Carlos Guastavino: A Study of His Songs and Musical Aesthetics

Jonathan L. Kulp

Publication No. 3023555 Jonathan Lance Kulp, Ph.D. Dissertation, The University of Texas at Austin, 2001 Supervisor: Gerard Béhague

Carlos Guastavino: A Study of His Songs and Musical Aesthetics

by

Jonathan Lance Kulp, B.M.; M.M.

Dissertation

Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School

of the University of Texas at Austin

In Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements

for the degree

Doctor of Philosophy

The University of Texas at Austin

May 2001

Copyright

by

Jonathan Lance Kulp

2001

Acknowledgements

Thanks first of all to Dr. Gerard Béhague, my principal advisor. His guidance, advice, and vast network of contacts in the world of Latin-American studies were invaluable in bringing this work to completion. Thanks also to committee members Michael Tusa, Charles Roeckle, and Elliot Antokoletz, not only for their helpful suggestions regarding my dissertation, but also for challenging me in my coursework and helping to shape the way I think and write about music, and for showing me what it means to be a musicologist. A special thanks goes to Professor Enrique Fierro, who agreed in the friendliest manner to serve on my committee at the last minute. Finally, I want to thank the Institute of Latin-American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, whose grant made my research in Buenos Aires possible.

In Buenos Aires I send out special thanks to Waldemar Axel Roldán, director of the Instituto Nacional de Musicología “Carlos Vega,” and to Sr. Oscar Olmello at the same institution, for lending sympathetic ears (after my suitcase was stolen at Ezeiza International Airport!), for making me feel welcome at the institute, and for allowing me to make copies of some rare recordings held in their archives. Thanks to Dr. Ana Lucía Frega for her thoughts on Guastavino and for sharing her wonderful network of contacts in Buenos Aires. Thanks also to choral director Carlos Vilo for spending an entire afternoon talking with me about Guastavino and for patiently answering my numerous follow-up email inquiries. I give my sincere appreciation to Maestro Roberto García Morillo, composer, critic, and elder statesman of Argentine music, for spending nearly four hours talking with Deborah Schwartz-Kates and me not only about Guastavino, but also about Argentine music in general, and a very special thanks to Ms. Ana María Móndolo for arranging and hosting the meeting. Dr. Melanie Plesch was especially gracious, welcoming me into her home in the midst of difficult personal circumstances and giving me unpublished or hard-to-find copies of her scholarly work on Guastavino. Thanks go to Silvina Mansilla, for meeting with me on extremely short notice and sharing her vast archive of articles, news clippings, scores, and recordings of Guastavino materials. Warmest appreciation goes to guitarist Victor Villadangos, whose hospitality and generosity were without equal, and who has since become a valued friend. Thanks also to guitarist María Isabel Siewers, who met with me for a few hours even though she only had a short time in Buenos Aires before returning to Salzburg. Finally, thanks to Sra. Amalia Chavarri at Ricordi Americana and Sra. Haydée González-Poisson at Editorial Lagos in Buenos Aires, for their help in acquiring scores of Guastavino’s music.

I also received plenty of help from people here at home. A big “thanks” goes to Nancy Roldán, pianist and instructor at the Peabody Conservatory, for her thoughtful and detailed answers to questions about Guastavino in particular, and the Argentine music scene in general, and also for sharing her Guastavino correspondence with me. Likewise, Douglas Crowder, professor of voice at Mansfield University was exceedingly friendly in making his letters from Guastavino available to me. Thanks also to pianist Noel Lester, who answered emails in a prompt and friendly manner, sharing his thoughts on Guastavino and his music. Perhaps the most important help during the final stages of my dissertation came from the Library Staff at Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia, who made me feel welcome and gave me faculty borrowing privileges, a quiet place to write, and valuable reference help.

Two people deserve special recognition here for their help through the whole process. First, my warmest thanks go to Dr. Deborah Schwartz-Kates, fellow Argentina scholar and professor of music history at the University of Texas, San Antonio, for her sound advice and moral support when I needed it most, and for giving me the benefit of her experience in navigating the sometimes tricky academic circles of the Buenos Aires musical scene. And my sincerest thanks to Dr. Mario Abril, professor of theory and guitar at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, my undergraduate mentor and the one to whom I always return for advice. His encouragement and support, as well as his help in transcribing difficult passages of interview recordings, were critical to the completion of this work.

Finally, thanks to my family. My most special thanks go to Caroline Huey, my wife and best friend, for her amazing patience and encouragement, and to my parents, Richard and Faye Kulp, for their unending and unconditional support in everything I do.

Muchísimas gracias a todos.

Abstract

Carlos Guastavino: A Study of His Songs and Musical Aesthetics

Publication No. 3023555

Jonathan Lance Kulp, Ph.D.

The University of Texas at Austin, 2001

Supervisor: Gerard Béhague

Carlos Guastavino (1912–2000) is one of the most beloved composers in Argentina, considered by many to be the last great exponent of Argentine musical nationalism. An enigmatic figure, he has been remarkably successful in the realms of both art music and popular music. His musical style often speaks more of the 19th-century salon than of the mid- to late twentieth century in which it was written, and for this reason his works have resonated strongly with performers and the concert-going public. Guastavino’s works have been performed often enough in Argentina and elsewhere that he was able to earn a living entirely from royalties, a unique situation among Argentine composers.

Given his “outdated” musical style, his nearly exclusive cultivation of miniature genres, and his penchant for speaking out against contemporary musical trends, it is not surprising that for many years (roughly the 1950s to 1980s) his music found little sympathy among the composers and critics in the academic musical circles of Buenos Aires, which were more interested in the modernistic trends prevalent in Europe at the time. In the 1990s, however, there began a resurgence of interest in Gaustavino’s music, accompanied by numerous new recordings, increased scholarly attention, and a reevaluation of his music on the part of critics. However, there has as yet been little attention paid to the largest portion of his output, his songs for voice and piano. While many of his songs are firmly rooted in the art-music traditions of Europe, he is also comfortable and successful writing in a more popular style, such that his songs have been recorded by opera stars like Teresa Berganza and José Cura, and also by popular artists like Eduardo Falú and Joan Manuel Serrat. In the present work, Guastavino’s songs serve as the basis for a study of his musical aesthetics and a consideration of his position in the history of Argentine music.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements 4

Abstract 7

Table of Contents 8

Introduction 10

Part I: The Background 12

Chapter 1: The State of Research 13

Specialized Literature 13

Representation of Guastavino in the General Literature 18

Chapter 2: Biographical Portrait 24

Overview of Guastavino’s Works 26

Personality, and Its Impact on Art 33

Chapter 3: Nationalism 49

Guastavino and Argentine Musical Nationalism 56

Nostalgia and Nature as Expressions of Nationalism 69

PART II: THE SONGS 72

Chapter 4: Style and Structure in the First Song Period, 1939–1962 73

Classification and Periodization of Songs 73

Harmony and Tonality 77

Tonal Definition 79

The Guastavinian Melody 105

Guastavino and Early Music 112

Influence of Opera 125

Text-Music Relationship 135

Text and Music: Images of Death 146

Nationalism in the First Song Period 149

Nostalgia as a Nationalist Expression: “Pueblito, mi pueblo” 156

Folk Song Settings 161

Nationalism by Association 166

Toward Popular Success: “Se equivocó la paloma” 167

Chapter 5: “La manera popular” (1963–1975) 178

Poetry in the Second Song Period 179

Style and Structure in the Second Song Period 182

Canciones Escolares 197

The Canción Escolar as a Tool for Socialization 198

The Canción Escolar as Diversion: “Arroyito serrano” 207

Guastavino and the Song Cycle: Flores Argentinas 213

Conclusions 229

Appendix A: Lists of Songs 236

List 1: Chronological Order 236

Appendix B: Discography 245

PIANO MUSIC 245

Songs 246

Chamber Music 248

Guitar 249

Recital Tapes 251

Bibliography 252

Vita 257

Introduction

The road that led me to study the songs of Carlos Guastavino was a long and ambling one. It is a coalescence of many different interests that once seemed disparate, but which appear to be all of a piece in hindsight. My first contact with music of Latin America came during my undergraduate studies as a classical guitarist. At around the same time I began to take a serious interest in literature, and was particularly captivated by the Columbian writer Gabriel García Márquez, author of the twentieth-century classic One Hundred Years of Solitude. In a very real way, García Márquez was my most important Spanish teacher, as I plowed through Cien años de soledad from beginning to end, dictionary in hand. In my senior year of college I began to write music, and my very first compositions were art songs, as this seemed like the natural genre for combining my interests in literature and music. Since then nearly my entire compositional output (slight as it is) has been in the medium of song.

My original idea for this dissertation was to do a broad survey of Latin-American Art Songs of the twentieth century, so as to combine my love for the art song and my interest in Spanish-language literature in a single scholarly pursuit. Preliminary research indicated that there was ample room, and perhaps even a definite need for such a study, but it soon became apparent that the topic was too broad. While looking for repertoire, I found that most of the well-known Latin-American composers (e.g. Villa-Lobos, Ponce, Chávez, Galindo, and Ginastera) had written at least a handful of songs. However, I found dozens upon dozens by another composer completely unknown to me: Carlos Guastavino. Some of them had been recorded by artists of international renown such as Teresa Berganza and José Carreras. The songs were charming, simple, immediately appealing, and in many cases similar to my own style of composition. I felt that Guastavino was a composer whose artistic principles resonated strongly with my own, and thus it happened that I decided to study of the art songs of Carlos Guastavino.

Argentine musicologist Juan María Veniard has called Guastavino “the last great figure of the [Argentine nationalist] movement.”¹ His most successful songs have become so embedded in the musical landscape of his country as to have achieved the status of folklore. Guastavino (1912–2000) is a beloved musician in Argentina, and is also a rarity among composers of art music in that his compositions earned him enough income on which to live comfortably.

While conducting research in Buenos Aires in the summer of 1999, I met a number of people who knew Guastavino (the composer himself was already very sick with Alzheimer’s disease, and as such was not available), and I attended several concerts in which his music was performed. Most of the people I met there believed that Guastavino had a reputation in countries outside of Argentina (including the United States) that was equal to the one he enjoyed at home. Recordings of his music are available here, but he is still almost completely unknown to North American concert audiences, performers, and scholars. (His countrymen Alberto Ginastera and Astor Piazzolla are much more familiar in the U.S.)

Guastavino represents the culmination of the Argentine nationalist tradition begun by Alberto Williams in the late 19th century, but he also became a fixture in the popular and folk music scenes of Buenos Aires, as his music traveled unexpected paths into the consciousness of all strata of Argentine society. He is one of the most interesting figures in Argentine music of the twentieth century, and in the present study I hope to introduce Guastavino to a North-American audience by surveying the largest portion of his output, his songs.

Part I: The Background

Chapter 1: The State of Research

Specialized Literature

Research on Carlos Guastavino is in its early stages and consists largely of the work of three or four scholars in Buenos Aires. The earliest useful article is a catalogue of Guastavino’s works by Silvina Mansilla that appears in the journal of the Carlos Vega Institute.² While there is no analytical scholarship here, the list of works has indispensable data for anyone working on Guastavino.

Mansilla has published several other brief pieces on Guastavino that are worth mentioning. First is a portrait of the composer for a guitar journal in 1988.³ Here, Mansilla introduces Guastavino to an audience of guitarists, telling them who he is and what he has written, with special emphasis on his guitar works. From a North American perspective, she exaggerates the extent to which Guastavino’s music is played around the world, referring to “the greatest diffusion his works have had on the five continents” and how “his creations have crossed over the frontiers of the most remote countries and have been and are frequented often by musicians of all levels.”⁴ While Guastavino is well known in Argentina, he is still known only to a small, rather specialized audience here in the United States. I will return to this issue in greater depth later, but suffice it to say that Guastavino’s international importance differs according to one’s perspective.

Mansilla has also delivered papers on Guastavino in which she raises some important issues and begins to do some interesting musicological analysis of his music. At a conference in Buenos Aires in 1998, Mansilla talked about the possibility of using Guastavino’s piano music in education, not only for piano performance but also for teaching harmony, counterpoint, phrasing, and other musical issues.⁵ Her comments illustrate something I will cover later having to do with Argentine musical nationalism, specifically a reluctance even now on the part of the musical establishment to consider Argentine music on an equal level to European music, and to integrate Argentine music into their educational curricula when it will serve the same purpose as works from the traditional canon.

Mansilla’s most recent paper is promising in that she uses some of the modern methods of musicology, integrating social theory with music history and reception history to study the dissemination of one of Guastavino’s most famous songs, “Se equivocó la paloma.”⁶ This study is related to my own work more closely than any of the others since its subject is a song, rather than piano or guitar music. It is also the most thorough study of a single song by any Argentine scholar.⁷ Mansilla examines the poem and documents Guastavino’s relationship with Alberti’s poetry, as well as the different versions that various singers have done of the song that have made it one of the best-known songs in Argentina. I would like to have seen more in her application of social theory. For example, she did show clearly how Bordieu’s theories applied to the dissemination of “Se equivocó la paloma” after having invoked him in the introduction to the paper. Nevertheless, this is a rare example of socio-cultural study in the analysis of Guastavino’s music, and since this was a lecture delivered at a conference, space to amplify her ideas was limited. Mansilla has also written an excellent unpublished paper on Guastavino’s lost ballet, Fue una vez…, in which she uses archival materials and newspaper accounts to reconstruct the events leading up to the ballet’s premiere and its subsequent reception by the critics.⁸

Along with Silvina Mansilla, two other Argentine scholars have made important contributions to Guastavino studies, Melanie Plesch and Bernardo Illari. The three collaborated on an article-length entry for the 10-volume Diccionario de la Música Española e Hispanoamericana.⁹ In the first part, Silvina Mansilla draws on her extensive collection of biographical data on Guastavino to give the most complete and objective portrait of the composer to date. Part two is a survey of Guastavino’s music by all three authors, including analysis and evaluation of some of his principal works. This article should be the starting point for anyone who wants information on Guastavino (and who can read Spanish).

In 1996 Melanie Plesch published a fine article on Guastavino’s music for solo guitar, an outgrowth of her work on the joint dictionary article.¹⁰ In this piece she identifies the elements of rural música criolla present in the three guitar sonatas and Jeromita Linares (for guitar and string quartet), targeting an audience not familiar with the rural musical traditions of Argentina. She says Guastavino uses folk materials to create a common ground with his audience, one that will not make sense to those not grounded in Argentine culture. While the sonatas stand up to the closest scrutiny in terms of their construction as “sonatas” in the European tradition, one can not appreciate them fully without being aware of the folk-inspired passages that permeate the works. She bases her study on rhetorical theories used by Roland Barthes and Kofi Agawu,¹¹ and she acknowledges various levels at which Guastavino makes his folk sources apparent, from the direct use of folk rhythms or melodic styles, to the most abstract allusions, what she calls “evocativa.”

A 1998 article by Fernando Fuenzalida¹² is the longest published work on Guastavino to date. This article contains some useful information, but its tone is anecdotal and decidedly uncritical. It is more a patriotic summary or appreciation of the composer’s achievements than a scholarly study. The work is essentially a series of quotations from Guastavino presented in the manner of a memoir, without any commentary, critique or discussion. In addition to the text of his article, he includes a catalog of Guastavino’s works, which amounts to little more than a reformatting of Silvina Mansilla’s 1989 catalog, although he was able to add the few works written between 1989 and 1992. Fuenzalida is currently working on what he calls “the definitive book on Carlos Guastavino,” commissioned by the Instituto Nacional de Musicología “Carlos Vega.”¹³ While his intentions are good, there are serious problems with his work from a musicologist’s perspective. Mansilla echoes these thoughts in a published critique of Fuenzalida’s article.¹⁴

There are a number of American DMA treatises on Guastavino, beginning with that of Nancy Roldán in 1989. Hers is a study of Guastavino’s largest opus for solo piano, Diez cantilenas argentinas.¹⁵ She bases her work not only on the scores, but also on interviews and correspondence with the composer. Ricardo Roel selects a number of other piano works for analysis in his treatise,¹⁶ and there are two DMA treatises on Guastavino’s songs. In his paper on ten selected songs, Douglas Crowder analyzes the music and poetry while also drawing on information from interviews and letters from the composer.¹⁷ Deborah Wagner’s work amounts to a singer’s guide to the complete published solo songs of Guastavino.¹⁸ For each song, Wagner gives a body of data relevant to singers, such as range, tessitura, duration, and difficulty level. This treatise is most useful for singers, but it also has some information useful to musicologists, such as brief biographical portraits of some of Guastavino’s poets and English translations of most of the song texts (although it would have been better had she placed the originals and the translations side-by-side instead of presenting all of the translations together as an appendix without the original texts). The most recent DMA treatise, and perhaps the most thoughtful of the group, is that by the Argentine guitarist Pablo Cohen, who has a strong association with Guastavino’s music as a performer, having recorded Jeromita Linares on the Dorian label.¹⁹ In his doctoral paper he analyzes Guastavino’s Sonata no. 1 (1967) for solo guitar, with special emphasis on its Argentine folk music influences. He also offers a consideration of Guastavino’s importance to the classical guitar repertoire.²⁰ Of peripheral interest is Carlos Capra’s work on Argentine clarinet music, which includes a brief discussion of Gaustavino’s Sonata for Clarinet and Piano, as well as his Tonada y Cueca for clarinet and piano.²¹

Representation of Guastavino in the General Literature

Thus far I have concentrated on literature for which Guastavino is the primary subject. I will turn now to more general sources to see how he is represented in encyclopedias, dictionaries, histories, and critical studies.

