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The musical development in Latin America at the end of the 19th century indicated a concern with local and folk traditions as a reaction to previous trends, derived almost exclusively from European practices. Composers started to search their own musical heritage for self-assertion, applying those folk elements to the diverse aesthetic forms of modern European currents. This merging process was accelerated by the rapid rise of the middle class and increased
participation of the native sectors of the society. As a result, Latin America experienced the collected phenomenon of musical nationalism.
Modesta Bor
was born in 1926 in the Venezuelan island of Margarita. She studied composition in her home country and at the Tchaikovsky Conservatoire in Moscow. Her catalogue ranges from songs to orchestral pieces. Tonight’s songs use rhythms and the colloquial language of Venezuela. The first two pieces reflect everyday life in the city, while the
Lullaby… is a tribute to Cuban nursing songs.
The climate in the initial period of the Cuban Republic, from 1920 to 1940, inspired artists to research their own popular heritage. This interest, opposed to the influence of European artistic tendencies, originated passionate debates of nationalism against cosmopolitism. In this context emerged
Enrique Sánchez de Fuentes
(1874-1944). His music brings traditional forms of Hispanic origin into the romantic style and his use of the Habanera rhythm in particular gained him great fame.
Heitor Villa-Lobos
(1887-1959) is the most representative figure of Brazilian academic music of the first half of the 20th century, and a peer with the most prominent European composers of his time. In his unique style, he created recital songs using the folk traditions of his country. Following the steps of Villa-Lobos, Brazil produced outstanding figures such as
Oscar Lorenzo Fernândez
(1897-1948). He studied piano and composition in his native Rio de Janeiro and was the founder of several music institutions. Of a large number of orchestral pieces, several of his works have been performed in Brazil under the baton of Villa-Lobos.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, composers were attracted to exotic realms. The Paris premiere of the
Songs of Madagascar by
Maurice Ravel
(1875-1937) set off a scandal, on the grounds that its anti-imperialistic view was unpatriotic. The poems were published by Evariste de Parny, who claimed to have translated them from Madagascan songs, which was but a poetic license. The two outer songs are expressively erotic in character, while the middle song is more dramatic in its hinting at the evil effects of the "white men" who bring death and destruction to the exotic and distant land.
In the 1880s Argentina saw the end of the mandate of Juan Manuel de Rosas, who instigated the
Campaign of the desert that wiped out most of its native population. As international immigrants were welcomed to these deserted lands, there was a climate of cosmopolitan euphoria as well as concerns with the Argentinian cultural identity.
Carlos López Buchardo (1881-1948) and Alberto Williams
(1862-1952) belonged to this generation of artists that turned to their national folk traditions. Williams studied composition in the Paris Conservatoire and under Cesar Frank. Later he founded the Buenos Aires Music Conservatoire. His
Inca Songs are an example of his interest in the traditional music of a fellow South-American nation. This period was also influenced by the French academicism, which inspired the edification of the Teatro Colón. Within this context, composers like Alberto Ginastera and
Carlos Guastavino
(1914-2000) came to the forth, developing an individual style that reflected the varied scope of tendencies of the time. Guastavino, whose work is often characterised by their simple traditional character, is represented tonight with a rather introspective piece. As the nationalistic tendencies started to be abandoned, a new generation emerged of musicians free from any need of recover their musical heritage. Their stylistic developments succeeded in putting Latin America on the map of world contemporary music by the early 1960s. One
of these composers is Argentinian Julio Viera (b.1945). He has written pieces for electroacoustic media, as well as chamber and symphonic works.
Andrés
Sas
(1900-1967) was born in France and after studying composition and violin in Brussels and Paris he started a solo career in
Europe. As a renowned teacher he gained a post at the Alcedo Music Academy in Lima, where he lived for the rest of his life. He founded there a new music academy and started researching Peruvian music. His later compositions captured the spirit of Indo-Peruvian music, as is evidenced in tonight’s two songs. Their authentic character is enhanced by the use of Quechua, the Andean language that has survived since
the times of the Inca Empire until today.
© Lloica Czackis |
