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ARGENTINA
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Introduction
Argentina
had a vigorous musical life in the 19th century, and the opera
at Buenos Aires became (and remains) world famous. The 1880s
saw the rise of a nationalist music style drawing on indigenous
folk-music, and especially that of the gauchos and their ranching
life. The father figure of this movement was Alberto Williams
(1862-1952), of Basque and British descent, whose mantle was
taken over by Alberto Ginastera (1916-1983), the major
Argentinean composer of international stature. In reaction to
this movement, the composer Juan Carlos Paz (1901-1972), who
considered nationalist material a dead form, introduced the
latest ideas current in Europe, especially 12-tone techniques.
After co-founding the Grupo Renovacion in 1929, and as Director
of the Concerts of New Music from the 1930s and of the acclaimed
Teatro Colón (founded in Buenos Aires in 1908), he performed
foreign contemporary works; through his own compositions he
influenced the subsequent generation of Argentinean composers.
It was he who introduced the other major Argentinean composer,
Mauricio Kagel (born 1931), to contemporary music.
The
most fertile period of new music in Argentina was probably the
period 1950 to 1970, especially with the foundation in 1962
of the Latin American Center for Advanced Musical Studies, which
included an electronic music studio and maintained contacts
with visiting composers of an international reputation. It closed
in 1970. In spite of this, such composers as Kagel preferred
the freer musical atmosphere of Europe to their politically
troubled homeland. Like Kagel, Carlos Alsina (born 1941) left
Argenta for Germany in 1964. He has also followed Kagel in embracing
the extremes of the avant-garde movement of the 1960s, though
without the same notoriety, and in composing works for music
theatre. In 1969 he formed with Drouet, Globokar, and Portal
an improvisation group New Phonic Art for performances
both of improvised music and their own works. His own music
has embraced most of the new techniques developed in the 1960s,
including aleatoric devices and free improvisation, exploring
the possibility of dramatized performance of music works in
addition to more overt stage works. His music often employs
extreme instrumental ranges and unconventional instruments,
and the merging of apparently antipathetical instrumental timbres.
As
with so many South American countries, the paucity of composers
in this section does not reflect the quality of Argentinean
composition, but rather the near impossibility of encountering
works by such composers as Williams and Juan Carlos Paz (who
would otherwise be in the Guide) either on the concert
platform or on recordings outside South America.
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GINASTERA
KAGEL
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BAUTISTA
Julián
see
under SPAIN
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GINASTERA
Alberto
born
11th April 1916 at Buenos Aires
died
25th June 1983 at Geneva
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Although
Ginastera has long been recognised as the major exponent of
Argentinean nationalism in music, the label is misleading, and
his international reputation rests as much on the international
style of his later works as on the expression of local colour.
Nonetheless,
he first came to prominence with nationalist works. In these,
the style of Argentinean folk music is blended into his music,
rather than overtly using the genuine or quasi-folk music and
tunes so prevalent elsewhere in South America in the 1930s and
1940s. These folk-influenced effects included polytonality,
the feel of the melodic lines of the música criolla,
rhythmic effects, and the chord of the open strings of the guitar.
Ginastera himself called this "objective nationalist",
expressed both in music suggesting primitive ritual and in music
of a more contemplative lyrical feel. Two such works, the Danzas
Argentinas for piano (1937), and the ballet Panambí
(1934-1936), established his reputation. Panambí is occasionally
heard as an orchestral suite. It is a heady and vivid piece,
that pits sections of sensuous, rather Impressionistic orchestral
colours in thick textures with marvellous descriptive touches
and effects (birds calls, rain-forest sounds) against primitive
violence (with a heavy percussive bass and ostinati) or a rather
spare, languid lyricism. The works between 1937 and 1947 confirmed
this nationalist reputation, notably the ballet Estancia
(1941, suite 1943) which included spoken and sung evocations
of the pampas and the use of the gaucho popular fast dance,
the malambo, and Las Horas de una Estancia (1943)
for voice and piano.
