Week 5

The Nineteenth-Century Transition:

• The 1800s became a century of nationalism.

• Gave birth to Italy, Germany, and Belgium.

• by 19th Century is a dominant style combining Euro classical genre like the symphony, sonata, opera, and concerto and with local character making them different from each other depending on where its from

The Birth of Modern Latin America:

• Inspired from U.S independence from Britian

• Dreamed of becoming Republics Free of Spain and Portugal reign

• Wars in 1820s for freedom

• Spain granted their freedom except Cuba and Puerto Rico

• Brazil was liberated peacefully since the Portuguese monarchy fled from the Napoleonic invasion, making Brazil rule as an independent nation

Mexico:

• The Spainards left with an imprint on Mexican Civilization, in language, religion, and culture.

• The U.S coveted Northern Mexico for the expansion of Slavery

• 5 years later Mexicans over through them, which is the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862

• Mexico Had Banned Slavery

• 1846 provoked a war, lasted 2 years resulted the loss of 40% of Mexicans Territory

• Later Mexican Revolution

Manuel Ponce:

• Manuel Ponce (1882-1948)

• Most influential pioneer in late-Romantic and early Modern composers to write music with a distinct Mexican character

• Pianist

• Pursed studies in Paris

• He would listen to music in the countryside, studying local music, imitating it in his works.

Concierto del Sur ( Concerto of the South), 3rd movement

• Concerto form: composition in which one or more solo instruments contrast with an orchestral ensemble

• South: Spain and Mexico

• Nationalist elements: guitar, Spanish Harmonies

• For Guitar and orchestra, one of Ponce’s most celebrated works

• Melodies strongly suggested folk and dance music from Mexico and Spain

• Strumming and Plucking

• Andres Segovia (1893-1987) - close personal friend of Ponce and a great interpreter of Ponce’s many solo works for the instrument

Carlos Chavez

• Carlos Chavez (1899-1978)

• Mexico’s leading composer of the twentieth century

• Ponce’s student

• Conductor

• Music celebrates Mexico’s indigenous people, resembling art of Diego Rivera (1886-1957)

Sinfonia India

• Composed in New York City (1953)

• Native melodies along with instruments, flutes, drums.

• Indigenismo - recognize that makes their identity unique from cultural heritage

• Divided into 5 sections

• Percussion section includes Indigenous instruments- butterfly cocoons, deer hooves, tenponatzli

• upper- and middle-class audiences would attend the orchestra concert in the 1930s

Silvestre Revueltas

• Silvestre Revueltas (1899-1940)

• most avant-garde and experimental composers Mexico Produced in the first half of the 1900s

• Often evokes pre Columbian and African cultures

• Primitivism, started with Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring (1913)

• a leading primitivism was the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) who’s Les Demoiselles d’avigon (1907) portrays Barcelona prostitutes with African masks

• Revueltas was a socialist

Sensemaya

• Programmatic Work: music that has non-musical associations that is music that tells a story or depicts a scene

• Depicts Afro-Cuban ritual

• Primitivist components: Irregular rhythms, Syncopation, Unusual timbres (tuba and bassoon) highly dissonant, contrast, heavy use of percussion,

• Ostinatos: repeating melodic or rhythmic figure that is the structural foundation for a piece of music

• Title of a poet of revolutionary Cuban-poet Nicolas Guillen (1902-1989)

• Revueltas was a socialist and very much in tune with Guillen’s Politics

• Work covers irregular rhythms (meter with 7 beats to the measure), striking dissonances, and emphasis on wind and percussion.

Salvador Ley

• Salvador Ley (1907-1985)

• Guatemalan pianist and composer

• Pursued advanced studies in Berlin

• Appointed National Conservatory in Guatemala City (1934-37 and 1944-53)

• Active in the U.S teaching at the Westchester Conservatory in New York (1963-1970)

La Balada del tiempo mozo

• expressed regret for a misspent youth

• Inspiration from the folk music of Guatemala

• Art song: vocal work typically for solo voice and piano

Cuba

• Did not gain independent till 1898 due to Spain’s war with the U.S

• Were under control from the U.S for economic interests

• 1959 Revolution, under communist leadership of Fidel Castro

Ernesto Lecuona

• Ernesto Lecuona (1895-1963)

• Envokes carnival: period of feasting and celebration before Lent

• Cuban pianist, bandleader and composer’

• Tresillo

• Syncopation

• Danced performed during Carnival

La conga de media Noche

• an Afro-Cuban upright membranophone and also a style of popular dance with a distinctive rhythm

• Conga line

Terms

• Nationalism: In politics and culture, an attempt to unify or represent a particular group of people by creating a national identity through characteristics such as common language, shared culture historical traditions, and national institutions and rituals.

• Also, 19th 20th century trend in music in which composers were eager to embrace elements in their music that claim a national identity

• Modernism: General term for music, art, and literature from the last 19th through the 20th century whose creators sought to offer something new and distinctive while maintaining strong links to tradition, intertwining innovation with emulation of past classics.

• Folklore: when the expressions of pre-capitalist culture are put into a kind of museum, making them perceivable as cultural objects and preserving them

• Folklorization: the process of turning organic cultural practices into staged (re)presentations.

Musical Nationalism in Latin America:

• Euro classical genres

• Local musical expressions incorporated into these

  • Instruments

  • Rhythms

  • etc

All the -isms:

• Indigenism: An intellectual, cultural, and political movement that championed indigenous cultures and heritage in Latin America. Especially strong in Mexico and Peru in the early to mid-twentieth century, the indigenista movement was primarily led by the mestizo elite, including composers, who emphasized Indigenous themes in their classical works

• Primitivism: Musical style that represent the primitive elemental through pulsation… etc