicente Ascone (1897-).

The most talented of the younger composers, Hector Tosar (b. 1923), began along nationalist lines but has since veered towards constructivist tendencies, exploiting the contrast of tonal and atonal elements in a prevailingly contrapuntal texture. His Symphony II for strings

(i9go--i) is representative of his current style.

French neo-classicism is exemplified in the work of Carlos Estrada (b. 1909), Director of the National Conservatory, and his pupil Ricardo Storm (b. 1930), composer of an Introduction and Allegro for orchestra. Athematic tendencies are represented by Luis R. Campod6nico (b. 1931), who also studied with Estrada.

In Chile, folkloristic nationalism was successfully cultivated by Humberto Allende (i 88 g-) in such scores as Escenas Campesinas Chilenas and La Voz de las Calles (both for orchestra, the second based on street-vendor's cries), Tres Tonadas for soli, chorus and orchestra, and numerous songs and piano pieces, including Tonadas de caracter popular chileno. Carlos Isamitt (i885-) has also cultivated folkloristic nationalism, but with more emphasis on indigenous elements stemming from the Araucanian Indian culture, as demonstrated in his Friso Araucano for voices and orchestra in seven sections (with Araucanian text), Sonko purdn (Dance of the Chief) for baritone solo and chamber ensemble, Sonata for Piano titled Evocacidn Araucana, and a Suite for Orchestra (i944) of which the third movement is based on a theme played by the Araucanian Indians on a native instrument called trutruka.

This tendency, however, began to lose momentum after the rise to prominence of Domingo Santa Cruz (i 899-) and the group of composers more or less associated with him, including the late Rend Amengual, Alfonso Letelier (b. I91 2) and Juan Orrego Salas (b. I919). Santa Cruz directed the main current of Chilean art-music towards neo-classical directions with a consequent repudiation of folkloristic nationalism. He does not see the need for any music that could be recognized as typically Chilean, or even as Latin American. He scoffs at composers who put on " Indian war-paint and feathers". He is not averse to literary-pictorial evocations, as in the Cantata of the Rivers of Chile, but his pre- dilection is towards formalistic structure, as in the two String Quartets, the



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Five Short Pieces for string orchestra, the Variations for piano and orchestra, and the two Symphonies.

Juan Orrego Salas, pupil of Santa Cruz and of Randall Thompson and Aaron Copland in the United States, has written two Symphonies (1949 and 1953), a Concerto for piano and orchestra (i9 go), a Concerto for chamber orchestra (1 92), a Festive Overture (1946) and numerous smaller works. Another Santa Cruz pupil, Carlos Botto Villarino (b. 1923), has recently come to the fore with his Ten Preludes for Piano (i952), First String Quartet (i954), and Songs of Love and Death (i956), for voice and string quartet. Spiritually, he moves in the orbit of Alban Berg.

The Chilean counterpart of the New Music Association of Buenos Aires is an organization called Agrupaci6n Tonus of Santiago, which gives chamber music concerts not only of new music (Chilean and foreign) but also of pre- classical music. The leader of this group is an emigre' named Esteban Eitler, composer of Magister Dodecatonicus (for piano, I95S) and other twelve-note works. Associated with this group are Leon Schidlowsky, Free Focke, Roberto Falabella, Jose Vicente Asuar, Eduardo Maturana, and Abelardo Quinteros. They write mostly dodecaphonic music with a tendency towards microformal structure.

We turn next to a group of countries that may be designated as Andean, comprising Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador. They are characterized by large Indian populations, a high percentage of Indian-Spanish racial mixture (called mestizo), vestiges of pre-Hispanic civilizations, and the tradition of a long and influential colonial past. For Peru, centre of both the ancient Incan Empire and of the Spanish Viceregal power in South America, these historical factors carry special importance.

To date, none of these countries has produced any composer of recognized international stature. It has been a case, chiefly, of talent without technique, plus the lack of a sufficiently developed musical milieu. The leading composers of Bolivia are Humberto Viscarra Monje (b. I898) and Jos6 Maria Velasco Maidana (b. I899), the former trained in Italy, the latter in Buenos Aires. Velasco Maidana has written a ballet, Amerindia (1940), exalting " the new Indian of tomorrow " (the one of today is rather miserable). The most prominent Ecuadorean composer of today is Luis H. Salgado (b. I903), who has also gone out heavily for local colour in two ballets, two operas, and three symphonies, of which No. I is titled Ecuadorean and No. III A.D.H.G.E. (" Based on a pentatonic theme and in rococo style"). He has also written a symphonic poem titled Sismo, descriptive of an earthquake (a familiar event in Ecuador). All this is symptomatic of musical immaturity, yet these countries are making progress, slow but steady, in the realm of art-music.