In
1945, with the rise of Peron to power, Ginastera left Argentina
for the U.S.A. From 1947 he travelled extensively in Europe
and the States before returning to Argentina at the overthrow
of Peron (1955). These wanderings correlated with a second period
in his music. With the first of three Pampeana (No.1
for violin and piano, 1947) and the String Quartet No.1
(1948) the indigenous influences became assimilated into his
personal style, in a process he called "subjective nationalism"
- the overall feel may have an Argentinean character, but the
folk elements are no longer individually recognisable, apart
from general ideas (such as the continued use of the `guitar
chord'). The most-often heard work of this period is the tense
and pianistic Piano Sonata No.1 (1952), with dense and
percussive writing characterised by a nervous rhythmic flow,
contrasted by a sparse slow movement (recalling Prokofiev),
and ending with a malambo rhythm, and characteristic
ostinati.
Pampeana
No.3 (1954) for orchestra introduced elements of 12-tone
techniques into Ginastera's music, even if the overall effect
remains tonal (Ginastera himself pointed to the presence of
12-note rows in Panambi and the Piano Sonata No.1).
This change of direction seems temporarily to have halted Ginastera's
output, for the only work in the next four years was the Harp
Concerto (1956), a brilliantly orchestrated work (with winds
and percussion to the fore) of varied textures, an ostinato
opening, an atmospheric slow movement, and involved writing
for harp, sometimes recalling guitar effects. It heralded a
third stage in Ginastera's development, in which 12-tone and
serial techniques are employed for dramatic, ritualistic, sometimes
surrealistic, and above all expressive effect, while utilising
the experience of his earlier music, particularly the nervous
rhythmic energy and the use of ostinati, and regularly maintaining
classical forms (sonata, variations). Gradually the experimentation,
especially of texture and timbre, became more developed, close
to similar exploration in Europe and a far cry from the nationalist
early works.
With
the String Quartet No.2 (1958) 12-tone technique was
openly embraced, although with a continuation of the nervous
rhythmic drive. The individuality of his new "neo-expressionist"
style was announced in the Cantata para América Mágica
(1960) for soloists and percussion ensemble, a total of 53 instruments,
mostly percussion but including two pianos and a celesta, and
based on pre-Columbian poems. Technically the cantata is overtly
serial (pitch, rhythm and dynamics are treated serially, as
well as the melodic material), but emotionally it has an extraordinary
undercurrent of expressive primitivism, especially in the pervasive
rhythmic effects (polyrhythms and irregular metres) and in the
difficult and dramatic vocal writing, with wide leaps and subtle
inflections. This cantata is a genuine marriage of the expression
of ancient emotions and modern techniques, in which the power
of expression may attract many listeners who are otherwise antipathetical
to serial techniques. The dramatic elements of this cantata
were developed in four operas, modern in language if traditional
in format, and highly successful in their debuts if now largely
ignored (Don Rodrigo, 1963-1964, Bomarzo, 1966-1967,
Beatrix Cenci, 1971, and Barabbas, 1977). They
present strong formal structures, surrealistic situations arising
from characters on the edge of sanity, and a pervasive theme
of sex and violence (one critic called Bomarzo "Porno
in Belcanto").
The
other element of Ginastera's later music is its virtuoso writing
(a natural ally to a strong expressive intent). The brilliant
and expressive solo part of the Piano Concerto No.1 (1961)
is initially pitted against the orchestra in a dialogue of variations,
then utilized in an "hallucinatory" slow movement
before a rhythmic finale. The long Piano Concerto No.2
(1972) is more florid, shot through with nervous energy, and
with dense, sometimes dissonant and exceptionally virtuosic
textures with cluster effects, the orchestra used for swathes
of a single tone colour or for points of emphasis. Its second
movement is in the form of 32 variations on a chord from the
fourth movement of Beethoven's Symphony No.9, and, while
more difficult than its predecessor, it is both a more introvert
(in spite of its massive effects) and a more rewarding work.
