L’intervalle de quarte dans la musique d’Astor Piazzolla

Nous examinons dans cet article l’utilisation et l’origine de l’intervalle de quarte comme élément organisateur des hauteurs dans la musique du compositeur et bandonéoniste argentin Astor Piazzolla (1921–1992). Des exemples nous permettront de prendre contact avec une utilisation diversifiée de cet intervalle, soit mélodique ou harmonique, et d’en constater un emploi conscient et systématique. Une œuvre de jeunesse du compositeur où l’emploi de ces quartes est abondant nous permet de tisser un lien avec les leçons de Piazzolla avec Alberto Ginastera qui eurent lieu pendant l’élaboration de cette pièce, la musique de son professeur de cette période révélant elle-aussi d’importants usages de ces techniques quartales. Finalement, la fascination des deux compositeurs argentins pour Stravinski, et la présence de ces techniques quartales dans la musique du compositeur russe nous permet de déceler l’origine de ces techniques quartales dans la musique savante moderne.

A arte pianística de Barbara Nissman

Barbara Nissman é uma pianista norte-americana conhecida por suas gravações de Alberto Ginastera e Sergei Prokofiev. O compositor argentino dedicou a ela a última obra que escreveu, sua Sonata n. 3. Em 1989, ela realizou a primeira gravação integral das Sonatas para Piano de Prokofiev. É autora do livro Bartók and the piano: A performer´s view, além de uma extensa discografia e de DVDs que combinam performance pianística e conferências educativas sobre compositores e suas obras. Atua intensamente em palestras e master classes. Sua formação ocorreu da graduação ao doutorado na Universidade de Michigan, sob orientação do pianista Gyorgy Sandor, discípulo de Béla Bartók.

John Harrison, Alberto Ginastera, and the Creation of CLAEM

This chapter explores the creation of CLAEM through a series of vignettes that use the interactions between Rockefeller Foundation officer John P. Harrison and the famous composer Alberto Ginastera to show how institutional forces, usually imagined on a seemingly abstract level, actually come into play on the ground through the exchanges of specific people. The chapter demonstrates how Harrison played a fundamental role in the creation of CLAEM and heading several inroads of the Rockefeller Foundation into Latin American art music during the early 1960s. The narrative constructed in this chapter around the creation of CLAEM sets up several issues that will be further explored in the rest of the book in relation to the Rockefeller Foundation, the Di Tella Family, and the mission and vision of CLAEM.

The Di Tella Family, Art Philanthropy, and the Legitimation of Elite Status

The Di Tella family owned one of the largest industrial emporiums of Argentina and in 1958 decided to use part of their fortune to create the Torcuato Di Tella Institute. In 1962, the Institute collaborated with the Rockefeller Foundation to create a music center, CLAEM, under the direction of Alberto Ginastera. This chapter examines the ways in which avant-garde music, and art in general, was relevant to the Di Tella family at a time when they were in the process of reconfiguring their elite identity. It shows the complex and often contradictory positions of Guido and Torcuato S. Di Tella as they legitimized their status and associated the Di Tella name not just with refrigerators and automobiles, but also with contemporary arts. Built upon oral histories, this chapter explores the social meaning and value of philanthropic practices for the Di Tella brothers. The complex picture painted by this story underlines the need to understand elites as dynamic and not as static or homogeneous social groups.

Serialism

In the 1950s and 1960s, many composers, influenced by Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, embraced serial compositional techniques. Tonal music became atonal and composers, such as Pierre Boulez from France and the German composer, Karlheinz Stockhausen, championed this new compositional approach. This chapter defines serialism and how composers applied it to works for percussion instruments. Music examples include Stockhausen’s solo work, Zyklus, with its totally original notational system, and a setting of an E. E. Cummings poem, Circles, by the Italian composer Luciano Berio. American composer Charles Wuorinen’s use of Milton Babbitt’s “time point” system in both his solo work Janissary Music and his forty-five-minute Percussion Symphony is presented, as is the work of Argentine composer Alberto Ginastera, who contributed to the literature one of the twentieth century’s largest percussion works, Cantata para América Mágica, for dramatic soprano and fifty-three percussion instruments. A discussion of percussion solo and ensemble works by the Greek composer, architect, and mathematician Iannis Xenakis completes the chapter.