In Peru, Daniel Alomia Robles (i871-942) and Theodoro Valcarcel (1902-1942) made a cult of indigenous music, which they collected and utilized in works that are more picturesque than permanent. Two well-qualified musicians of foreign origin, Andris Sas and Rodolfo Holzmann, have directed intelligent efforts toward the utilization of indigenous themes (mostly pentatonic) in a contemporary and technically adequate musical structure. Along these lines, Holzmann has written a Suite on Peruvian Themes for piano (1i 944) and Peruvian Partita for orchestra (1i 945), based on a quartal disposition of the tones of the pentatonic scale. Sas has written short pieces and suites on Peruvian Indian material, such as Airesy Danzas Peruanas for piano, Cantos del Peri for violin



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and piano; also Peruvian Rhapsody for violin and orchestra. He fuses Andean modes, melodies, and rhythms with a post-Impressionist harmony stemming from France.

Among the native-born Peruvian composers, Enrique Iturriaga (b. 191 8) came into prominence when his Suite No. I for orchestra won an important prize at the Second Festival of Latin American Music in Caracas (March-April 1957). A pupil of Holzmann, Iturriaga makes discreet use of local color in a prevailingly eclectic idiom that still shows marks of the early Strawinsky. Francisco Pulgar Vidal, Charlotte Pozzi Escot and Edgardo Valcarcel are other young composers contributing to the emergence of a genuine Peruvian school.

Colombia and Venezuela are difficult to classify in any regional grouping. Both countries have a hinterland of vast well-watered plains (Llanos de Orinoco) impinging on the jungle of the Amazon Basin. Both have sea-coasts on the Caribbean, receiving Afro-American influences from that area. In addition, Colombia has a sea-coast on the Pacific and a massive highland region formed by three ranges of the Cordillera of the Andes. The music of both countries, therefore, is marked by indigenous (Indian), Negro (Afro-American), and criollo (Neo-Hispanic) elements.

The patriarch of Colombian art-music is Guillermo Uribe-Holguin (1 880-), pupil of Vincent d'Indy at the Schola Cantorum in Paris, composer of several symphonies, concertos for piano and for violin, a Requiem for soli, chorus and orchestra, and some 3oo Trozos en el Sentimiento Popular (Pieces in Popular Style) for piano, in which all types of Colombian folk music are passed through the post-Franckian wringer. In similar vein are the Sinfonia del Terruiio and the Suite Tipica for orchestra. Uribe-Holguin has also written a quantity of chamber music, marked with the imprint of the Schola Cantorum. His role in Colombian music resembles that of Alberto Williams in Argentina.

Jesuis Bermudez Silva (1884-) and Jose Rozo Contreras (1894-) cultivate a picturesque folkorism that is purely local in scope, while among the younger men Luis Antonio Escobar (b. I925), pupil of Nabokov in Baltimore and of Blacher in Berlin, follows the neo-classical cul de sac in such works as the Divertimento No. i for orchestra (19so) and Concertino for flute and orchestra (i95i). Striving also to be a national composer (important in countries where nearly all music patronage is governmental), Escobar has written a ballet, Avirana, on an Indian subject, produced in 1956.

Venezuela is the only country of Latin America that can boast of a genuine musical Maecenas, in the person of a real-estate multi-millionaire, Inocente Palacios, founder and backer of the Institucion jose Angel Lamas, which in turn sponsors the Festivals of Latin American Music in Caracas and donates the substantial cash prizes (a total of $20,000 U.S. currency) awarded competitively to Latin American composers. The prize-winners this year (I957) were Bias Galindo of Mexico (Symphony), Camargo Guarnieri of Brazil (Ch6ro for piano and orchestra), Enrique Iturriaga of Peru (Suite No. I), and Roque Cordero of Panami (Symphony II).

Venezuela also has its musical patriarch in the person of Vicente Emilio Sojo (1887-), enthusiastic collector of Venezuelan folk music and director of the choral society, Orfedn Lamas. Juan Bautista Plaza (1898-) brings a traditional technique, combined with taste and sensibility, to bear upon unpretentious but delightful stylizations of native themes and rhythms, as in his Fuga Criolla




for String Orchestra (based on the rhythm of the joropo, a typical dance of' Venezuela) and Sonatina Venezolana for piano.

Among the younger Venezuelan composers, Antonio Estevez (b. 1916) has a compelling temperament and an adequate technique which have enabled him to write national music in such works as the Concerto for Orchestra (I948) and the Cantata Criolla (i954) for soli, chorus and orchestra, while transcending the merely local and picturesque evocations that continue to plague so many of his fellow-composers. The Concerto for Orchestra is based thematically on the Popule Meus of Jose Angel Lamas, most prominent of the important school of Venezuelan religious composers that flourished at the end of the I8th century and beginning of the I9th. Sung throughout Venezuela each year during Holy Week, the Popule Meus is a sort of unofficial national anthem, familiar to millions of Venezuelans. Estevez's Concerto is, therefore, an interesting example of a national composition achieved without benefit of folklore.