In the 1980 edition of the primary English-language reference work on music, New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians,²² Guastavino is not mentioned at all. He does not have his own entry, nor does his name appear in the article on Argentina. His lack of representation here is certainly because the dictionary was published before the resurgence of interest in Guastavino and his music. The author of the entry on Argentine art music is Gerard Béhague, whose book-length survey of Latin American art music²³ was published at roughly the same time as New Grove and also has no mention of Guastavino. However, when writing the entries on “Argentina” for the new editions of Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart and The New Grove Dictionary nearly twenty years later, Béhague devotes a paragraph of about 80 words to Guastavino in discussions about the nationalist movement in twentieth-century Argentine art music.²⁴ As further testament to Guastavino’s growth in importance during the last twenty years, the new edition of New Grove also contains an entry of roughly 600 words on Carlos Guastavino by the present author, who was commissioned by New Grove on the recommendation of Gerard Béhague.²⁵ Illustrating the difference in stature between Guastavino and Ginastera from an international perspective is the relative amount of space each receives in the MGG article on “Argentina.” Immediately following the paragraph about Guastavino, there is a paragraph on Ginastera that is at least five times longer than the one on Guastavino. In addition, there is a lengthy entry on Ginastera in the 1980 New Grove and a 3,000-word entry on him in the 2001 edition. In Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, Guastavino’s representation follows the rise and fall of his popularity. There is an entry of about 40 words on him in the 1958 edition, while there is no entry at all in the 1988 edition. As evidence of Guastavino’s greater prominence early in his career, Slonimsky includes a brief biographical note on Guastavino in his 1945 survey of Latin-American music, calling him “a composer of the young Argentine school” and giving the incorrect birth year of 1914.²⁶

In terms of representation, Carlos Guastavino does not fare much better in the literature of his own country than in the international literature. There are brief biographical entries on him in most of the music dictionaries or encyclopedias, but they borrow heavily from one another and essentially do not change from the 1940s through the 1980s. One of the most-often-cited entries is that by Rodolfo Arizaga.²⁷ In Lázaro Flury’s 1967 book Historia de la música argentina, there is one paragraph on Guastavino, and it deals only with his folk song settings. He is also mentioned during a discussion of children’s music, where he is included among a group of composers who have written canciones escolares.²⁸ Guastavino gets little more than a mention by Mario García Acevedo in La música argentina contemporánea,²⁹ which is less a history of music than a snapshot of musical life in Argentina in the early 1960s. It documents musical institutions—such as orchestras, opera houses, ballets, conservatories—and artists (both performers and composers). Ginastera and López-Buchardo get considerably more coverage than does Guastavino. In a discussion of chamber songs, Guastavino and Ginastera are mentioned as composers carrying on the tradition of Argentine song, although he says the songs of Julián Aguirre and Carlos López-Buchardo are the “most representative” examples of the Argentine chamber song.³⁰ Like Flury, Acevedo also includes Guastavino in a list of composers who cultivate the genre of canciones escolares.³¹ Roberto García Morillo’s more recent book, Estudios sobre música argentina,³² is confined to deceased composers, automatically eliminating Guastavino from consideration.

The most extensive coverage of Guastavino comes in Juan María Veniard’s study, La Música Nacional Argentina, where Guastavino is afforded several paragraphs and lauded as the only Argentine nationalist composer who remained faithful to nationalism throughout his career.³³ Veniard gives a list of some of Guastavino’s better-known compositions, then spends one paragraph in an analysis of Jeromita Linares (1965—for guitar and string quartet), indicating the work’s formal design and some of its folk elements. He suggests that this work could mark the end of nationalism in Argentine art music, and that in any case Carlos Guastavino was the last great figure in the movement.³⁴ In his most recent book,³⁵ Veniard gives Guastavino even more coverage, as it has become increasingly evident in the intervening years that Guastavino has gained in standing while most of his contemporaries have begun to fade. In addition to the thoughts presented in his earlier book (which are reprinted word-for-word in the new one), Veniard also discusses Guastavino’s importance as a song composer and writes at some length about his cycle Flores argentinas, though only in a general way, without actual analysis of individual songs.

Given the general paucity of scholarship on Guastavino, lacunae exist in almost every facet of musical scholarship: biographical, analytical, genre-centered, historical, socio-cultural, and critical. Mansilla, Plesch, and Illari’s joint article on Guastavino touches on all of these concerns, but given the scope of their task (the article is for a dictionary), they could not go into great depth in any one area.

While there is no book-length biography of Guastavino as yet, the published interviews and biographical sketches that exist leave few gaping holes and provide a relatively seamless picture of the composer from his early days until his retirement from composition in 1992. One critique I would level at the current writing about Guastavino (with the exception of the work by Mansilla, Plesch, and Illari), however, is that very often its tone is one of reverence and boosterism rather than scholarly discourse. For example, when writing about Guastavino’s compositional process, instead of analysis Fuenzalida simply talks about Guastavino’s inspiration in nature and his being “flooded by music (corresponding to the creative process where ideas come to my mind and they put me in a trance) carrying everything beautiful in the world.”³⁶ I would never suggest ignoring the emic perspective, but to let a statement like that stand without comment or critique seems naive and serves only to characterize the creative process as spiritual mumbo jumbo.

There is also the matter of Guastavino’s critics. In Fuenzalida’s article, and in most of the shorter sketches of Guastavino (such as compact disc liner notes, entries in reference works, and brief magazine articles), there are vague references to adversarial critics and colleagues who sent Guastavino into a state of disillusionment and withdrawal in the mid-1970s. However, these critics are always presented as a nameless group of bogeymen out to “get” Guastavino. Nowhere has anyone mentioned the critics by name or laid out their points of contention with either Guastavino or his music. Judging from some of the strong opinions Guastavino had concerning modern music, I can imagine the sorts of objections his colleagues in music circles might have had with him, but it should not be left to speculation, nor should his critics simply be dismissed as mean-spirited, jealous rivals. This is an issue I will discuss in the next chapter in greater depth, as I was able to unearth some information about it during my interviews in Buenos Aires.

A third problem with some Guastavino scholarship is that in its apparent spirit of boosterism it tends to overestimate his international stature. Fuenzalida claims that on an international level, Guastavino’s name has become synonymous with Argentine art music, “occupying a seat of honor previously held exclusively by Ginastera.”³⁷ Likewise, the eminent Argentine composer and musicologist Carlos Suffern says that Guastavino’s music has the most widespread diffusion of any Argentine composer.³⁸ From a North-American perspective, this is a wild exaggeration. While Guastavino’s works are enjoying more exposure than ever in the way of recordings, performances, and scholarly attention, Ginastera and Piazzolla are still clearly the composers most people associate with Argentine art music, if they can name any Argentine composer at all. A cursory glance through three surveys of twentieth-century music published in the U.S.—which are skimpy in their coverage of Latin America in general—shows Ginastera as the only representative of Argentina.³⁹ If one were to say that Guastavino’s name has become synonymous with Argentine art songs, then there might be some truth in it; every new disc of Argentine art songs includes at least a handful of songs by Guastavino. My own work will include a more sober estimation of his international stature.

The aspect of Guastavino scholarship where there is the most room for more work is analysis. My own study will fill a major gap in this area. Right now the only serious analytical work on Guastavino deals with his instrumental music, but he is most famous as a composer of songs. The analyses that exist are few, and rather superficial at that. Mansilla goes into great detail about the history of “Se equivocó la paloma,” but she does not discuss the music. Fuenzalida, when talking about the text-music relationship in Guastavino’s songs, says simply, “the poetic environments condition the melody and harmony.”⁴⁰

In the current work, I study Guastavino’s songs in the context of his whole output. I also consider various issues relevant to him and his music, such as nationalism, modernism, and reception history. It is not a song-by-song analysis of the entire corpus of songs, but rather an issue-oriented study that illuminates important aspects of his style and aesthetics through analysis of representative songs.

I also attempt to evaluate Guastavino’s position in late twentieth-century music. While some Argentine scholars exaggerate his international standing, there is no doubt that he is gaining recognition outside of Argentina, with a growing discography and strong sales of his music in many places around the world. This fact might say something about the state of music today and the attitudes of performers and audiences at the turn of the new century. It is interesting that after all of the innovations in art music for the last ninety years or so, there seems to be a change in taste and compositional style afoot, one that is heading back toward conservatism. Guastavino always wrote in an idiom marked by tonality and melodic lyricism, despite the often harsh criticism he took from contemporary critics and composers.

Chapter 2: Biographical Portrait

Carlos Vicente Guastavino was born on April 5, 1912 in Santa Fe, Argentina. His early experiences with music were limited to informal situations where his family played instruments for their own enjoyment, since the musical scene in Santa Fe was not highly developed. His father painted houses for a living, and in spite of his lack of formal education, Guastavino says his father had the “vision of education.” ⁴¹ Guastavino’s brother was a lawyer, and his four sisters all became schoolteachers. Guastavino’s father encouraged all of his children to follow their gifts, and when he saw that Carlos at the age of five already showed talent at playing the piano, he took him to study with the best teacher in Santa Fe, Esperanza Lothringer, who had arrived recently from Germany. He learned quickly and gave his first public performance a few months later. After about a year, Lothringer moved to Buenos Aires, leaving Guastavino largely on his own, although his cousin Dominga Iaffei Guastavino⁴² began teaching him piano in around 1920. He became interested in chemistry, and after graduating from high school he enrolled in the chemical engineering program at the Universidad Nacional del Litoral (Santa Fe). He also continued to practice the piano, though, and in 1937 met Héctor Ruiz Díaz, a pianist who had recently moved to Santa Fe. Díaz encouraged Guastavino to devote all of his time to music instead of chemical engineering. He won a grant to study music in Buenos Aires and moved there in August of 1938.

In Buenos Aires he enrolled in the composition program at the Conservatorio Nacional de Música y Arte Escénico, but this lasted only a short time. While at the Conservatory, however, he met the composer Athos Palma and later studied privately with him. During these years he also worked as a vocal accompanist at the Teatro Colón, where the environment and the singers inspired him to write songs.⁴³ In 1939 he published his first songs, “Arroyito Serrano” and Tres Canciones (Frida Schulz de Mantovani). Some of his earliest songs won first prize in the 1940 Concurso Anual de la Municipalidad de Buenos Aires. He also reportedly met the music critic Gastón Talamón, who was influential in the formation of a nationalist musical aesthetic in Argentina. Talamón pointed out various features in Guastavino’s music that spoke of Argentine folk idioms and encouraged him to cultivate that part of his style. Shortly thereafter he produced some of his famous folk-inspired piano pieces, including Bailecito and Gato (1940). In 1944 he met Manuel de Falla, who was living in Alta Gracía in the Córdoba province. Guastavino took advantage of the older composer’s presence in Argentina to learn as much as he could from him through visits and correspondence. In 1948 and 1949 he went to England on a grant from the British Council. While there he toured the country giving concerts of his piano music and orchestrated his Tres Romances Argentinos (originally for two pianos) for a performance by the BBC Philharmonic orchestra directed by Walter Goehr. During the 1950s he went on many concert tours throughout Argentina and abroad, including tours in the major cities of Russia. On these tours he performed his music for piano solo, as well as his songs and works for two pianos, collaborating with the singers Conchita Badía and Clara Oyuela and the pianists Haydee Giordano⁴⁴ and Francisco Ocampo. It was in this era of the late 1940s through the early 1960s that Guastavino wrote much of his music for solo piano—including the Sonata (1947), Tres sonatinas (1949), Diez preludios (1952), and the Diez cantilenas argentinas (1956–1958),⁴⁵ and the solo piano pieces from Las Presencias (1962)—so that he would have fresh music to play on tour. He was professor of harmony at the Conservatorio Nacional de Música in Buenos Aires, as well as the Conservatorio Municipal “Manuel de Falla” until 1973. He stopped composing abruptly in 1975, his last works being the settings of four sonnets by Francisco Quevedo. In 1987 he began to write again on the encouragement of Carlos Vilo, a conductor who began to champion Guastavino’s music with his male chorus (the “Orfeón Carlos Vilo”) and with a vocal quartet with piano. Most of Guastavino’s activity from 1987 until he stopped writing for good in 1992 was making special arrangements of his songs for performance by Carlos Vilo’s groups. The only newly composed works from this time are five songs, plus a Sonatina for two pianos entitled Romance del Plata (1987). He spent the last years of his life in his childhood town of Santa Fe, where he struggled with Alzheimer’s disease and other ailments until his death on October 28, 2000.

Overview of Guastavino’s Works

Carlos Guastavino’s output is almost entirely in miniatures, the most important of which are his songs for voice and piano, the many choral arrangements of those songs, and his piano character pieces.⁴⁶ The art song (or, canción de cámara) has a strong tradition in Argentina, dating back at least to Francisco Hargreaves (1849–1900) and continuing through the generations of Julián Aguirre (1868–1924), Carlos López Buchardo (1881–1948), and beyond. It was not unusual, then, for an Argentine composer of Guastavino’s generation to concentrate more on songs than his North-American or European counterpart might. Guastavino was unique, though, in the centrality of position that songs occupy within his output. Songs make up by far the largest percentage of his works. The sheer number of songs, as well as their lyrical, pleasing character have prompted many to call Guastavino “The Argentine Schubert,” or “The Schubert of the Pampas.”⁴⁷ The exact number of Guastavino’s songs is unclear, but most sources estimate that he wrote from 500 to 600 songs. Many of these remain unpublished, since there are only 162 songs listed in the catalogs of his published works (not including the many arrangements he made of his own songs). Curiously, in spite of the wide diffusion and success of Guastavino’s songs, one author points to Julián Aguirre and Carlos López Buchardo as the composers whose songs are “most representative of the Argentine art song,” saying that the more recent composers Guastavino and Ginastera represented a renewal and continuity of the tradition.⁴⁸

There are about a dozen songs that stand out as his “greatest hits,” songs that have been recorded by artists of international stature such as Elly Ameling, José Cura, José Carreras, and Teresa Berganza. Chief among them are “Se equivocó la paloma” (1941), “Pueblito, mi pueblo” (1941), and “La rosa y el sauce” (1942). “Se equivocó la paloma” in particular has been a phenomenal success largely on account of the 1969 version by Catalán pop singer Joan Manuel Serrat.⁴⁹ These songs are also routinely sung in choral arrangements by professional, amateur, and school choruses throughout Argentina, and are so well known as to have gained the status of folk music in Argentina.⁵⁰ While doing my research in Buenos Aires, I was able to confirm this countless times in informal experiments. For example, when the cleaning lady at the hostel where I stayed asked me what I was doing in Buenos Aires, I told her that I was studying an Argentine composer named Carlos Guastavino. She said she did not know who he was, but when I sang her the first line of “Se equivocó la paloma,” she immediately responded by singing the second line and exclaimed, “Oh yes! of course everyone knows that song, but I’ve never heard of Guastavino.”

Guastavino’s fame among the general public rests largely on these early songs. Cuatro canciones argentinas (1949) is another well-known set of songs, and is one of the few in which he makes frank use of Argentine folk sources. He was interested in music education at all levels, and has written several cycles of canciones escolares, or songs for schoolchildren, including Quince Canciones Escolares (before 1965) and Edad del Asombro (before 1968). Among his finest mature songs are Flores Argentinas (1969), a cycle of twelve songs on poems by León Benarós, and the Cuatro Sonetos de Quevedo (1975).