Juan Orrego Salas: Cien Años de un Compositor Cervantino

La figura del compositor chileno Juan Orrego Salas (Santiago de Chile, 18 de enero de 1919-Bloomington, Indiana, E.E.U.U., 24 de noviembre de 2019) se alza como una de las personalidades más importantes, influyentes y referenciales de la creación sonora académica de Iberoamérica en el siglo XX. Testigo y coautor del florecimiento de la composición latinoamericana y de los foros panamericanos, Orrego Salas pertenece a la segunda oleada de grandes creadores iberoamericanos del siglo XX que – junto a compositores como el argentino Alberto Ginastera o el panameño Roque Cordero – proyectaron y trascendieron el marco nacionalista al que la música latinoamericana se había visto constreñida después de Heitor Villa-Lobos, los mexicanos Carlos Chávez y Silvestre Revueltas o los cubanos Amadeo Roldán y Alejandro García Caturla. En Orrego Salas confluyen compositor, musicólogo, docente, gestor y crítico musical además de un verdadero adalid de la promoción de la música latinoamericana como fundador del LAMC (Latin American Music Center) en Bloomington, perteneciente a la norteamericana Universidad de Indiana. Un importante rasgo de la personalidad de éste creador chileno es su “españolidad” vertida en varias obras de su catálogo compositivo entre las que destaca la cervantina Palabras de Don Quijote. El presente artículo, producto de dos artículos anteriores que sobre Juan Orrego Salas tuve ocasión de llevar a cabo, pretende ser un homenaje a este factotum musical con motivo del año de su centenario y fallecimiento, 2019. En la primera parte se realiza un breve recorrido por su figura musical cuya pertinencia se explica por el incomprensible desconocimiento que de la creación musical iberoamericana y sus figuras se tiene, en ocasiones, no solo en geografías no americanas sino en los propios países de Latinoamérica. La segunda, y más extensa parte de este escrito, consiste en un análisis de Palabras de don Quijote en la que el compositor chileno proyecta su devoción por el universal autor de Don Quijote de La Mancha, al tiempo que hace suyos los valores del “caballero andante” para transitar su recorrido vital como hombre y creador, ejemplo de honestidad y coherencia ética e intelectual.

Iturriaga (Romero), Enrique (1918--)

Enrique Iturriaga is a Peruvian composer and music pedagogue. He is one of the lead representatives of the so-called Generación del 50, a Peruvian composers’ group that introduced modernist ideas to the musical life of Peru during the mid-twentieth century. Although Iturriaga’s production is not vast, it has been awarded several composition prizes and has been performed and published extensively. As a music teacher, he was a leading personality at the National Conservatoire of Peru, where he taught for over fifty years and was appointed twice as General Director. Iturriaga has experimented with diverse techniques depending on the demands of each individual work, which are always solidly constructed. His music shows the influence of Stravinsky and Bartók, and his style is close to that of other Latin American composers of the first half of the twentieth century, such as Alberto Ginastera and Juan Orrego Salas. Iturriaga is deeply concerned with his Peruvian musical heritage, aiming to reconstruct it through a modern musical language.

Gandini, Gerardo (1936–2013)

Gerardo Gandini was an Argentinean composer and pianist. Disciple and assistant of Alberto Ginastera in the late 1950s and 1960s, he obtained international recognition for his musical work, which comprised more than 120 works for orchestra, small ensembles, musical theatre, opera, and solo instruments. As a pianist, he took part in the last sextet founded and led by Astor Piazzolla. From then on he interpreted and recorded a number of tango arrangements, called ‘‘Postangos.’’ Gandini was also active as a disseminator of contemporary music in Argentina.