Before leaving the continent of South America we must turn to the largest nation of that region, immense and many-sided Brazil, with its Portuguese background, its vast Amazonian jungle, and its impressive tropical civilization (Sdo Paulo is one of the largest and most dynamic cities in the Western Hemi- sphere). Brazil can pride itself upon having produced the most famous of all Latin American composers, Heitor Villa-Lobos ( 887-), whose prodigious if uneven output epitomizes the land and its people in all their ethnic diversity and equatorial ebullience. Living close to the popular currents and the folk roots of his country during his adventurous youth, Villa-Lobos was later able to absorb the principal tendencies of contemporary music, particularly as reflected in Paris between the two wars, while preserving both his own individuality and what I have elsewhere called the " telluric intuition " of a musician who is dramatically aware of his unique cultural heritage. So much has been written about the music of Villa-Lobos that I shall make no attempt in this brief general survey to deal with his work in the detail it deserves, but rather pass on to consider some other contemporary Brazilian composers, less known yet certainly not unworthy of attention.

By the early decades of the present century musical nationalism was strongly established in Brazil and it is the main road that Brazilian composers have continued to travel up to this moment. The vigorous and varied folk and popular music, with its strong Afro-American currents, its indigenous vestiges, its sensuous Portuguese elements, and its fascinating mixtures, provided a rich store of materials which was fully exploited not only by Villa-Lobos, but also by such composers as Oscar Lorenzo Fernandez (I897-1948) and Francisco Mignone (i 897-), to name only two who are outstanding among many.

With such works as the symphonic poem Imbapard (1929), the orchestral suite Reisado do Pastoreio (I930), and the opera Malazarte (1941), Lorenzo Fernandez gave a great impulse to national music in Brazil, combining a thoroughly assimilated native tradition with a thoroughly modern compositional technique employing polytonality, polyrhythm, and dissonant linear writing. Mignone, a native of Sio Paulo, possessing amazing facility and a brilliant orchestral technique, has written superbly effective symphonic evocations of Brazilian scenes in such works as Maracatri4 de Chico-Rei and Babaloxd (both ballets), Festa das Igrejas (four symphonic movements evoking churches of Brazil), and four Fantasias Brasileiras for piano and orchestra. One of his most successful orchestral scores is the Congada (Afro-Brazilian dance), used as an intermezzo in the opera Contratador



34 TEMPO

de Diamantes (1924), an early, Italianate work. Mignone's piano music includes an admirable Sonata (1940), Six Preludes (1932), and the delightful Valsas de Esquina. These are all pages that will repay a pianist's scrutiny.

Of Brazilian composers born in the present century, the most prominent is Camargo Guarnieri (b. 1907), who, notwithstanding an occasional excursion into neo-classicism (as in the Concerto for violin and orchestra) has concentrated heavily on folkloristic nationalism. His attitude in this respect became so dogmatic that some years ago, in the form of " An Open Letter to the Composers and Critics of Brazil ", he unleashed an intemperate attack against all proponents of internationalism in modern music, particularly the dodecaphonists. Guarnieri's extensive output includes about two hundred songs, many piano pieces (Ponteios, Toada, Dansa Brasileira, etc.), sonatas for violin and piano, a Concerto for piano and orchestra, several symphonies, and a comic opera, Malazarte, in one act (on the adventures of a traditional roguish character of Brazil, a subject also treated by Lorenzo Fernandez). His two String Quartets are also worthy of mention. Guarnieri may go down in Brazilian musical history as the last of the doctrinaire nationalists.

Cesar Guerra-Peixe (b. 19I4) and Claudio Santoro (b. 191 9) are the most

important Brazilian composers of their generation. Both studied with Hans Joachim Koellreutter, a German emigre who founded the group Musica Viva and became the initiator of the twelve-note movement in Brazil. But after attempting to reconcile the exigencies of twelve-note writing with their un- quenchable national aspirations, both Guerra-Peixe and Santoro turned away from the teachings of Koellreutter and resumed their nationalist trend. Each, however, went in a different direction. Guerra-Peixe embarked on an intense study of Brazilian folk music, exploring its further rhythmic and melodic possibilities; while Santoro drifted towards a more conventional and eclectic international style.

A younger pupil of Koellreutter, Edino Krieger (b. I 92 8), who also studied with Copland and Milhaud in the U.S.A., has followed somewhat the same trajectory as Guerra-Peixe, passing from twelve-note writing to neo-classicism and thence to Bart6k-influenced folklorism. Thus, while the dodecaphonic trend appears to have lost its impetus in Brazil (for the time being, at least), it doubtless provided a stimulus to self-searching and to a reconsideration of accepted values, including folkloristic nationalism. Although currently in a state of crisis, the contemporary Brazilian school is still to be reckoned with.

(To be concluded.)



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