Another important part of Guastavino’s vocal output is his choral music. Although most of his choral works are arrangements of solo songs, they are nevertheless important inasmuch as they have played an key role in spreading his music among the general public and among amateur musicians. He did write some original music for chorus, however, including two cycles of Indianas (for male chorus and piano), and a cycle of 26 folk song arrangements,⁵¹ some of which were originally for voice and piano.

Guastavino was also a prolific composer of piano music. He wrote many solo works for his own use as a performer, and most of these are character pieces of a gentle, sentimental nature. His crowning achievement in the piano miniature genre is the Diez Cantilenas of 1956–1958. He also cultivated sonata forms, however, and the Sonata (1947) is probably his most substantial piano work, both in length and in concept. It is in four movements, the last of which is an energetic fugue that is striking for its forceful character—Guastavino’s music is rarely anything but gentle—and for his use of an Argentine folk song as the fugue subject.⁵² His most popular work for piano is Bailecito, a brief folk-inspired dance for piano solo that also exists in transcriptions for two pianos⁵³ and for solo guitar. It is one of his earliest published works (written in 1940, published in 1941), and along with the three songs mentioned previously, Bailecito is one of the works from which he earns the most royalties for sales, recordings, and public performances.⁵⁴ Consistent with his production of educational songs for children, he has also written a number of didactic works for piano, including Mis Amigos (My Friends) a cycle of ten brief pieces named after children. It was published in 1968 with the subtitle “Musical Portraits for Young Pianists,” and Guastavino was proud to note that one of the pieces, “Pablo, del aeroparque,” is included in the required program of study at Australia’s Melbourne Conservatory for children in their fifth year of piano studies.⁵⁵

Late in his career, Gaustavino wrote a handful of works for other instruments and chamber ensembles, including three guitar sonatas (1967, 1969, 1973) a Sonata for Clarinet and Piano (1970), the Tonada y Cueca for clarinet and piano (1966), the Introducción y Allegro for flute and piano (1973), and some chamber pieces that he included in the series of Presencias. Outstanding among the Presencias chamber pieces is Jeromita Linares (Las Presencias No. 6) for guitar and string quartet (1965). In these works he shows a firm grasp of sonata form and an ability to sustain musical ideas for the duration of an extended work. Having concentrated on miniatures he was often criticized as being incapable of writing in larger forms.

His only stage work was Fue una vez, a ballet in one act performed at the Teatro Colón in 1942. The reviews were mixed, and the score has since been lost.⁵⁶ Other orchestral works include Romance de Santa Fe for piano and orchestra (1952); Despedida (before 1973), a cantata for baritone solo, male chorus, female chorus, and strings on a text by León Benarós; and several orchestral arrangements of his songs or piano pieces. He reportedly wrote a Sinfonietta for orchestra (date unknown) and a string quartet (date unknown) that he subsequently withdrew.⁵⁷ Guastavino’s most significant international exposure as a composer of orchestral music came in 1949, when Walter Goehr and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra performed the aforementioned orchestral arrangement of Tres romances argentinos (1948), a work originally scored for two pianos.

There is not an obvious stylistic trajectory that one can trace from the beginning to the end of Guastavino’s output. Most observers remark that he began writing one way and did not change significantly throughout his career.⁵⁸ When Veniard made this observation, however, he was probably referring not so much to musical style as to Guastavino’s nationalist ideology (given that the subject of his book is Argentine musical nationalism). Also, in the context of the mid-twentieth century, Guastavino’s music might be discarded wholesale by critics as homogeneous and reactionary, but from a less biased perspective it has variety and diversity of style, form, and intent. To criticize Guastavino’s music for being homogeneous throughout his oeuvre would be similar (for example) to baroque commentators criticizing renaissance music for being too homogeneous—obviously, when the whole body of music is examined closely, there is inevitably more variety than would be apparent from a casual observation by someone from an opposing ideological position. Even if there is not a definite teleological development to Guastavino’s style, there are nevertheless numerous musical idioms to which Guastavino turns in his career as the need arises, existing side-by-side nearly throughout instead of leading one to another in succession from beginning to end.

There have been a few attempts at the periodization of Guastavino’s career and/or categorization of his songs in the scholarly literature. Fuenzalida posits two creative periods (1940–1975 and 1987–1992), between which there is the silence from 1975–1987. He further divides the first creative period into three stages. Stage one lasts from 1940–1949 and is defined by the composer’s “creative and artistic expansion signaled by commissions, compositions, and concert tours that cemented his prestige in the country and in the exterior.”⁵⁹ The second stage (1950–1959) is marked by a decrease in compositional activity and an emphasis on concertizing. Furthermore, his works of the second stage were mostly brief ones, such as piano character pieces and songs. In the third stage (1960–1975) Guastavino focuses on teaching and on writing the “masterpieces of his maturity.”⁶⁰ To call the years from 1987 to 1992 Guastavino’s “Second Creative Period,” as Fuenzalida does, however, might be to overstate its importance. While it is true that he resumed musical activities, he only produced a few pieces that were actually new. The rest were arrangements of pieces he had written years earlier. Virtually his entire creative output dates from before 1975, and the arrangements that he made from 1987 to 1992 were really done exclusively for the use of an outstanding exponent of the composer’s music, the choral director Carlos Vilo. The significance of this five-year period of renewed activity lies less in the works he produced than in the fact that he was once again interested in his music and was enjoying a resurgence in popularity. He was clearly exhilarated by Vilo’s performances and gratified by the conductor’s interest in his music:

I’m doing well, working. I finished a sonata for piano four-hands that I titled “Romance del Plata” and now I’m in a feverish state making versions for male chorus of many of my songs. A chorus of this type has sprung up—there is no other like it in all of Argentina as far as I know—and I am mad with the pleasure of the sound it produces. The director, Carlos Vilo is very sensitive, and is dedicated—I’m ashamed to say—to spreading my works alone. He has a madrigal quartet that is having great success and all of this fills me with musical pleasure and also with amazement.⁶¹

He received attention not only from Carlos Vilo and his ensembles, but also from many other performers around the world. Most of those who recorded his music also took the time to send him copies of the recordings and letters of gratitude. It was a validation of his life’s work.

Bernardo Illari proposes three periods in Guastavino’s career. In the first (the decade of the 1940s), Guastavino explored diverse styles and compositional techniques. In this era, he explored nationalist musical elements in his works for piano and in some of the songs, and he also explored other stylistic avenues (i.e. other than nationalism) in his songs. Illari says that during this stage Guastavino’s music and ideas were not much different from those of his nationalist predecessors and some of his contemporaries, such as Ginastera in his early years. Impressionist elements were important in the works of many composers, and Guastavino explored them in his own music, especially in piano pieces like Tierra Linda (1940). Illari contends that even though Guastavino gave up on impressionism after 1950 in favor of a 19th-century, primarily nationalist aesthetic, the impressionist line of his development should not be considered any less important than the nationalist line.⁶² The second stage, from 1951–1967, is when Guastavino developed what is considered his typical style. According to Illari, this is the period when the Guastavinian canon was established, “primarily through the works for piano from 1951–1960.”⁶³ Illari calls Guastavino’s third period (1967 and beyond) “a moment of elaboration, where the pieces ‘within the canon’ coexist with more abstract or intellectual styles.”⁶⁴ Here, the composer concentrated on more extended forms, both in vocal music (writing song cycles instead of individual songs), and in instrumental music (sonatas instead of character pieces). Illari does not acknowledge a new creative period after 1987 and in fact does not mention that the composer was active at all in his later years. The fact that Fuenzalida places a greater emphasis on the period from 1987 to 1992 is most likely because he is a member of Carlos Vilo’s Orfeón, the group for which Guastavino made many of the aforementioned arrangements. It is logical that he would consider this work more important than a neutral observer, since he was a direct beneficiary. The one odd aspect about Bernardo Illari’s work on Guastavino is that he seems preoccupied with dispelling the notion of Guastavino as 1) primarily a composer of songs; and 2) primarily a nationalist composer. He goes out of his way to emphasize piano music instead of songs, saying that the Guastavinian canon was established mainly with the piano character pieces from 1951–1960, for example, when it is clear that Guastavino’s best-known and most often-performed works are a few songs and nationalistic piano pieces from the early 1940s: “La rosa y el sauce,” “Se equivocó la paloma,” “Pueblito, mi pueblo,” Bailecito, and Gato.

Personality, and Its Impact on Art

According to those who knew him, Guastavino’s preference for chamber music and shorter forms reflects his personality. When asked in a 1968 interview why he does not write more orchestral music, he responded, “You know why? I express myself better in chamber works. In addition, I’m not pretentious, you see? I adore singing, I see a verse and I feel the music inside of me. There’s a kind of automatic aesthetic conversion.”⁶⁵ He worked in almost complete isolation, both artistically and physically. He was virtually alone among his contemporaries in keeping to traditional forms and harmonies. He had a singlemindedness of purpose and a belief in the correctness of what he was doing that kept him going in spite of being ridiculed by his contemporaries for being old-fashioned and writing music that was irrelevant to modern times. Guastavino’s commitment to songs and piano miniatures—what most critics in Argentina call “Salon Music”—also might have held him back from having the sort of splendid international fame that his countryman Ginastera enjoyed. While Guastavino has had international success to a certain degree, it is nothing compared to what Ginastera (and later Astor Piazzolla) had. While Ginastera wrote operas, concerti, and ballets that reached large audiences throughout the world, Guastavino concentrated on songs and brief piano works that, while popular, reached smaller, more specialized audiences. He never broke any new ground musically—that is to say, he was not involved in anything avant-garde—so his music was unlikely to make headlines when it was performed. This sort of success seemed to suit Guastavino well. He was solitary by nature, preferring to write his music and let it get around however it could on its own without his urging or interference.⁶⁶ His idea of a successful song was one that people would sing in the streets without knowing who wrote it.

…I was enchanted by the idea of hearing some work of mine sung by all of the public without knowing anything about the author…‘La tempranera’ became really popular and everyone used to sing it. Many times I have heard that song on the lips of workers as they worked, or on the radio or TV sung by unknown people, which is truly a pleasure.⁶⁷

The fact that he achieved (several times) his goal of writing songs that would evolve into folk music is remarkable for one who is ostensibly a composer of art music. When I asked Dr. Frega to compare the reputations of Guastavino and Ginastera within Argentina, she found it difficult to compare the two, saying that their personalities were such that they were equally successful and equally satisfied with their success, but in different ways and at different levels.

The two personalities have been very consistent with the production. Guastavino is a private person. He made some trips [tours], but I’m sure that he didn’t even pay a visit to our foreign affair minister [while on tour] or try to get acquaintances and commissions. He’s that kind of man, you know. Ginastera was really a showoff. An ego incredible. Ginastera had a good advertising person, his first wife. She made the whole business…I am making a comparison but I would say that I am not putting a weight on one side or the other…When I say consistent with the personality, it’s consistent with the kind of life that they have chosen…And we understand that to write Flores Argentinas or La Bella Molinera [Die Schöne Müllerin] is not that easy. I mean, it’s like saying who’s a better writer, Victor Hugo with the big novels…or Verlaine with the poems.⁶⁸

Another commentator said that of the three Argentine composers heard regularly outside of Argentina, Guastavino would probably end up being less important than Ginastera or Piazzolla, but that, “hearing him always leaves the spirit well disposed after passing through that haven of provincial and authentic serenity.”⁶⁹

Although Guastavino made many public appearances as a pianist, he was painfully shy and humble as a person. Throughout his career he battled stage fright in performances. The conductor Carlos Vilo relates that when Guastavino agreed to accompany his chorus in some new arrangements of his own songs, he was so nervous during the dress rehearsal that he needed several minutes for his hands to stop trembling.⁷⁰ He received countless awards but was rarely persuaded to receive them in person. He enjoyed hearing good performances of his music, but he did not like to attend concerts, because he felt embarrassed when strangers approached and congratulated him. He was also known as a severe critic who always told people what he thought of their performances of his music, so that artists were afraid to perform for him. By staying away from concerts, he could avoid publicity and also keep from having to criticize well-meaning performers.⁷¹ He never married, had few close friends, and later in his life he rarely allowed people to visit him. He recalled in an interview that he almost did not play the concert that sparked his most active period of public performances (in the 1940s):

I gave concerts, [but] I didn’t invite them…I went to Rosario with Conchita Badía, and soon thereafter I got a letter from a “Pro Música Association of Rosario” proposing that I give a concert of my piano works there. I wrote back saying no, that it was very risky, and so forth. But they insisted, and I went and I played, and I had great success. And so I began there and after that I only did my own works…but everywhere, all over the world!⁷²

He taught harmony at the National Conservatory for fourteen years, but according to Oscar Olmello, who was in Guastavino’s class during his last year, he did not even say goodbye to his students when he retired, apparently because he was afraid they would make a fuss over him and he would be embarrassed. “One day we came to class and [the new teacher] says, ‘No, Maestro Guastavino isn’t coming anymore.’ But never a goodbye…”⁷³

He lived very simply, shunning possessions almost obsessively. In spite of his success, he always lived in a tiny one-room apartment with only a little bed, a tiny table, a wooden chair, an armchair, an upright piano, and his old collection of bottles from his chemistry studies. Victor Villadangos recalled his impression of the sparse and meager living conditions he found when he first went to visit Guastavino:

What struck me most—since here in Argentina Guastavino is such a recognized person, such an important musician—was the modesty and poverty in which he lived. Not poverty in the bad sense—he didn’t lack for anything—but it was an absolute modesty of resources. One day when I was there he opened up the refrigerator and there were only some bottles of 7-Up, a little bit of ham, and nothing else! Almost as if he didn’t eat. I don’t…well, what do I know? It was incredible, that little kitchen was a tiny room, right? It’s not that he was wanting for anything, but one always thinks that a person, a composer of such importance must have earned more than enough money in his lifetime or…I think he was humble because he wanted to be and wasn’t interested in money, either. He lived very austerely. He didn’t have anything. He had some compact discs but they were gifts from the artists…⁷⁴

It is with this image in mind—the image of a man so humble as to live a life of near self-deprivation and almost total seclusion—that we have to consider another side of Guastavino. Writers often say that Guastavino’s period of silence between 1975 and 1987 was due to “disillusionment” at being neglected by critics and colleagues, but it seems to me that there must have been something else at work. He did not agree with the modern trends that held sway with most composers and music critics, so to think that he would be disillusioned when the modernists ignored or maligned his music is inconsistent. He had enormous popular success inside Argentina and in numerous foreign countries. With the possible exception of Ginastera (and nowadays Astor Piazzolla), Guastavino’s music was performed much more often than that of any other Argentine composer of his time. We may never know what caused his long creative silence, but at least one author speculates that it might really have arisen from grief at the death of his mother in 1975.⁷⁵

Judging from everything that has been written about Guastavino, and from what he himself has said, it seems safe to say that he did not worry much over what critics and avant-garde musicians said about his music. If he had wanted acceptance by the musical establishment (i.e. the academy, critics, and other composers), then he certainly would have acted differently. For one thing, he would not have lashed out at modern music and composers the way he did in 1968, when he was interviewed for a composer profile in La Prensa, one of the major daily newspapers in Buenos Aires.⁷⁶ Many people have pointed to the appearance of this article as a key factor in the animosity that critics and other composers had for Guastavino.⁷⁷ As timid and self-deprecating as he was, he never failed to express his opinions on music to anyone who asked him, and this sometimes caused him trouble. “He always says what he thinks, and this is a serious problem.”⁷⁸ Whether he was simply expressing his opinions, or whether he felt as if he were under attack from a reporter who sympathized with the other side, Guastavino made it clear that he liked nothing about contemporary music, calling the work of his colleagues “still-born” and “anti-music.” Most of the leading composers in Argentina at the time—including Juan Carlos Paz (1901–1972) and Roberto García Morillo (b. 1911)—made use of serialism, twelve-tone rows, atonality, and the like. For Guastavino, however, dodecaphony amounted to decadence:

Guastavino: As soon as we enter into dodecaphony, I hate it. I think it is the negation of music…What do you want? That I write 12-tone music? Never! If I were born twenty times, twenty times I would write “La rosa y el sauce”; twenty times I would write “Pueblito, mi pueblo.”

Schulz: And it doesn’t bother you that in fifty years they won’t play Guastavino and will play Schoenberg and Berg and Juan Carlos Paz, for example?