Similarly personal is the spiky and nervous Piano Quintet
(1963), the strings exploring tense intimate effects in the
central slow section, the piano dense and complex expression
in the outer, with a suggestion of the maniacal. The tense energies
of these works, notes piled on notes, correspond to the 'primitive'
aspects of his earlier work. Much clearer in texture and in
the formality of its structure is the powerful Concerto for
Strings (1965), more obviously lyrical within its dramatic
and rugged mould (with swooping effects, and the glistening
of high harmonics). The Violin Concerto (1963) requires
brilliant technique, while the Estudios Sinfónicos (Symphonic
Studies, 1967) for orchestra include clusters and micro-tones.
The performance difficulties of these works have hampered their
wider dissemination.
His
final works (e.g. the last two piano sonatas, 1981 and 1982,
of which No.2 has an ostinato final movement Ostinaro
ayamara; and Iubilum for orchestra, 1980, with dissonant
fanfares contrasted with quiet meditations, Impressionist writing,
and tonal climaxes) showed a mixture of this uncompromising
language with a return to the more accessible concerns of his
early works.
Ginastera
was professor of composition at the National Conservatory (1941,
dismissed 1945), and 1958 was appointed Dean of the Faculty
of Arts and Science at the Argentine Catholic University. In
1968 he again left Argentina for the U.S.A., and settled in
Geneva in 1970, where he lived until his death. In common with
many composers in the years immediately following their deaths,
Ginastera's music appears to be currently neglected. But it
seems only a matter of time before it reappears, both for the
primitivism of the earlier works, and more especially the individuality
of the later. In these, even if the language shares many of
the styles and techniques of contemporary Western music, the
statement - nervous, dramatic, surrealist - is unique.
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works
include:
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2 cello concertos; harp concerto; 2 piano concertos; concerto
for strings; violin concerto
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Iubilum (Celebracion Sinfónica), Popol Vuh and Estudios
Sinfónicos (Symphonic Studies) for orchestra; overture Obertura
para el "Fausto" Criollo (Overture to the Creole Faust)
for orch.; Variations Concertante for chamber orch.
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3 Pampeanas (No.2 for violin and piano, No.2 for
cello and piano, No.3 for orch.); 3 string quartets;
piano quintet; On a Theme of Pablo Casals for string
quintet and strings
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3 piano sonatas; Malambo, Twelve American Preludes and
other works for piano; guitar sonata
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Five Popular Argentinean Songs, song cycle Las Horas
de una Estancia; 3 Cantata Drammatico (No.1 Cantata
para América Mágica, No.2 Bomarzo, No.3 Milena);
Turbai ad Passionem Gregorianum for soloists, chorus
and orch.; Lamentations of the Prophet Jeremiah for chorus
and other vocal works
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ballets Estancia, Panambí
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operas Barabbas, Beatrix Cenci, Bomarzo, Don Rodrigo
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film scores
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recommended
works:
Cantata
para América Mágica op.27 (1960)
Concerto
per Corde op.33 (1965)
Harp
Concerto op.35 (1956 revised 1968)
Panambi
op.1a (1934-1936) (suite from ballet)
Piano
Concerto No.1 op.28 (1961)
Piano
Concerto No.2 op.39 (1972)
Piano
Quintet op.29 (1963)
Piano
Sonata No.1 op.22 (1952)
Piano
Sonata No.2 (1981)
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bibliography:
P.Suárez
Alberto Ginastera Buenos Aires, 1967
P.Suárez
Alberto Ginastera eu cinquo movimentos Buenos Aires,
1972
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KAGEL
Mauricio
born
24th December, 1931 at Buenos Aires
doed
18th September, 2008 at Cologne
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Mauricio
Kagel properly belongs to the European avant-garde as much as
to Argentinean musical life, for in 1957 he moved to Cologne,
quickly became an integral part of the German musical scene,
and has continued to live in Germany. He has been one of the
most colourful and extreme music experimenters, whose works
have often shocked and horrified, but elements of which have
had wide influence on other composers. In 1969 he was appointed
Director of the Institute for New Music at the Cologne Musikschule.