Guastavino: No! Absolutely not! Because they’re not going to be played. They will only be held as a phenomenon of disintegration of the medium. Do you think people can sustain themselves with that destruction? With the destruction (which signifies the antimusic) that is trying to impose itself as music and is only maintained on the strength of numbers? None of our vanguard composers have value in themselves. Their works are played in the Colón because they are members of a guild.⁷⁹

Another reason Guastavino was marginalized in the music community was that he never joined any musical societies the way most composers did as a way to promote their music and secure performances. He was proud that his works were performed frequently on their own merits. Avant-garde composers viewed his music as old-fashioned and did not take it seriously, such that Juan Carlos Paz does not even mention Guastavino’s name in his book on contemporary music.⁸⁰ Paz also offers a contrasting view (and not really a very radical one) of the twelve-tone technique, which by the mid-1950s was so firmly established that to most composers it was not really “modern” at all, but simply one of the basic tools of twentieth-century music:

In the general focus of this book, dodecaphony is considered the basis of musical reality effective at the middle of the century, with the understanding that none of the tendencies developing parallel to the twelve-tone current have yet shown the renovating potential and the incessant variety and projection that it has maintained for more than twenty-five years, but rather simple qualities of renovation and survival outside of their own limits…Finally, it remains to be added that the values that this introduction to the music of the 1900s supports and privileges…are those that act under the sign of risk and possibility, not trusting, in consequence, any tendency and all compromise of any kind that would lead to a submission, a retreat, a repentance, or an academic-type settlement, backward-looking and reactionary.⁸¹ (1955)

Paz was also strongly anti-nationalist, such that for him, “any form of nationalism, but especially that based on folklore, was a symptom of rural retardation and creative bankruptcy.”⁸²

Interestingly, Alberto Ginastera criticized Juan Carlos Paz not so much for adopting the twelve-tone technique, but for doing so in only a superficial manner, and for being too eager to follow European trends, which he felt were alien to Latin audiences.⁸³ Except for the fact that he wrote very little symphonic music, Guastavino was not really out-of-step with his contemporaries at this stage of his career. Ginastera wrote this article in 1946, and although he does not mention Gaustavino as one of the eight leading composers of Argentina, the styles and nationalist practices Ginastera describes are strikingly similar to what Guastavino was doing in the same era. It is only later, as other composers adopt modernistic techniques and Guastavino’s style grows more popular, that the gulf between them begins to widen.

Frega says that many of the composers and critics who did not like Guastavino were not only put off by his opinions and amused by his music, but also jealous of his success. She mentioned that one of Guastavino’s most prominent critics was Roberto García Morillo, who is himself an important composer in Argentina, was a long-time critic at La Nación, and is also the author of a book on Carlos Chávez. She says, “He [García Morillo] once was very unhappy with the fame. Because Guastavino was famous…Roberto García Morillo is a composer of difficult music. One of García Morillo’s songs or pieces of music will never be really popular, because it’s very hard from the point of view of melody or rhythm.”⁸⁴

There might also have been some personal problems between the two. Carlos Vilo related anecdotally that Guastavino once commented to a fellow professor at the National Conservatory, “Poor fellow [García Morillo]. This man is just unlucky. There’s not one melody of his that turns out well.”⁸⁵ Whether this particular incident is true or not, several sources cited García Morillo as a long-time critic of Guastavino. However, in a recent interview García Morillo would not admit to having criticized Guastavino at any time, saying he always respected the way Guastavino was faithful to his aesthetic ideals throughout the course of his career.⁸⁶ Perhaps this is also a tacit critique of Alberto Ginastera, whom García Morillo has accused of turning away from his true style to gain international fame.⁸⁷ In recent years, García Morillo and others who once criticized Guastavino have begun to change their views of him. Roberto García Morillo even orchestrated Guastavino’s three most famous songs for a performance at the Teatro Colón in 1994.⁸⁸ Carlos Vilo comments:

…I found myself at a music festival once seated next to García Morillo—it was a cocktail first and later there was music—and I didn’t know who he was, but it seemed that he recognized me and he said, “You are Carlos Vilo?” “Yes.” “You do the music of Guastavino? I congratulate you. It’s excellent,” and he began to name Guastavino’s works for me. And I realized that he had begun to value the works of Guastavino…and yesterday I heard on Radio Nacional three of the works of Guastavino—“Pueblito, mi pueblo”; “La rosa y el sauce”; “Se equivocó la paloma” that are for voice and piano—orchestrated, arranged for orchestra by García Morillo.⁸⁹

As for critics, Guastavino claims to have had no more problem with them than any other artist. “I’ve caught on with everyone except the critics, but I believe everyone complains about the critics, right? They’re bothered by what they call a ‘lack of currency’ in my music.” This has been one of the most consistent criticisms of Guastavino’s music: that it has nothing to do with his own time, that it is music of that past because of its tonal harmonies and romantic lyricism. When asked how he responds to such criticism, Guastavino says simply, “I write without era. I wrote and I write the music I like. And I think that time and the diffusion my works have had have proved that what I’ve been doing was right.”⁹⁰ As recently as 1992, Guastavino still expressed the same opinions about contemporary music and those who supported it. In an interview, Guastavino was showing guitarist Victor Villadangos the statements he had received from SADAIC (the performing rights organization of Argentina, equivalent to ASCAP in the U.S.) to show him how often his music was performed all around the world. He read off a long list of performances from the previous year and finally asked,

What do you think? Viva atonality! Viva 12-tone music! Viva musique concrete! All that is nonsense! I say it, I shout it to the whole world!…They’re all wrong! They’re rubbish, they’re lies, they’re falsehoods… I want to and I can’t. Enough? Music, real music, is harmony, melody, and rhythm, perfectly to-nal. It’s the only way to make music. The rest are hoaxes, they’re lies. And what about what happened with Ginastera? I just read about it. They vacated the theater as much as people were able to before the piece ended. No. Everyone was there for the first piece! What do you think? Beautiful music! Beautiful music!⁹¹

It was not as if all of the critics were against him. For every negative review, there was usually a favorable one that praised the same aspects of his music that the negative reviewers considered faults—romantic tonality, lyrical melodies, simplicity of form. The favorable reviews reflected the feelings of much of the general public who attended the concerts. Reviewing a concert by the “Orfeón Carlos Vilo,” critic Silvano Picchi said, “The composer’s style, so closely identified with that idyllic poetry of the simple things and the enchantment of the ordinary, recaptures in these inspired songs turns and rhythms that touch the soul and preserve the flavor and purity of the ancestral song of the race.”⁹² This description is perhaps more romantic than necessary, but it illustrates the other side of Guastavino’s reception history.

Guastavino’s silence from 1975 to 1987 must have stemmed from something within his own life, not from neglect by critics and colleagues with whom he did not agree in the first place. He would have worn their neglect like a badge of honor, as proof that he was doing the right thing. He was happy as long as performers continued to present his music to the public and audiences enjoyed it. He did not write music in the hope that future generations would understand it. He wanted his works to resonate with audiences in his own time.

The one thing that could have discouraged Guastavino and prompted his silence in 1975 (apart from personal considerations about which we may never know) is neglect by audiences and performers. There is evidence that there were fewer performances of his music during the time in question and that his prestige had waned. Much of the music he wrote had never been performed at all, even though it was published. One example is the Sonata No. 3 for solo guitar, written and published in 1973, but not performed until 1989 when Victor Villadangos gave the world premiere.⁹³ Although Guastavino’s guitar sonatas are now considered important works in any professional Argentine guitarist’s repertoire,⁹⁴ the Sonata no. 3 went un-played for more than fifteen years. Given the typical guitarist’s hunger for music by reputable non-guitar-playing composers, the fact that a new work by a composer of Guastavino’s stature lay dormant for so long is nearly inconceivable, evidence that his music was suffering a period of relative neglect.⁹⁵ As stated earlier, his status in the late 1970s was at such a low point that he was not even mentioned in the 1980 edition of the New Grove dictionary, although many of his compatriots were. Of course, inclusion in New Grove is based on a composer’s importance as perceived by those in his own country, so that his exclusion was not simply a lack of awareness on the part of those outside of Argentina but a reflection of his decline within Argentina.⁹⁶

Guastavino’s period of disillusionment coincides with what was apparently a general lack of awareness of Argentine art music on the part of performers, so that he was not the only one being neglected. Argentine performers in the 1970s and 1980s typically learned music by the great masters instead of native composers, often simply because they did not know the music of Argentina. The institutions of music education share some of the blame. Mansilla makes the point that the conservatories of Buenos Aires rarely used works by Argentine composers in their curricula, preferring instead to have students play studies by Bach, Clementi and the Viennese masters, when works like Guastavino’s Mis amigos could serve the same technical purpose while raising the level of national musical awareness at the same time. Meanwhile conservatories in Melbourne, Australia were using Guastavino’s music in their curricula, not because of any particular interest in Argentine music, but because it served their didactic needs.⁹⁷ Carlos Vilo cited ignorance as the main reason he did not want to perform Argentine music when his singers asked him for it:

They asked me for music from Argentina, but I didn’t want to because I thought I didn’t know very much. And since I studied here in the Art Institute of the Teatro Colón, [and] in the Conservatorio Nacional, in general they don’t speak of Argentine music. They don’t know that Argentine music exists.⁹⁸

García Morillo says that “it is not that [performers] are not interested in [Argentine music]. They don’t know it, and there are people interested in their not knowing it.”⁹⁹ He says further that the public typically enjoys Argentine music when they hear it, and that they are surprised when they discover that it was written by an Argentine composer because they did not know any Argentine music existed. García Morillo places most of the blame for this situation on impresarios, and also on arts administrators who normally come from the business world nowadays and typically know very little about music. “They are interested in having a paying public, but they are not concerned that the local element should come into play.”¹⁰⁰ He notes that during the first Perón era, there was a law stating that every symphony concert had to include on the program at least one work by an Argentine composer, but that the organizers went to great lengths to avoid complying with the law. Tactics included, for example, arranging concerts or festivals in homage to some great master, so that it would seem inappropriate to put an Argentine piece on a concert in honor of, say, Beethoven or Vivaldi. When asked why they did not want to present Argentine music, their answer was that it was bad music. “They don’t say that [Argentine music] is unfamiliar, they say that it is bad. So it can not be done because it’s bad and the public will leave, of course…we know very well that this is not true. There is bad Argentine music, average Argentine music, and good [music] also.”¹⁰¹

Nancy Roldán is a pianist born in Argentina who now lives in Baltimore, Maryland, where she teaches piano at the Peabody Conservatory. She has performed Guastavino’s solo- and two-piano works in recitals around the world, and has also recorded them commercially.¹⁰² She says Guastavino’s feelings of neglect and depression were not unique:

The 70s and 80s were a terrible period in Argentina for everything, especially in the Arts. There is a saying in Spanish and English, something like “nobody is a prophet in his own town.” One of the reasons is the absence of artists owing to the professional exodus and the political situation in Argentina in those decades. There was an overt attempt at dissolving individualism and the arts. Some of my friends (musicians) were persecuted, and in general artists were considered “lazy bums”… In general I’d say there was not much emphasis on learning music by Argentine composers. The “traditional” repertory received absolutely more attention. Regarding Guastavino, I learned more about him and Argentine music when I was away than when I was in Argentina. Even now, students do not pay attention and do not work on Argentine music, especially in Argentina. I was there recently and it is sad not to hear any Argentine music anywhere. I usually play it there or wherever I give concerts.¹⁰³

Carlos Vilo also came to appreciate Guastavino while living abroad. He says that before he began performing Guastavino’s music with his vocal ensembles in the early 1980s, he only knew a few of Guastavino’s most famous songs—“Se equivocó la paloma,” “Pueblito, mi pueblo,” and “Mi garganta”—having learned them in his student days. In Paris he had no desire to perform any music from Argentina. He first “discovered” Guastavino’s music in 1981 after members of his chorus in Paris insisted that he bring them some music from his native Argentina. He resisted, but finally during a trip to Argentina he went to the publishers Ricordi and Lagos, where they gave him packages of music by Argentine composers that he took back to Paris and dumped into a trunk without even opening them. Time passed and after more insistence from his singers, he opened the packages. The first scores to appear were songs by Carlos Guastavino. He was so enchanted by them that he quit doing renaissance music and devoted all of his energies to performing Guastavino. At some point he placed a phone call to Buenos Aires and talked to the composer, explaining who he was and that he had a chorus that was dedicated entirely to performing Guastavino’s music. The composer was delighted and asked which songs they were doing. Vilo named all of the repertoire they had learned, and Guastavino said that he had never heard 70% of the songs Vilo had just named. Here is the core of Guastavino’s disillusionment. He did not care what the critics or modernists said about his music, but he cared deeply that his music be performed and enjoyed by the public.

CG: …I write for everyone…Perhaps there is a nucleus of people I do not reach; they are the new composers, those young fellows who are following another tendency. And I don’t know if they are expressing their real musical preferences when they talk about my work. In reality, that doesn’t interest me, either, I tell you sincerely.

CS: Would you be equally content if your music was not played?

CG: No, no. I would be very sad, because I would be a dead composer.¹⁰⁴

Based on all of this circumstantial evidence—he had not heard more than 2/3 of his songs nor his Sonata no. 3 for guitar, plus his name was entirely absent from major reference sources of the time—it is likely that Guastavino stopped composing in 1975 in part because there was simply less interest in his music among performers and the public, not because he was being neglected by critics and colleagues.

A final thought about Guastavino’s decline has to do with his music’s distribution. When Guastavino turned to Editorial Lagos as his (nearly) exclusive publisher in the mid-1960s, an unfortunate consequence was that he no longer had adequate international distribution for his newly published works. While Lagos produces beautiful scores, their distribution is extremely limited outside of Argentina. It is impossible to buy any of Guastavino’s Lagos scores at music stores in the United States. In fact only a handful of the scores are available in academic libraries, even those with excellent Latin-American collections. The Peabody Conservatory Library has several of Guastavino’s works published by Lagos, but only because Nancy Roldán donated them after buying them in Argentina. The only way to get these scores is to go to Buenos Aires or to order them by mail. However, to mail-order a score one first has to know that it exists. I stress this point because it may have something to do with Guastavino’s retirement from composition and his perception than he had been forgotten and neglected during the 1970s.

As an example of the importance a composer’s publisher has, one need only look at the holdings of the Benson Latin-American Collection at the University of Texas. This is one of the finest collections of Latin-American materials in the world, one that prides itself on the completeness of its holdings. The Benson Collection has copies of roughly 95% of Guastavino’s scores published by Ricordi—including music for piano, two pianos, guitar, choral ensembles, and art songs—but not a single work published by Lagos, whose catalog includes nearly two-thirds of the composer’s published songs and several important chamber pieces. If Guastavino merited such comprehensive holdings of music written during the first 25 years of his career, why would the acquisitions department at Benson not have continued to purchase scores from later in his career? Tastes can change, and perhaps he was simply held in less regard, but this could not be the reason for such a complete drop-off, because Benson owns copies of the three guitar sonatas, which date from the same time as the missing songs (1967–1973), but which are published by Ricordi. The answer has to be that the Benson Center, like nearly every other library in the U.S., simply was not aware of Guastavino’s Lagos scores. Ricordi, on the other hand, had excellent international distribution at the time, so that Guastavino’s works from 1939 to 1962 were readily available throughout the world (if not in music stores, then at least in libraries). With this in mind, it is no wonder that Guastavino seemed to disappear from the international scene in the early 1960s and that he is absent from major international music reference sources published around 1980. There was little chance that people outside of Argentina would know about his most recent music. This is a shame, because Lagos’ scores are more elegant than those of Ricordi, especially the songs published as collections, such as Flores argentinas and Pájaros. It may not have been the decisive factor in Guastavino’s decline in popularity through the 1970s, but switching publishers had a detrimental effect on his career and may have played a part in his eventual decision to stop writing in 1975. It is not clear that staying with Ricordi would have solved this problem, however. In 1991 Guastavino lamented the state of his international distribution:

As for the distribution of my works in other countries, it is a very complicated problem. Ricordi and Lagos both know of my concern. I believe in the main house of Ricordi in Milan they don’t have my works, except for only a couple of them. Lagos is looking for a distributor in Paris. I don’t know anything about the United States. The best thing to do is ask directly at the publishers here in Buenos Aires…¹⁰⁵

In the 1990s there began what Guastavino called an “aluvión,” a flood of recordings, performances, royalties, and letters from admirers around the world.¹⁰⁶ For example, In 1997 the “Grupo de estudios pianísticos Alberto Ginastera,” a group of artists founded in 1984 to promote Argentine piano music, recorded Guastavino’s complete solo piano works on three compact discs.¹⁰⁷ They have also recorded the complete piano music of Ginastera and Juan José Castro, so that at least in this case, the “aluvión” applies not only to Guastavino, but to other Argentine composers as well.

Chapter 3: Nationalism

Nationalism has been one of the most important intellectual and political trends in twentieth-century music. What began in the nineteenth century in France and Eastern European countries as a negative impulse—i.e. a desire to write music that was distinctly non-German—soon turned into a positive effort to express and define one’s own cultural identity.¹⁰⁸ Composers became concerned with creating a national music, a body of works that not only would serve as a source of pride for the nation, but would also represent that nation to concert audiences in other places. On one level, nationalism has to do with musical elements. One author defines musical nationalism as “the conscious and intentional revelation of the rhythmic, melodic, harmonic-cadential, and timbral-coloristic configurations associated with the expressions of ethnic and traditional song that characterize a people in the most adequate way.”¹⁰⁹ Aside from musical manifestations of nationalism, however, there are other issues to consider.

One is the notion of “national music.” National music refers to all of the music produced within a given country that is claimed as that country’s own. This includes, but is not limited to, works that we might call specifically “nationalistic” according to the definition given above. This is an important distinction, since hardly any Latin-American composers have been openly nationalistic in their entire compositional outputs. Some composers felt that the sort of overt musical nationalism displayed by their contemporaries (or predecessors) was degrading to their art. These composers felt that the only way to gain respect internationally was to write works of high artistic quality in a style devoid of regional novelties.¹¹⁰ In spite of their opposition to musical nationalism, such composers would of course want their works to be included in their countries’ national music. In this way, it is clear that a composer can be a nationalist politically without taking a nationalistic approach to composition. Carlos Chávez wrote many works in a nationalistic style, but felt that the status of a national music ultimately had to be based on artistic quality rather than on its distinctive national flavor: “Only when Mexican music reaches artistic quality does it become national art.”¹¹¹ There can be two types of nationalists, then. One group wants to write music that sounds like its homeland. This group displays nationalistic tendencies both politically and compositionally. The other seeks to raise the national prestige by showing that its artists can make meaningful contributions to the world of contemporary music at large by writing in an international style, one that shows a grasp of the latest compositional techniques without reference to local musical sources. This type of artist is a nationalist only in the political sense. With both types, a national claim can be made to the music and to the artists.

Another term that bears some discussion is “national style.” In dealing with twentieth-century Latin-American art music, the notion of a national style is not particularly useful. A national style is a set of musical conventions that predominates during a given period of musical production. One thinks of the marked stylistic differences between Italian and German opera in the nineteenth century, or the contrasting French and Italian baroque styles. It would be impossible to speak of a “Mexican style” or a “Cuban style” in the twentieth century (except to note that certain rhythmic patterns or melodic gestures are common enough to have become clichés), and altogether ludicrous to posit a “Latin-American style,” with so many countries and such diverse musical outputs represented. As long as a national style refers specifically to musical conventions, one will have difficulty in defining a single national style for any Latin-American country in this century. The only way to group composers together in any meaningful way is to proceed not on an assumption of common musical styles, but rather upon shared ideological approaches. In this way, one can talk of composers whose nationalistic ideology led them to explore folk or popular sources, but whose compositional applications of these sources vary so widely as to make impossible any talk of a shared compositional “school” that might be comparable to the “Second Viennese School,” for example.¹¹²

Another issue to consider is the impetus behind musical nationalism. Apart from patriotic sentiment and a natural (perhaps) affinity for the music of one’s own land, what advantage is there for a composer in adopting a nationalistic approach to music? Carl Dahlhaus suggests that there is artistic allure to nationalism, one that has to do with satisfying a fundamental requirement of “greatness” in Western art: originality.¹¹³ Until the nineteenth century, much of the art music outside of continental western Europe amounted to little more than an imitation (not necessarily a bad imitation) of what composers were doing in Europe. For example, Italian opera dominated the musical scene in 19th-century Mexico, so that even Mexican composers such as Luis Baca (1826–1855) and Melesio Morales (1838–1908) wrote operas in the Italian style with Italian texts.¹¹⁴ Of course, their operas were Italian in the same sense that Mozart’s were, having been written by non-Italian composers familiar with the conventions of Italian opera. As they became less satisfied with imitating the Europeans, composers began to look for ways to create works of art that would be more original and individual. By turning to their own culture for inspiration, they helped themselves in two ways. First, they could write works that would be more relevant to their local audiences. In opera, for example, they could write Spanish-language librettos on native subject matter. Second, a nationalistic approach helped composers to write music that sounded different from what was coming out of Western Europe. Nationalist composers, then, based at least part of their artistic originality on their nationality. As Dahlhaus notes, however, a simplistic display of one’s national identity–quotation of a national folk song, for example–is not enough to gain a composer recognition as an artist. He says, for example, that Robert Schumann “wanted the national to be subsumed in the universal…rather than to flaunt its own limitations and narrowness.”¹¹⁵

In addition to the possible artistic motivations behind musical nationalism, there are political concerns, as well. Identity formation is a political process that ideally boosts morale within a nation, and at the same time seeks to project a positive image of that society to outsiders. A nation’s cultural products constitute an integral part of its national identity. In 1920s Cuba, for example, artists celebrated the African aspects of Cuban culture in an intellectual movement called afrocubanismo. They encouraged Cubans to revive, embrace and take pride in the traditions of their African ancestors. Afrocubanismo served both as a source of artistic inspiration and a stimulant for national/ethnic pride.

Another issue relevant to this discussion is the relationship of musical nationalism to folklorism and exoticism. The use of folk sources is a time-honored practice for musical nationalists. The idea is that by turning to the cultural products of the peasants, indigenous peoples, or ethnic minorities (such as happened when American composers turned to jazz in the 20s and 30s), artists can present what is most typical, most representative, or most genuinely native to their homelands. It is slightly ironic, then, that for many audiences listening to concert music in the heyday of musical nationalism, real folk music of their own country probably sounded as foreign to them as the music of other countries might. For the most part, people of the upper and middle classes were simply not familiar with their national folk music. Even Bartók , when he first heard an authentic Hungarian peasant song, was so intrigued that he set out to collect all the melodies he could from the peasants. The fact that he had to go out collecting these melodies indicates that they were not well-known even in their country of origin, at least not in his social class. Certainly, using such native folk melodies in the composition of art music reflects a nationalistic intent, but for an audience unfamiliar with the folk traditions in question, the resulting music can sound as exotic as it does nationalistic. It is for this reason (among others) that Dahlhaus says, “exoticism is closely allied with folklorism.”¹¹⁶ He contends that both local and foreign folk musics share many of the same musical traits, and that when placed in an art-music context, audiences recognize that something sounds different, but do not necessarily know whether the “different” element is foreign or local. It is up to the composer to make explicit the association of various musical elements with either national or foreign folk sources. As Dahlhaus puts it, “musical exoticism [read also “nationalism”] is a question of function, not of substance.”¹¹⁷ Similarly, in talking about the Aztec Renaissance and the Indianist movement in 1920s Mexico, Béhague notes that

In an attempted return to pre-Conquest Indian musical practices, the crucial factor was not so much authenticity in reviving those practices as it was a subjective evocation of the remote past, or of the character and physical setting of ancient (and, for that matter, contemporary) Indian culture.¹¹⁸

Granted, twentieth-century composers have shown much greater concern for authenticity of folk elements than did their nineteenth-century counterparts. But Dahlhaus’ point is that the use of folk sources does not have to be “anthropologically or historically ‘genuine’” in order to be legitimate. The exotic and the folkloric serve the same aesthetic function, inasmuch as both are “deviations from the European norm.”¹¹⁹ As long as an audience knows to associate these deviations with a folk tradition of its native land, then the music will also serve its political function as nationalistic music.

Dahlhaus also deals with the issue of authenticity with regard to nationalistic music. In this context, the word “authentic” has to do with the degree to which a composer can make the claim that his music is genuinely “of” a given country. Dahlhaus makes the point that in the baroque era, music was labeled “French” or “Italian” based more on its stylistic characteristics than on the nationality of its composer (1989: 39). After all, the Italian-born Lully virtually invented the French baroque style. In the 19th and 20th centuries, however, it is the composer’s own nationality that counts the most when weighing questions of authenticity. The idea is that only a Cuban can write music that truly represents Cuba, for instance. How, then, does one classify a piece like Aaron Copland’s Danzón Cubano (1942)? Since Copland was an American, is his Cuban-inspired music necessarily relegated to the status of exotica? Certainly, Copland never claimed that he had written “Cuban music.” Nevertheless, Michael Tilson Thomas included the Danzón Cubano on a recording entitled, “Music of Latin America.”¹²⁰ Copland’s inclusion on the CD is surprising for the very reason that he is not a Latin American. At the same time, we have no problem calling Copland’s Rodeo authentic American music, even though Copland was a Jewish man who grew up in New York City and probably never met a cowboy in his life. In this case, authenticity is based not so much on Copland’s knowledge of cowboy songs as it is on his status as an American citizen, one whose familiarity with cowboy life (like most Americans) was most likely based on Hollywood western films. The possibility that an American composer might try, but fail to write “authentic” American music is one that never arises.

Another side to the politics of musical nationalism has to do with the power relations between the people whose music and culture is celebrated, on the one hand, and the artists, audiences, and patrons making use of those cultural products, on the other. In most cases of musical folklorism, the melodies or musical styles that composers borrow or imitate come from the lowest economic and social strata of society (although this is not necessarily the case when dealing with popular musics), while composers and their public occupy the middle to upper classes. It is perhaps not coincidental that at around the same time as the Mexican Aztec Renaissance (and concurrently the Indianist movement) and afrocubanismo, composers in the U.S. were turning for inspiration toward the music of their own historically downtrodden population. Composers searching for a distinctive American sound naturally looked to jazz, one of the few musical traditions recognized around the world as genuinely and uniquely American. The exchange between jazz musicians and art-music composers (and by extension, their audiences) is decidedly uneven. Even as they celebrated America by listening to jazz-influenced music in the concert hall with what was probably exoticist curiosity, the mostly-white, middle- to upper-class audiences of the 1920s and 30s (and perhaps even much later) still regarded the black musician as second-class citizen. In Argentina, the inspiration came from a romanticized image of the gaucho, the Argentine cowboy who by that time was all but extinct due to industrialization and a persistent marginalization of Gauchos by modern society. I do not mean to say that composers are always out to exploit the underprivileged classes. On the contrary, I think that in general composers try to be conscientious about the way they obtain and use folk material. Nevertheless, there is a distinct imbalance of power between an artist in search of raw material and a peasant farmer who sings a song into a tape recorder. There is also an imbalance of power between the concert-going public and the classes whose music they celebrate as a national treasure.

It is clear that musical nationalism involves many issues, both artistic and political. When dealing with music of Latin America (or any other country, for that matter), it is important at least to be aware of the issues surrounding nationalism in order to get at the motivations of the artists and to gain as complete an insight as possible into their creations. We have seen, for example, that composers turn toward nationalism as a way to lend originality to their music, and consequently, to gain greater international recognition. We have also seen that some composers oppose musical nationalism on artistic grounds, saying that the simple declaration of one’s national origins by quotation or imitation of folk sources is not enough to raise music to the level of great art. Other composers occupy a position somewhere between these extremes. For instance, Manuel Ponce, Alberto Ginastera, and Carlos Chávez cultivated nationalistic styles as well as neoclassical and modernistic styles. Chávez in particular was able to assimilate nationalistic musical elements into his own contemporary musical language, never relying on simplistic quotation or imitation of folk sources or resorting to the sort of sentimentality that so offended the anti-nationalistic artistic purists.

I have also drawn a distinction between the concept of “national style” and that of “nationalistic style.” A national style refers to a set of musical conventions that dominate the compositional output of composers from a given nation. A nationalistic style, on the other hand, is a broader concept that allows for individual stylistic freedom within a general ideological climate that is centered on nationalism. In this way, we can say that Carlos Chávez sometimes writes in a nationalistic style without having to say that his work conforms to any Mexican National Style.

Politically speaking, musical nationalism is a complex phenomenon involving issues such as identity formation, identity affirmation, authenticity, and national representation. Inasmuch as cultural products play a role in the development of national identity, the entire corpus of works written by the nationals of a given country (or the country’s “national music”) can be said to contribute to identity formation, and can serve to represent that country’s artistic achievements to the international community. Likewise, movements such as the “Aztec Renaissance” and Afrocubanismo have to do with affirmation of identity through the celebration of one’s cultural heritage.

Guastavino and Argentine Musical Nationalism

Carlos Guastavino can be situated at the end of a long line of nationalist composers in Argentina. The Romantic nationalist movement in Argentine music began in the late 19th century with the generation of Alberto Williams (1862–1952) and Julián Aguirre (1868–1924). Between 1880 and 1910 there were rapid advances in almost all areas of life in Argentina and especially in the capital city of Buenos Aires, which was gaining a reputation as one of the great cultural centers of Latin America. While Europe remained the model for all things cultural and Argentine artists strove to attain the level of excellence of their European counterparts, they also wanted to show their national pride by creating native arts of a quality comparable to the best in Europe. At that time, though, Argentina still lacked the institutions to train its musicians at the highest level, so composers and performers routinely finished their studies abroad. From 1882 to 1889, Alberto Williams studied with César Franck at the Paris Conservatory. Williams was encouraged to look to native sources for musical inspiration, and after returning to Argentina, he acquainted himself with rural Argentine folk music during trips through the Province of Buenos Aires. It was then that he wrote what many scholars call the first important piece of Argentine national art music, “El rancho abandonado” (1890), for piano solo. Williams also played a decisive role in the future musical education of his country by founding the Conservatory of Music of Buenos Aires, which was later renamed in his honor.

Julián Aguirre was born in Argentina, but moved to Spain while still a young man and later studied music at the Royal Conservatory in Madrid. He was particularly taken by Isaac Albéniz, who had written music of nationalist character at the urging of Felipe Pedrell, and decided to emulate Albéniz’ accomplishments in his own music. He returned to Argentina in 1886 and toured extensively through the interior of the country as a concert pianist, after which he settled in Buenos Aires. His works are almost exclusively miniatures (songs and piano pieces) written in a nationalist vein. He also was an important figure in music education in Buenos Aires, serving as a professor of harmony at Alberto Williams’ conservatory and also enriching the repertoire of schoolchildren with his choral canciones escolares.¹²¹

The second generation of nationalist composers in Argentina included Carlos López Buchardo (1881–1948), Floro M. Ugarte (1884–1975), and Constantino Gaito (1878–1945). López Buchardo received his preliminary musical education in Argentina, and then went to Paris in 1909 to study composition with Albert Roussel. He returned to Argentina four years later and began a long and distinguished career as an arts administrator. Starting in 1924 he directed what is now called the Conservatorio Nacional “Carlos López Buchardo.” He also held many other important administrative posts, and as such played a fundamental role in developing the musical institutions of Argentina. As a composer, his output was small and sporadic, since he only wrote when he had the time or when he felt the urge. He wrote around fifty works, most of which have to do with the gauchesco tradition of musical nationalism, including the Escenas argentinas (1920) for orchestra and many songs for voice and piano, the most famous of which is the “Canción del carretero” (from Seis canciones al estilo popular, 1924).¹²² López Buchardo is best know for his songs, and this song is considered one of the most important pieces not only in the art song repertoire, but in Argentine art music as a whole.¹²³

Floro Ugarte’s career path was very similar to that of López Buchardo. He studied violin and harmony in Buenos Aires before going abroad to complete his training at the Paris Conservatory. He graduated in 1913 and returned to Buenos Aires, where beginning in 1924 he taught harmony, counterpoint, orchestration, and composition at the National Conservatory. He held numerous other positions throughout his career, meanwhile also writing music in all genres in a style rooted in the gauchesco tradition of musical nationalism.¹²⁴ One of his most important nationalistic works is the symphonic suite De mi tierra (1923). In addition, he was one of the few composers who took the time to put his thoughts about musical nationalism on paper.