His
work has shown a consistent thread of restructuring what might
be described as the dialectic of music. Initially, and in common
with many other composers, this involved physically the extension
of instruments into new ranges and sounds, including the human
voice (unusual texts and vocal techniques), and abstractly the
exploration of free forms and chance happenings of musical events.
He then extended this to the restructuring of the ambiance of
the performance, creating dramatic events out of concert works,
and especially redefining music theatre. As this involved irony
and a surrealist humour, it has infuriated those who have seen
it as insincere or a negation of the weight of received tradition.
He has broadened these concerns to include film and the cross-over
of various media. Finally, he has filtered earlier music through
these techniques to redefine it too, causing further furore.
His
experimentation started while he was still in Argentina, while
choral director of the Teatro Colón (1949-1956). Palimsestos
(1950) mixed speech patterns, while Musica para la torre
(Tower Music, 1953) was an early electronic work using concrete
sounds and distortions, broadcast from a tower with a light
show - an early indication of the preoccupation both with unconventional
sounds and dramatic effects. The String Sextet (1952,
revised 1957) contrasted structured sounds (including microtones
and polymetric patterns) against free expression.
The
first work to attract wider attention after his move to Germany
was the influential Anagrama (1955-1958) for four voices,
chorus, and orchestra, in which unconventional texts - the sounds,
not the sense, of anagrams - were performed by unconventional
vocal techniques, including whispering and declamatory, shouted
passages. The purely electronic Transición I (1958-1960)
explored the evolution of timbre changing into timbre, in a
revolving roll-over of sound, since used by many composers but
at the time quite new. Improvisation ajoutée (1961-1962)
not only uses the extremes of organ sounds, and a large element
of random interplay as two assistants improvise registration
changes while a third plays (all to prearranged instructions),
but also includes their voices and hand-clapping, to haunting
effect like some Inquisition nightmare. The element of action
in sound was even more overt in another organ piece, Phantasie,
which caused considerable stir when it appeared in 1967. In
it, the purely organ part (signifying the organist's official
duties) is contrasted with a tape (that should be pre-recorded
by the organist) that might typically include the sounds of
breakfast, commuting, the church bells, the noises of the services
- the background to official duties - in a surprisingly evocative
manner. But the major and most extended work concerned with
new vocal sounds was the then innovative Hallelujah (1967),
an arcane hymn of praise for 16 soloists (and also a film).
The major score exploring new instrumental sounds was Acustica
(1968-1970)), which uses experimental sound-makers (from bull-roarers
and nail-violins to gas blow-torches), loudspeakers and tape,
the musical events precisely delineated on 200 file cards, but
then distributed randomly and played in a random order against
the fixed sequence of the tape.
His
first stage work - and one of his major successes - was Sur
scène (1959-1960), which ridiculed the pretensions of critics,
using musical-hall elements, a process taken to its culmination
in the anti-opera Staatstheater (1967-1970), whose nine
scenes include a satirical swipe at earlier opera, and whose
musical instruments - all household objects - include a chamber
pot. In other stage works, the music itself has more subtly
become the drama. In Match (1964) two cellist/table-tennis
players and a drummer/referee play out the tensions found in
chamber groups, while in Pas de Cinq (1965) the players
walk around in pentagrams, and the rhythms of their footfalls
and the tapping of their walking-sticks - precisely notated
- create the music.
The
re-evaluation of older music through avant-garde eyes was first
apparent in Heterophonie (1959-1961), in which the 42
traditional instruments play as soloists in a work which, in
its chance elements, is concerned with spatial changes of timbre
for its effects. Music for Renaissance Instruments (1965-1966)
employed an orchestra of disparate historical instruments, while
Der Schall (Sound) (1968) for five players with 54 instruments
of the most varied kind imaginable and whose combinations only
appear once, suggests the break-up of some old symphonic work,
like a once shiny piece of metal dug up unrecognisable and rusted.