Constantino Gaito had prodigious musical talent and learned to play the violin and piano at an early age. By age eleven he had written his first piece, and at age thirteen he was awarded a grant from the government to study music at the San Pietro a Maiella in Naples. In Italy he got to know most of the great opera composers of the day, including Verdi, Massenet, and Mascagni. He returned to Buenos Aires in 1900, and like the composers mentioned above, he became highly involved with music education in Buenos Aires. He co-founded the Conservatory of Buenos Aires and his students included such well-known musicians as the brothers Juan José (1895–1968) and José María Castro (1892–1964), Juan Carlos Paz, and Roberto García Morillo. He wrote many works in a nationalist vein, the most important of which is the opera La sangre de las guitarras (premiered in 1932), in which the hero is a payador (a gaucho improvisor of songs, often in competition with other payadores) and the composer includes many musical numbers of gaucho origin.¹²⁵ Other notable works include the ballet Flor del Irupé (1929) and the symphonic poem El ombú (1924).

Since I have mentioned the word “gauchesco” several times, it might be appropriate to describe briefly what it means. The gauchesco tradition of Argentine musical nationalism was an intellectual, cultural, and political movement that held up the gaucho as the embodiment of the true spirit of Argentina.¹²⁶ The gaucho was the Argentine cowboy, a solitary horseman who wandered through the countryside hunting for food, drinking mate (a very strong herbal tea still consumed all over Argentina), and engaging in various sorts of competition with other gauchos.¹²⁷ By the time this movement began to flourish, the real gauchos were all but extinct, having declined rapidly after Argentina gained independence from Spain in 1816.¹²⁸ The gaucho was idealized and popularized in José Hernández’ epic poem Martín Fierro (1872). In the late 19th century, when nationalist sentiments were on the rise in Argentina, the gaucho became the symbol of the nation, a symbol whose faults—reportedly habits such as cruelty to animals, drunkenness, gambling, and thievery—were forgotten as his extinction became more complete.¹²⁹ Music played an important part in gaucho life, so that Argentine composers naturally turned to typical gaucho song and dance types for inspiration in their own works. Some of the most common gaucho genres making their way into the art music repertory were the gato, estilo, vidalita, and cielito.¹³⁰ Most scholars point to Alberto Williams’ “El rancho abandonado” (1890), for piano solo as the first piece to draw inspiration from gauchesco themes.

The other major musical influence on nationalist composers was that of criollismo. Criollismo has to do with the reinterpretation of European genres in the new world, the end result of which is music containing elements of both Europe and America. For example, one of the most popular criollo genres is the waltz, which exists in nearly every country of Latin America in similar but distinct regional varieties. Criollo waltzes such as the vals peruano (Peruvian waltz) and the vals venezolano (Venezuelan waltz) typically have more syncopation than traditional European waltzes do, as well as frequent use of hemiola and melodies doubled at the interval of a third. This blending of Iberian and American elements began in the seventeenth century, and nearly as soon as it began, the Latin-American influence started to flow back to Spain, creating a rich interchange of elements in both directions.¹³¹ Criollismo was more important for Guastavino than was the gauchesco tradition. His extensive cultivation of European-influenced piano miniatures and songs in the spirit of Argentine popular music, his dependence mostly on common-practice harmony, and a tendency to use other criollo conventions such as melodic parallel thirds, all exemplify the criollo element in his music. ¹³²

The generation following López Buchardo, Ugarte, and Gaito—that which Veniard calls the “third wave”¹³³—fell into two distinct groups, one that continued the nationalist style of the preceding generations, and another that chose a new path. Although the most important works of Argentine nationalism had already been written by the 1930s, there was never a time in Argentina’s history that produced a greater quantity of nationalist works, or when there were more composers working in the nationalist style (Veniard counts more than 50) than the 1940s. The nationalist movement died out in the 1950s due to a number of factors, one of which was the economic hard times after the second World War that led to less government support for the arts. Without sufficient funding, some composers gave up composition altogether, leading to a decrease not only in nationalist works, but also in the overall artistic production of Argentina. Others abandoned nationalism in favor of more international, experimental styles.

These experimental styles had already gained momentum with another branch of Argentine composition in the preceding decades.¹³⁴ In the mid-1920s a group of young composers including Juan Carlos Paz, Juan José Castro, José María Castro, Gilardo Gilardi, and Luis Gianneo formed a new society called the Grupo Renovación, dedicated to renewing the development of Argentine art music. They felt that they needed to get away from the folkloristic styles of the previous generation and find a newer, more cosmopolitan style incorporating the latest trends from Europe such as neo-classicism, dodecaphony, serialism, and polytonality. In so doing they would elevate Argentine music to an international level and leave romanticism in the past for good. Part of the impetus toward their rejection of romanticism and the traditional gauchesco nationalist themes was their desire to distance themselves from the ideologies of the repressive governments that ruled from the 1930s to the 1950s, first that of General José F. Uriburu beginning in 1930, and later the authoritarian government of Perón, which lasted from 1946–1955. Perón’s populist and anti-intellectual agenda had made life difficult for anyone of an artistic or intellectual persuasion. He was against all forms of education, high culture, and civil liberties such as freedom of expression.¹³⁵ Composers in the Grupo Renovación reacted by turning away from the old forms of musical nationalism toward a style that would have no relation to the repressive government under which they lived.

Guastavino belongs chronologically to this bifurcated third generation of composers, but unlike most of the others, he began as a nationalist and remained so for the duration of his career. Veniard says, “Nevertheless, there is a personality who continued on the path fixed in the first years in which his works were presented and who has remained faithful to his aesthetic position: Carlos Guastavino.”¹³⁶ There is an implicit value judgment in Veniard’s comment to the effect that any composer whose style or ideology changes during the course of his life has somehow been “unfaithful” or intellectually dishonest. This is valid from the perspective of an observer with a nationalist political agenda, but the suggestion that composers not adhering doggedly to nationalism have somehow betrayed their true artistic ideals is judgmental and completely subjective. There is no reason why composers should not have a sincere artistic interest in contemporary trends, and there is also no reason why such an interest should work to the exclusion of nationalism. They are not mutually exclusive concepts. Even so, it is absurd to suggest that artists who start on one path and stay with it can ipso facto claim to have the moral high ground over those whose ideals change over time. What one person sees as fidelity to esthetic ideals might look like stubbornness or lack of creativity to someone else.

While Ginastera’s stature increased internationally after his stylistic changes, his currency within Argentina faded as his public felt that they had been betrayed.¹³⁷ In fact, Ginastera did not so much reject nationalism as he changed the nature of his nationalist expression. He went from what he called “objective nationalism,” characterized by the overt employment of typical Argentine folk elements, to “subjective nationalism,” in which the composer “introduces in the thematic texture rhythmic and melodic motives whose expressive tension has a pronounced Argentine accent.” This type of subjective nationalist reference is exemplified by what Chase calls the “‘symbolic’ guitar chord,” which appears in a number of Ginastera’s works at important structural points. The symbolic guitar chord is a chord whose notes are the same as the open strings of the guitar, which is of course the prototypical gaucho instrument. Chase notes the composer’s use of the chord in the third movement of his String Quartet no. 1 (1948), the Sonata for piano (1952), and the Variaciones concertantes (1953).¹³⁸ Not surprisingly, Ginastera also begins his Guitar Sonata (written in 1976, many years after Chase’s article) by having the guitarist strum the open strings of the guitar several times. The Argentine public’s feeling that Ginastera betrayed them is likely based less on a turn away from nationalism than on the fact that his more modernistic harmonic language was unfamiliar to them.

Likewise, Guastavino’s music is sometimes frankly nationalistic, while at other times it shows no obvious trace of nationalism. Nevertheless, the composer himself felt that his entire output represented a nationalist outlook:

I feel the music of Argentina. Since I was very young I have felt the music of Argentina, so that all of my production comes out Argentine and comes out with Argentine intent, you see? I tell you in truth that I am not ashamed to write things in the popular manner, and those things in the popular manner…have been disseminated all over the world, you know?¹³⁹

Musically speaking, Guastavino’s nationalist compositions show the influence of the gauchesco and criollo traditions in a way similar to that of Ginastera and their predecessors. He wrote many pieces based on gaucho song or dance types, such as Gato and Bailecito (both from 1940, for solo piano), Cuatro canciones argentinas (1949), and Vidala del secadal (voice and piano, written ca.1968). Melanie Plesch notes that the criollo folkloric topoi in Guastavino’s music are of two basic types. The first consists of musical conventions (melodic, rhythmic, or harmonic characteristics) that come from criollo sources. The second has to do with the imitation of the sounds or characteristic gestures of folk instruments. Of course these elements appear in varying degrees of clarity in Guastavino’s scores, ranging from outright quotation (what Ginastera called “objective” nationalism) to the most abstract allusion (“subjective”). This abstract type of folk reference, what Plesch calls “evocativa,” is probably what Guastavino means when he speaks of reproducing the aroma of Argentine popular music in his alleged ignorance of actual folk music characteristics.¹⁴⁰ He says that folk elements in his music are mostly incidental, that the music of Argentina is simply part of who he is, not a result of studying folk and popular sources or actively trying to emulate their styles:

I prevail, but it’s not a job that I force myself to do, because it comes out spontaneously. I think about form. Here…I don’t know anything about national folklore. I’m not familiar with it. I learned what a zamba is because I asked my friend [Eduardo] Falú, who told me that it’s in 32 bars, that it has to have such-and-such things. I didn’t know! If you ask me, “what is a…” I don’t know what a popular song is, the structure of a popular song, I don’t know. But the aroma of popular music, I have it in my veins. Do you know why? I was a boy of five or six years old and an uncle of mine used to come from Blaquiera, which is in the province of Buenos Aires. He was a peasant, he had wheat fields, you see? He came to Santa Fe where I lived…and this uncle was very, very nice, and while he was shaving he used to sing things from the province of Buenos Aires, so beautiful, so pretty, so lovely that even now I play them on the piano remembering them and it moves me. And that stuck with me. That got into my blood.¹⁴¹

It is clear that Guastavino’s approach to the use of folk sources is not a scientific one, but rather a subjective one that relies mostly on his own experiences and memories. Also, it seems that Guastavino did not adopt a nationalistic style, as others had done before him. He was not interested in forging an Argentine style in the active way that Aguirre did, or the way Roldán and García Caturla adopted afrocubanismo in Cuba as a statement of identity and political perspective. His music is infused with the atmosphere of Argentina on account of his early musical experiences in Santa Fe. Many times the Argentine musical elements are subtle enough that an uninitiated listener is unaware of their presence. Such is the case, for example, with Guastavino’s work for guitar and string quartet, Jeromita Linares (1965). Within a style similar to that of, say, Borodin’s String Quartet no. 2, Guastavino’s music is embedded with gestures that speak of Argentina in the most subtle, evocative way. Veniard says that Guastavino uses elements of Argentine folk genres “in a way that throughout the work there breathes a ‘national’ air, impossible to define and state in indelible characteristics by listening—if we exclude the tempo marking of lento where the allusion to the vidala is clear—meanwhile it is likewise not held in thematic analysis, since in no moment does it reach the textual citation of any definite genre.” Likewise, Melanie Plesch says that “the work is characterized by a decided Argentine ‘atmosphere’ that is indefinable at a simple glance.”¹⁴² In examples like this one, we might assume that Guastavino wrote his melodies and rhythms spontaneously, and that any nationalist elements in them are part of an unconscious musical identity formed through years of living in Argentina and absorbing the sounds around him.

There are a few cases where his use of folklore is more academic, however. The Cuatro canciones argentinas, for example, are harmonizations of actual folk songs sung to him by Yolanda Pérez de Carenzo.¹⁴³ In these settings, he makes free use of imitation, impressionist harmonies, and other devices, so that they resemble their original versions in much the same way Benjamin Britten’s folk song settings do; they have at least equal parts source material and new material. He even used the melody from one of these songs, “Viniendo de Chilecito,” as the subject of a fugue in the last movement of his Sonata in C♯-minor (1947). Also, he made fugal choral arrangements of the traditional songs Arroz con leche, La torre en guardia, and Margarita.¹⁴⁴

Guastavino claimed to have been ignorant about folk music, but it is not clear that he was being entirely ingenuous when he said this. He used the names of several Argentine folk genres in his scores as titles or subtitles, including the estilo, gato, zamba, milonga, triste, vidala, huella, and cueca. Surely he would not have used these titles if he did not have at least some knowledge of their characteristics. Nevertheless, he says,

…I know absolutely nothing about that. I had to ask Sr. Eduardo Falú for help, to indicate how to do a zamba, which was the only genre I did with knowledge of its structure. All of my other ‘popular’ songs are fantasies and free imitations of the orthodox schemes of the popular form.¹⁴⁵

Even if Guastavino had done research on Argentine folk music in preparation for his compositions, he would probably never have admitted doing so. He was a romantic, and it is much more romantic to be infused with the aroma of folk music at the age of five by a visiting uncle than it is to learn by listening to field recordings, song transcriptions or textbooks.

This is not to say that what Guastavino says is not true. It may be, but by saying simply that he has “the aroma of popular music in his veins,” he avoids having to divulge anything specific about how he writes his music. This is consistent with his other statements about the way he composes. One is inclined to be suspicious about the way he always mysticizes the creative process, making it seem as if the music simply emerges from him in an outpouring of divine inspiration without any intervention on his part. Many people have asked him about how he writes songs, and his responses have always been sentimental and romantic, emphasizing inspiration over all other things:

When I read a poem that reaches me, I get very upset, I shake all over, tears appear in my eyes…it is very strong! Then I take a sheet of staff paper and I write the notes. The melody comes easily; I write the bass in figures. Everything is very fast, I can not stop…it is as if I were possessed. Suddenly, when I realize that I have found what I wanted, I get up, make gestures, walk around in circles, laugh or cry, and I give thanks to God. The music comes out by itself, I am not responsible: a part of my brain contains music.¹⁴⁶

While there is no doubt that inspiration plays some part in his work (maybe even a large part), it seems naive to take a statement such as this at face value, as nearly every commentator on his music has done thus far. In speaking about the compositional process, Merriam notes that “unless one is willing to hold that the supernatural does invest individuals with new songs at one gulp, as it were, no composition can be unconscious.”¹⁴⁷ Even among non-literate people such as the Flathead Indians, who claimed that their songs came from visions, there is a distinct pattern to their visions that suggests composition on the individual’s part plays a significant role in the development of their songs.¹⁴⁸

Every artist relies on inspiration to some extent, but it is rare to find a composer whose music does not also depend in part on hard work. Guastavino always worked quickly, that much is certain. For example, when writing the twelve songs of Flores argentinas, he finished a new song every two or three days in October and November of 1969, according to the dates in the published score. As a song composer myself, however, I can say that even in the many instances when melodies come easily to mind upon reading a poem, there is rarely a time when I do not have to change notes, work out harmonies, or rewrite passages altogether. This happens even when I finish a song in one day, as Guastavino routinely did.

What seems most likely about his creative process is that the melody and the basic harmonic structure of the song come out quickly, just as he says, at which point all that is left to do is to fill in the harmonies indicated by his figured bass, experiment with rhythmic elements, work out voice leading and the like. Since he talks about using figured bass instead of writing out the whole accompaniment (so as not to interrupt the flow of the melody as it comes to him, presumably), we might assume that he felt a song was essentially “composed” when the melody and bass were notated. In that case, his statement could be completely true. All of the things he mentioned probably did happen to him, but is that all? Was there nothing else to writing a song? Did it really flow from his brain to paper in its final form, without any intervention on his part? This is highly unlikely. What about the introductions and codas? Did he write these before or after fitting a melody to the text? Did he know the form of the song immediately, or did he make decisions about repetitions, refrains, accompanimental figurations and the like, after he had the basic melodic material on paper? For example, in Se equivocó la paloma, there are many text repetitions in Guastavino’s setting that do not exist in the original poem. Did he know immediately that he would repeat the text, or did he initially set the whole text straight through and decide later that he could make a recurring motif out of the words “se equivocaba”? If he had so little to do with the compositional process, why did he get so upset when artists performing his music, perhaps in moments of inspiration similar to his own, decided to add ornaments or change the rhythms of the songs?¹⁴⁹

The only way we might get a better picture of Guastavino’s creative process is by a study of his manuscripts. Most of them are in the possession of Maestro Carlos Vilo, who also seems keen to protect the mysticism of the creative process. Vilo has written short biographical pieces and liner notes on Guastavino, and in each instance, he quotes the composer’s words on musical creation and lets them stand without comment. Likewise, Guastavino’s statements concerning his use of Argentine musical folklore promote an image wherein the composer simply lets the “aroma” of popular music contained within his veins pour forth in a mystical process similar to that by which he composes music. It seems likely that he knew more than he admitted, however, so that we should view his statements on the matter with some caution.

Nostalgia and Nature as Expressions of Nationalism

In addition to the traditional nationalist approach to music found in some of Guastavino’s works (an approach based on identifiable folk elements in the music), there is another side to his nationalism that is more personal, one that springs from a simple love for his country, its people, and its natural wonders. In his music one hears a tender nostalgia for Argentina, or at least a nostalgia for something. Often there is little direct musical connection to anything Argentine, so that the only reason one might hear the music and think of Argentina is that the composer has attached to it a suggestive title or some sort of nationalistic song text. This is true, for example, in the Diez cantilenas argentinas for solo piano, which have evocative titles such as “El ceibo,” a work in honor of the national flower of Argentina, and “Santa Fe para llorar,” a melancholy character piece inspired by the town where Guastavino was born and raised. Nostalgia is a recurrent theme in Guastavino’s music, and even his musical style is nostalgic, considering that during the heyday of serialism he wrote music that spoke of the 19th century salon.

Guastavino is especially drawn to nature and the wildlife found in Argentina, such as birds, trees, flowers, and streams. He is so well known as a nature-lover, in fact, that the Argentine writer Julio Cortázar made a reference to it in one of his short stories: “This was at eight o’clock, when Elsa Piaggio was playing the third encore, I think it was Julián Aguirre or Carlos Guastavino, something with pastures and little birds.”¹⁵⁰ Two of his best-known songs, “La rosa y el sauce” and “Se equivocó la paloma,” deal with roses, willows, and doves, and he also wrote entire song cycles on the native flowers and birds of Argentina (Flores argentinas and Pájaros).

Guastavino also reveals nationalist intent with his choice of song texts. While earlier generations of Argentine composers were known to set to music not only Spanish, but also French, Italian, and German texts, the only language Guastavino ever set to music was Spanish. His nationalist feelings did not go as far as to exclude foreign poets, however, so long as their poems were in Spanish. Other Argentine composers of Guastavino’s generation also gravitated toward Spanish-language poems, taking advantage of the surge of Spanish poetry that was happening both in Latin America and in Spain. The years between 1930 and 1950 saw some of the best and most abundant production of Spanish poetry to date, so that it was easier than ever for composers to find quality verses for their songs.¹⁵¹ Guastavino’s longest and most fruitful artistic collaboration was with the Argentine poet León Benarós (b. 1915), whose texts are featured in Flores argentinas, Pájaros, “El sampedrino,” Quince canciones escolares, Despedida, and many more. He also set verses by the Spanish poets Rafael Alberti (1902–1999) and Francisco Quevedo (1580–1645), as well as the Chilean poets Gabriela Mistral (1889–1957) and Pablo Neruda (1904–1973), to name only a few.

The argentinidad of Guastavino’s music lies in the stylistic elements to a certain degree, and also in his choice of poetry, but perhaps to an equal degree it lies in the affinity the people of Argentina have for it.¹⁵² School children grow up singing Guastavino’s songs. There are now in Buenos Aires two amateur choruses dedicated exclusively to the performance of Guastavino’s music.¹⁵³ “La rosa y el sauce” has more to do with Italian opera than it does Argentine folk music, but it is one of the most beloved songs in the art music repertoire of Argentina, a cornerstone in Argentina’s “national music.” The Italian aspect of his music should not be discounted in a discussion of Argentine nationalism, since an overwhelming percentage of the population of Buenos Aires is of Italian descent. Furthermore, Italian opera was in a real way the popular music of the 18th and 19th centuries in Buenos Aires, so that the Argentine public’s affinity for a song like “La rosa y el sauce” seems all the more natural. It is music with which Argentines identify, and therein lies its argentinidad.

Despite the nearly universal emphasis on nationalism in discussions about Guastavino’s music, and despite the testimony quoted earlier from the composer himself on the matter (saying that everything he writes comes out Argentine and with Argentine intent), there is a considerable portion of his output that has little obvious connection to nationalist issues. Bernardo Illari contends that to emphasize the nationalist side of Guastavino’s work is to give an overly simplistic view of the composer and to minimize the variety and richness of his creative output. He would rather portray Guastavino as a master of evocation, an artist who knew how to manipulate sound to conjure up images not only of Argentina, but also of Spain and Chile and of early music. On the other hand, he could write extended formal works without any extra-musical or nationalist references. While Illari acknowledges the importance of nationalism in Guastavino’s music, he also insists that “the non-nationalist works of Guastavino are not necessarily marginal within his output.” Additionally, he raises the question as to whether the emphasis on nationalism is Guastavino’s own intention, or whether it results from the perception of the public, critics, and performers.¹⁵⁴ Both sides share responsibility for the nationalist label. The composer gave ample reason to emphasize nationalism in his output. Even if he had not said that everything he writes comes out Argentine on purpose, we would still know he was a nationalist if only by the titles he gave to many of his works: Gato, Diez cantilenas argentinas, Cuatro canciones argentinas, and Flores argentinas, to name only a few. Music critics have undoubtedly had a role in the matter, too, since they always have to categorize a composer’s music for the concert-going public. For them, Guastavino fits most easily into the nationalist school since his best-known works are nationalistic. In the end, it does not matter who is to “blame” for the fact that Guastavino is typically seen as a nationalist. Once a label is applied to a composer’s music, it is likely to stay there (as Debussy could attest).

Another facet of Guastavino’s nationalism has to do less with musical style than with the civic-minded intent he had in creating some of his works. For example, he sought to elevate the level of music available to Argentina’s school children by writing dozens of canciones escolares (school songs). He also used the canción escolar to help educate the children who sang them in subjects like math, chemistry, Argentine political history, and even the proper manners for a good child (“Propósito”). He also enjoyed writing educational songs dealing with Argentina’s native plants and animals, such as “Ombú,” Flores argentinas, and Pájaros.

Finally, Gaustavino’s musical output as a whole shows nationalist elements nearly from beginning to end, but if we consider his songs alone, then there is a lengthy period of time in which nationalism plays only a minor role, if any. After the composition of “Pueblito, mi pueblo” (1941), a song with definite nationalistic qualities, there are only a handful of songs written in the next twenty years to which one can apply a nationalist label. This is apparently due to the fact that he was using verses by foreign poets, rather than a deliberate attempt to avoid nationalism.¹⁵⁵ His most fervent era of nationalist song composition dates from 1963 to 1975, when nearly all of his songs are based on texts by Argentine authors, and when he adopted a noticeably more “popular” musical style infused with characteristic rhythms of Argentine folk and popular music. In this sense, Illari’s insistence that nationalism does not play as large a role in Guastavino’s music as we have been led to believe is certainly true.

PART II: THE SONGS

Chapter 4: Style and Structure in the First Song Period, 1939–1962

Classification and Periodization of Songs

In order to get a grasp on Guastavino’s songs as a whole, it might be useful to attempt to break them down into categories. Bernardo Illari, after dividing Guastavino’s entire compositional output into three stages (see previous chapter), also made a tentative division of the composer’s song output into three “song periods” (“períodos de canciones”): The first period was the decade of the 1940s, the time when he was most prolific in the genre. In this early period he used many poems by non-Argentine authors, including for example “Se equivocó la paloma” (1941), by the Spanish poet Rafael Alberti, which would become one of Guastavino’s biggest hits. Although he wrote a few sets or cycles during this period (e.g. Cuatro canciones argentinas, 1949), most of the songs from the first period are single, independent works in a variety of musical styles. Illari places the second song period in the mid-1960s. This is when Guastavino increasingly turned to native poets like Hamlet Lima Quintana, Atahualpa Yupanqui, Jorge Luis Borges, and especially León Benarós, with whom he began to collaborate around 1963. The third song period goes from the late 1960s to the early 1970s, and is characterized by a tendency to write more extended song cycles (or sets) instead of isolated songs.¹⁵⁶ Illari’s classification skips the decade of the 1950s, which might be logical given the composer’s concentration on piano works during that time, but in so doing he leavesnumerous songs “homeless,” as it were.

Douglas Crowder chose to look at the songs by category, rather than by chronological period, although his sub-headings indicate that Guastavino focused on each of three song types during certain periods of his career. ¹⁵⁷ The categories are “Art Song: 1940–1959,” “Children’s Song: 1956–1974,” and “Popular Song: 1963–1975.” Of course Guastavino wrote songs from each of these three types throughout his career, not just in the time periods given. For example, his first three published songs (1939) were children’s songs, and one of his finest sets of art songs, the Cuatro sonetos de Quevedo (1975) dates from the end of Crowder’s “Popular Song” period. Crowder’s classification is an improvement on Illari’s in one respect, which is his inclusion of songs from the 1950s in the first category. This leaves no gaping holes in the song output.

“Popular song” can have various meanings with respect to Guastavino’s work, but here it simply refers to a compositional approach, one in which Guastavino wrote “in the popular manner” during a given period. ¹⁵⁸ Those songs were then released under the publisher’s series title, “Canciones Populares.” Guastavino’s canciones populares are only slightly related to the current notion of “popular song,” which has connotations of target audiences, mass distribution and globalization. The only song of Guastavino’s that can be called a popular song (or perhaps better named a “pop” song) in this sense is “Se equivocó la paloma,” which reached the masses because of a pop version by Joan Manuel Serrat recorded more than twenty-five years after the original art-song version was published. His so-called canciones populares are not written with this type of commercial intent. Rather, they show the influence of popular music in their musical characteristics, especially the reliance on refrain-based forms and simplicity of melody, harmony, and texture.

It is also sometimes difficult to draw clear distinctions among the three types of songs in Crowder’s classification. While Guastavino called Crowder’s categorization “clear and logical,” he also pointed out that “one can not be so absolute and specific saying, ‘this is a chamber song,’ ‘this is a cabaret song.’”¹⁵⁹ For example, Flores argentinas is in Crowder’s (and Illari’s) “children’s songs” category, but since they could as easily be called art songs.¹⁶⁰ Guastavino says that he originally intended Flores argentinas to be songs for school children, but that they have been performed more often on stage by concert artists and as such have been assumed into the art song repertory.

Guastavino’s song production is best seen as comprising two parts. The first part begins in 1939, the year of his first published song, “Arroyito serrano,” and ends in 1962 with “Soneto a la harmonía,” the last song in which Guastavino did any sort of formal and harmonic exploration before turning to a more popular style. The songs written during these twenty-three years are marked by a wide diversity of musical styles that arise from the diverse poetry he chose as song texts. In other words, what defines this period stylistically is its very diversity as compared with the second song period, which is relatively uniform in terms of musical style. The most daring songs are those based on poems by the Spaniards Luis Cernuda (Las nubes, 1944; Tres canciones, 1945) and Rafael Alberti (Siete canciones, 1944). These songs show a strong influence of impressionism, and one might also hear echoes of the Spanish composers Manuel de Falla and Isaac Albéniz. The music is marked by tonal ambiguity, chromaticism, and passages of extreme dissonance, but also by Guastavino’s characteristic vocal lyricism. This lyricism is common to his entire song production, although it takes different forms depending upon the poetry. The settings of Spanish poets are lyrical, but not particularly tuneful, with the notable exception of “Se equivocó la paloma,” on a poem by Alberti. Guastavino’s tuneful melodies appear most often in settings of lighter poetry, such as “Cita” (Lorenzo Varela, 1943), “Anhelo” (Domingo Zerpa, 1942), and especially verses from Argentina such as that by Francisco Silva (“Pueblito, mi pueblo,” “La rosa y el sauce”). In this early song period, however, there are relatively few settings of native poetry. He also sets verses by the 18th-century Spanish poet José Iglesias de la Casa, as well as two contemporary Chilean poets, Pablo Neruda (“Esta iglesia no tiene,” 1948) and Gabriela Mistral (“Riqueza,” 1943; Seis canciones de cuna, 1943).

The influence of musical nationalism on the early songs is minimal, which is not surprising considering that most of the poetry he set during that time was written by foreign authors. There is no inherent reason why a composer should avoid writing nationalistic music when setting the words of a foreign poet, especially when the poems are still in the composer’s native tongue. Guastavino’s song texts are all in Spanish, but he reserved his nationalist settings for those by Argentine authors. The idea that nationalism has played a crucial role in his entire output is largely due to the enormous success of his early folk-inspired piano pieces Bailecito and Gato, plus the widespread popularity of “Pueblito, mi pueblo,” which is one of only a handful of nationalist songs of the time, but which has played a major part in shaping Guastavino’s public image. Other songs that show nationalist tendencies are the early school songs “Arroyito serrano” and “Propósito” (both 1939), as well as “Anhelo” (1942) and Cuatro canciones argentinas (1949). More than nationalism, Guastavino relies on evocation of moods, scenes, or historical eras in the early songs. For example, the settings of José Iglesias de la Casa poems are full of baroque musical conventions such as imitative counterpoint and sequential repetition. Even though the poetry pertains to the classical era rather than the baroque, the idea is to conjure images of ages past, and in that respect he is successful. There are also songs in which he uses modal harmony and medieval contrapuntal techniques such as parallel fifths in response to images in the poetry. In short, the songs written between 1939 and 1962 are characterized above all by variety of musical expression, ranging from extremely dissonant songs in through-composed form to the simplest strophic songs with tuneful melodies and textbook tonal harmony. These diverse styles exist side-by-side throughout the period, without any progression from one to another.

The second song period begins in 1963 with the publication of “Milonga de dos hermanos” (Jorge Luis Borges) and “La tempranera” (León Benarós), and ends in 1975 with the Cuatro sonetos de Quevedo (Francisco de Quevedo y Villegas). ¹⁶¹ There are a number of factors that set this period off from the earlier one. First of all, Guastavino turns almost exclusively to poetry by Argentine authors. Apart from using elements of Argentine popular music, however, Guastavino’s style shows a general shift from the eclecticism of the first song period to a rather simpler, more predictable and uniform style marked by transparent textures, sparser accompaniments, tuneful melodies, and formal designs influenced by popular music that incorporate textual and musical refrains into strophic form. The one exception to his concentration on Argentine poetry and popular music is the set of Four Sonnets of Quevedo (1975), the last song collection published before his creative silence from 1975–1987. Even these settings of 16th-century poetry, however, show signs of the popular style in which he had been writing for the past dozen years.

In this classification I have condensed what Illari calls the second and third song periods into one larger period. Again, Illari posits a third period dating from the late 1960s until 1975, citing as the determining factor Guastavino’s concentration on cycles or sets, rather than individual songs. I would see this as a subdivision of the second song period instead of a discrete period of its own, because stylistically, there is very little difference between the individual songs written after 1963 and the songs contained within the collections of 1969–1975. Likewise, I see the canciones escolares as a subcategory within the second period due to their stylistic similarity to all of the other songs of the time.

Confronted with more than 150 published songs, it is impossible to consider all of them in this study. While all of the songs could merit attention based on their individual aesthetic value, it would be redundant to present numerous examples that illustrate the same points. The first song period of 1939–1962 has approximately half of the number of songs of the second period, but its stylistic variety demands that a relatively greater amount of attention be given to it. I have chosen examples from the first period that illustrate both typical and (supposedly) atypical aspects of Guastavino’s music, with the intention of deconstructing the widely-held notion that his music is uniformly neo-romantic, nationalistic, and sentimental.¹⁶² In the second song period I have chosen songs that exemplify his new aesthetic principles and compositional tendencies, as well as his nationalistic concerns. Finally, some examples from both periods appear more for their importance to Gaustavino’s career than for their stylistic relevance.

Harmony and Tonality

¡Viva el atonalismo! ¡Viva la dodecafonía! ¡Viva la música concreta! Eso es una porquería…son bodrios, son mentiras, son falsedades, son…La música, la música auténtica es armonía, melodía, y ritmo, perfectamente to-na-les. Es la única forma de hacer música.