The avant-garde culmination of this process was Ludwig Van,
Homage to Beethoven (1969), processing Beethoven's music
for a film as well as a score. Similarly, Variations ohne
fugue (1971-1972) for orchestra arose out of Brahms' Hungarian
Variations, and catalogue effects appear in 1898
(written in strict two parts for a number of instruments for
the 75th anniversary of Deutsche Grammophon).
In
common with many composers of the avant-garde period, Kagel
dropped from the limelight in the reaction of the middle 1970s.
If the swirling vocal sound of such works as the short Intermezzo
(1983) for chorus, orchestra and narrator continue the choral
techniques developed earlier, and Ex-position (1978)
the unusual performing groups (vocal ensemble, percussion, rhythm
generators and gymnasts), such works as "Rrrrrrr..."
(title abbreviated - 41 movements for various forces) suggest
a mellowing of the extremes of sound. The opera Aus Deutschland
(1981) filters Schubert and the lied through his perspective.
But his most remarkable work of recent years continues the preoccupation
of re-evaluation. St.-Bach-Passion (1985) is a huge -
perhaps too long - oratorio with the unmistakable ambiance of
a Bach Passion filtered through modern techniques, without being
overtly dissonant or extreme. It is a passion of the life of
Bach (and its repercussions, including modern kitsch renderings
of Bach tunes), and once one has accepted the inversion of format
and content, it is both reverent and moving.
None
of the avant-garde music is easy to listen to. So many of the
actual sounds themselves, as well as their interactions, are
unfamiliar, combined with an almost total lack of traditional
norms. The large element of the dramatic, in the concert as
well as the stage works, makes them more effective live than
on radio or recording. But if, as seems likely, the products
of this ever-inquiring and irreverent imagination seem destined
to remain in the history books for their influence on other
less extreme composers (particularly in the multi-media fields)
rather than in the repertoire, their acquaintance can sometimes
be fascinating, especially if the listener allows his or her
imagination to interact much in the manner of listening to a
radio-play.
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works
include:
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Heterophonie, Intermezzo and Variations ohne fugue
for orchestra
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Music for Renaissance Instruments; Rrrrrrr...
for various forces; Sonnant for guitar, harp, double-bass
and percussion
-
Opus posthumum for piano trio; Match for three
players; string quartet; string sextet; Transición II for
piano, percussion and 2 sound tapes; Der Schall for five
players
-
Matapiece for piano
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Improvisation Ajoutée and Phantasie for organ
-
Anagrama for 4 soloists, speaking chorus, and chamber
ensemble; Diaphonie for chorus, orch. and "diapositive
projections"; Die Frauen for voices and instruments;
Hallelujah for voices; Palimpsestos for chorus;
Kanrimusik (Countrymusic); monologue Kommentar &
Extempore; Con voce for mute actors; Die Himmelsmechanik
"composition with indigenous birds; "bandoneon"
piece Pandora's Box; Pas de cinq for five performers;
Phonophonie (4 melodramas); Synchronstudie for
singer, noise-maker and film; oratorio St.-Bach-Passion;
chamber music theatre piece Sur Scene; Variationen
for singers and actors
-
ballet for non-dancers Staatstheater
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operas Aus Deutschland, Die Erschöpfung; theatrical Oral
Treason
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Acustica for various sound sources and loudspeakers;
Camera Obscura for light sources with representers; Montage
for various sound sources; Privat for lonely listener(s);
electronic Antithése (with "publicly performed sounds"),
Transición I, Ludwig van (Hommage von Beethoven)
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film scores; radio plays
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recommended
works:
Acustica
for experimental sound-producers & loudspeakers (1968-1970)
Hallelujah
for 16 solo singers a capella (1967-1968)
Ludwig
Van, Homage to Beethoven (1969)
Phantasie
for organ (1967)
oratorio
St.-Bach-Passion (1985)
electronic
Transition I (1958-1960)
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bibliography:
D.
Schnebel Mauricio Kagel: Musik, Theatre, Film Cologne,
1970
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