—Carlos Guastavino¹⁶³

In a notice that appeared shortly after Guastavino’s death in October of 2000 in Santa Fe, Jorge Edgard Molina commented that

Throughout his compositional trajectory, Carlos Guastavino moved within the limits of tonality, a language that in its more than three hundred years of existence suffered, in spite of its renovations, the logical consequences of erosion and exhaustion. Carlos Guastavino, nevertheless, negotiated its roads with a personal accent, without ever trying his hand at some of the neo-tonal recourses of the 20th century supported by Stravinsky, Hindemith, and Bartók, among many others.¹⁶⁴

This is the official view of Guastavino’s output, one that surfaces nearly every time Guastavino is discussed in print. This estimation, however, is not entirely accurate, and it perpetuates the image of Guastavino as a composer completely untouched by modernity, an image that the composer himself also fostered with statements like the one quoted above. This image nevertheless does a disservice to the variety of his expressive vocabulary. The key phrase in this description is within the limits of tonality. This much is true. Guastavino’s music is always within the limits of tonality, but he was capable of far greater sophistication than that for which he is credited. Someone who knows only “Se equivocó la paloma” and “La rosa y el sauce” has heard only one side of his aesthetic. A far more interesting and challenging side is seen in some of his lesser-known songs, especially the settings of Cernuda and Alberti from the 1940s. The following sections cover the various ways in which Guastavino deals with tonality, how he defines it in his songs, and how he uses it for expressive purposes. In so doing they add an important element to Guastavino studies, the idea that in spite of the composer’s diatribes against modernism in music, he was himself not only capable but also willing to use modernistic techniques when they served his purpose, which was always to reflect or emphasize the meaning of the text. He was certainly not a closet modernist. The large majority of his works are frankly tonal, without serious complications. The following examples are meant only to show that he had more tools at his disposal than his conservative reputation would suggest.

Tonal Definition

In many of Guastavino’s early songs, he seemingly goes to great pains to obscure the tonic. In a way similar to Wagner or Debussy, he writes music that sounds romantic, lyrical, and often impressionistic, using extended harmonies (e.g. 9th, 11th and 13th chords), non-traditional scales, and unexpected harmonic turns to obscure the tonic or delay its presentation. He always takes his cue from the poetry, and the most adventurous settings are those of Rafael Alberti (1902–1999) and Luis Cernuda (1902–1963), both of whom associated with the Spanish surrealist movement at some point in their careers. The poems Guastavino chooses from their output have little to do with the tenets of surrealism, but the composer clearly views the poems as serious works of art, as he sets most of them in through-composed form and reacts to the text musically on what is sometimes a word-by-word basis.

These are some of Guastavino’s least predictable songs, but he can never entirely let go of the conventions of common practice harmony and traditional musical form. For example, his key signatures are almost unfailingly reliable. No matter how difficult it might be to hear the tonic in one of Guastavino’s songs, one can always look at the key signature in the score and immediately narrow the choices to two—one major and one minor. On rare occasions he uses a “modal key signature,” or a key signature that reflects the mode he is using in a given song. For example, a song in G-Dorian mode would have a key signature of one flat.¹⁶⁵

In the majority of Gaustavino’s songs, there is no doubt as to the key and mode from the beginning. However, in those songs without a clear presentation of the tonic, Guastavino often defines it by way of the dominant. This is the case with “Jardín antiguo” (Ancient Garden) from the 1944 collection Las nubes (The Clouds), three songs on poems by Luis Cernuda. “Jardín antiguo” is dedicated to Manuel de Falla, who was living in Argentina at the time of the song’s composition. This dedication is evidence of their friendship and of the estimation in which Guastavino held the older composer. The harmony is more slippery than usual for Guastavino, with a constant succession of suspensions and quasi-resolutions in the chordal accompaniment. This is perhaps a harmonic reflection of the “old souls float[ing]” through the ancient garden “that guards the enchantment of the water.”¹⁶⁶ It is also in keeping with the rather impressionistic flavor of the song as a whole. The key signature has five flats, suggesting either D♭ major or B♭ minor. It turns out to be B♭ minor, but more by implication than by statement. The tonic chord of B♭ minor actually appears two times in the first section of the song, but neither instance is really an affirmation of tonality. It first occurs on the downbeat of measure one. The way it is presented, however, belies its identity as the tonic; the root B♭ sounds incidental, simply part of a descending line in the lowest voice of the piano part: C–B♭–A♭–G♭–F–E♭.

Example 1: “Jardín antiguo,” mm. 1–2

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The strongest affirmation of tonic that we get is through a prolonged dominant chord and a stepwise melodic descent to the dominant in the voice part in measure 12, followed by a V–I melodic leap going into measure 14. Note that the tonic chord of B♭ minor appears in m. 14, but that it is approached the same way as before, and that this time it is further weakened by its metric placement on the second beat of the measure.

Example 2: “Jardín antiguo,” mm. 12–14

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

There is also an extended section (mm. 24–34) in which the dominant is hammered home, followed by what looks like a strong motion to the tonic’s parallel major, B♭ (from measures 31 to 32), but which is undermined by the presence of dissonant non-chord tones. Here we also can see the influence of impressionist techniques in a series of parallel second-inversion chords in mm. 32–33, as well as his use of chords based on open perfect intervals in m. 31. In this case he uses the perfect fifths F–C–F, with a G♭ added for tartness. Then at the beginning of m. 35, as the poem says, “To feel once again, as before, the sharp thorn of desire” (“sentir otra vez como entonces la espina aguda del deseo”), he changes the perfect fifth to a diminished fifth F–C♭, which clashes mightily with the bass note B♭ in a representation of the anguish portrayed in the poem.

Example 3: “Jardín antiguo,” mm. 31–37

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

This passage is also a perfect example of the way Guastavino’s vocal lines always maintain their lyrical qualities, even (or especially) in the midst of jarring dissonance in the accompaniment. Guastavino is unfailingly kind to the singer by keeping the melodic motion simple (here, ascending and descending stepwise motion) and not introducing much chromaticism that could throw him or her off pitch. This is not only kindness on his part, but also wisdom. The easier a composer makes it for the singer to stay on pitch, the more likely it is to happen.

The song concludes as a sustained German augmented-sixth chord resolves directly to the dominant (instead of first going to the tonic in 2nd inversion) and goes no further. This progression strongly suggests the tonic of B♭-minor, but again does state it explicitly.

Example 4: “Jardín antiguo,” mm. 41–45

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Another song in which Guastavino defines the tonic in terms of the dominant is “Violetas,” from Tres canciones on poems of Luis Cernuda (1945). Like “Jardín antiguo,” “Violetas” sounds like it belongs to the tradition of late 19th-century French chansons of Fauré or Debussy. The rapid, sustained arpeggios create a wash of ethereal sound that only vaguely defines any tonality, but which gives a lovely musical representation of the violets, which Cernuda describes as follows in the first stanza: “Light, wet, and melodious, / Your obscure moving light hinting / Such a botanical pearl through green valves, / They are a shout of March, a sorcery / of new wings through the tender air.”¹⁶⁷ In the end, the key turns out to be F major, but there is no strong sense of F through most of the song. In the A section (of what is similar to a rounded binary form), there is a sense that the music is tonal (or modal), but it is difficult to grasp. On the one hand, there is a strong sense of the dominant, since the bass note is C for the first eight measures of the song.

Example 5: “Violetas,” mm. 1–6

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

It is not unusual to dwell on a key’s dominant before ever reaching the tonic, but there is even a vagueness to the definition of C, since the arpeggio patterns also contain in varying configurations the five notes of a pentatonic scale starting on F: F–G–B♭–C–D. Of course this collection could also be rotated to start on C. Since there is no “A” among the collection, we do not know if it is F major or F minor, and it could even be C-mixolydian given the B♭ in the key signature and the C pedal tone. Since Guastavino’s tendency is to use traditional tonal key signatures, my first instinct is to view the “C-ness” of the opening section as a definition of the dominant. This turns out to be true, although he keeps us waiting until nearly the end of the song to find out. There is no obvious textual reason for this, but by avoiding clear tonal definition until later in the song, he perhaps means to reflect the fleeting nature of the flowers lives.

Several times throughout the song, Guastavino nearly cadences on F-major only to thwart expectations and keep the suspense going longer. In measure 16 he sits on a dominant 9th chord that seems sure to resolve to F, but instead it goes abruptly to a piano interlude in C♯-major that lasts for six measures and returns to the murky tonal region of the song’s opening.

Example 6: “Violetas,” mm. 16–17

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Then, from m. 29–30, there is an apparent cadence on F major as the bass moves from V to I (and there is finally an A♮ in the middle of the chord), but the upper voices re-articulate the diad E–G of the V7 chord from the previous measure. When these tones resolve to D–F, the presence of the D undermines the sense that F is the root of the chord. On the next beat, the bass changes to G, thereby dashing any hopes that the real tonic has arrived.

Example 7: “Violetas,” mm. 27–32

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The tonic finally does arrive in m. 54, with a strong bass movement from V to I, although the tonic chord has an added 2nd and 6th. We know for sure that the tonic has arrived when, in the next measure, the voice makes its first cadence on F on the final syllable of text. Guastavino seems to be manipulating the harmony of the song in reaction to the poetry, the final stanza of which goes as follows:

Al marchar victoriosas a la muerte
Sostienen un momento, ellas tan frágiles,
El tiempo entre sus pétalos.
Así su instante alcanza
Norma para lo efímero que es bello,
A ser vivo embeleso en la memoria.

Upon marching victorious unto death,
they who are so fragile sustain time
for a moment among their petals.
Thus their instant reaches,
as is normal for those ephimeral beautiful things,
to be a living enchantment in the memory.

When the word “memoria” appears in the final vocal phrase, there is a faint recollection of the opening arpeggio pattern in the high register of the piano. Apparently the arpeggio pattern represents the violets in full bloom, and the fleeting glimpses of tonic throughout the song might be heard as representing the flower’s ephemeral beauty. The melody’s arrival at the tonic at the end of the song, then, represents the violet’s arrival at its final resting place: in the memory of those who saw it in full bloom. But even as memories are vague, so is the final chord, with its added ♭6 scale degree!

Example 8: “Violetas,” mm. 53–59

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

In terms of tonality, Guastavino’s most ambiguous song is “Donde habite el olvido” (Where Oblivion Dwells), the third song from the same collection as “Violetas.” The title itself, with its image of oblivion, suggests a certain murkiness in the music.¹⁶⁸ Reading further, it is clear that this is one of Cernuda’s surrealist poems, as seemingly unrelated images are juxtaposed in a dreamlike fashion:

Donde habite el olvido
Where Oblivion Dwells

Era un sueño, aire
Tranquilo en la nada;
Al abrir los ojos
Las ramas perdían
Exhalaba el tiempo
Luces vegetales,
Amores caídos,
Tristeza sin donde.
Volvía la sombra;
Agua eran sus labios.
Cristal, soledades
La frente, la lámpara.
Pasión sin figura,
Pena sin historia;
Como herida al pecho
Un beso, el deseo.
No sabes, no sabes.

It was a dream, tranquil
air in the nothingness;
upon opening my eyes
they lost the branches.
Time was exhaling
vegetal lights,
fallen loves,
sadness without a home.
The shade was returning;
Its lips were water.
Crystal, solitudes
the forehead, the lamp.
Shapeless passion,
pain without history;
like a wound in the breast,
a kiss, desire.
You don’t know, you don’t know.

Judging by the key signature and the final bars of the song, the key should be A♭-mixolydian. As in “Violetas,” the tonality is suggested mostly by its dominant. The tonic chord appears much earlier here (in the first bar), but its tonic effect is undermined by weak metric placement. It sounds like an anacrusis to the chord built on E♭, which is the dominant, but is what I would call a substitute dominant harmony. It acts like a dominant, but is not spelled like one; the chord on the downbeat of m. 2 is an inverted quartal collection, of which E♭ would be the highest pitch: C–F–B♭–E♭. Its dominant function is defined by the strong bass motion of a descending fourth: A♭–E♭. As further emphasis on the dominant, the voice part dwells on E♭ extensively, almost as if it were a reciting tone. Crowder interprets the tonality of the song as being based on an A♭maj 13 chord, which is certainly plausible, but difficult to hear.¹⁶⁹ I tend to hear it as music based on A♭ in a context of quartal instead of tertian harmony.

Example 9: “Donde habite el olvido,” mm. 1–16

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Guastavino’s use of quartal harmony is surprising, since he said for the record a number of years later that he “detested” the music of Paul Hindemith, the best-known exponent of quartal harmony.

Near the end of the song there appears one of the most unusual passages in all of Guastavino’s output. The text reads as follows:

Pasión sin figura,
Pena sin historia;
Como herida al pecho
Un beso, el deseo.

Shapeless passion,
pain without history;
like a wound in the breast,
a kiss, desire.

Prompted by the words, “like a wound in the breast,” Guastavino unleashes a violent and dissonant barrage of chords that would make any modernist proud. He marks the passage forte, violente, and places accents over every note. He further disrupts the tranquil (albeit murky) atmosphere of the song by effectively changing the meter from 6
8 to 2
4 and increasing the tempo.

Example 10: “Donde habite el olvido,” mm. 51–60

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

What sounds rather chaotic in performance is really a simple case of bitonality on paper. The right hand of the piano is alternating between A major and F-major chords, while the left hand simultaneously alternates between F♯-major and D-major chords. The upshot is that one hears A- and F♯-major chords at the same time, then F- and D-major chords at once. The D-major chord is held for several bars, joined by an A-minor chord in m. 56 while the voice has a short recitative-like passage.

The progression that finally defines A♭ as the tonic is presented at the end of the song, in mm. 64–68. Guastavino makes only a slight but important modification to the piano pattern established in the opening bars of the song. It begins the same, with the bass going from G–A♭–E♭, but instead of leaping back up to G or F as at the beginning, it keeps going down to the low A♭, which is apparently established as the tonic in a wide arpeggiation of A♭ triad in m. 68. Of course, in setting a poem about oblivion, he can not leave the ending in such a happy state of closure. He immediately undermines the sense of tonic in the last two measures, first by adding the 7th G♭ to the tonic triad, and then by continuing the arpeggiated ascent into an outline of a D-major triad, which of course has a tritone relationship to the tonic A♭, and which was established as an important sonority earlier in the passage of bitonality.

Example 11: “Donde habite el olvido,” mm. 61–70

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

In another example, Guastavino takes a slightly different route. First, he establishes the tonic firmly, and then he goes on to make it ambiguous. “Deseo” is the second song of Las nubes (Cernuda), the same 1944 collection that contains “Jardín antiguo.”

Deseo
Desire

Por el campo tranquilo de septiembre,
Del álamo amarillo alguna hoja,
Como una estrella rota,
Girando al suelo viene.
¡Si así el alma inconsciente,
Señor de las estrellas y las hojas,
Fuese, encendida sombra
De la vida a la muerte!

In the tranquil field of September,
From the the yellow wing a leaf,
Like a broken star,
comes drifting down to the ground.
If the unconscious soul is thus,
Lord of the stars and the leaves,
go, burning shade from Life unto death.

The song begins with an impressionistic-sounding cascade of wide descending intervals. These cascades represent the poem’s image of a leaf “falling to the ground like a broken star.” Each cascade ends with a minor seventh (G–F) between the two voices of the piano. In m. 4 this mild dissonance is resolved into octave Fs, which are revealed to be the dominant in the key of B♭ by the strong, clear V–I motion in all parts as the voice begins.

Example 12: “Deseo,” mm. 1–6

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The harmony gets more intricate as the second stanza approaches. In measure 12 he begins to build tall chords of stacked open fifths with the dominant F as the “root.” Then in m. 14 the music turns violent as the poem speaks of the burning shade going from life to death, just like the leaf falling from the tree to the earth. The voice soars to F, the highest pitch of the song thus far, and the piano part becomes quasi bi-tonal, with A♭–E♭ fifths on the bottom and stacked perfect fourths (C–F–B♭) on top. All the while, the falling leaf motive continues.

Example 13: “Deseo,” mm. 11–15

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Then, in a passage strikingly similar to the one discussed earlier, the music turns frankly bi-tonal. On the word “hojas” (leaves) in m. 17, Guastavino uses the same bi-tonal sonority as he did in “Donde habite el olvido”: D-major triad in the left hand and F-major in the right. In the next bar he pits F♯ against F at the fortissimo dynamic level. Meanwhile the voice is clinging to the high F that clashes with the F♯s in the piano’s left hand. In measure 19 the vocal part and bass line do an extremely dissonant voice exchange, with the voice moving from D♭–C, and the bass concurrently moving from C–C♯.

Example 14: “Deseo,” mm. 16–20

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

After the dissonance subsides, tonality returns again, although the tonic chord B♭ is underlined by an F pedal tone. The song ends on the dominant instead of the tonic, and even this is clouded by the addition of soft, clashing pitches in the impressionist manner: the final sonority is F–C–G–E–F, essentially an F dominant 9th chord. Concluding the song on the dominant, Guastavino gives the listener what might be heard as a musical representation of the journey from life to death, the arrival at a new stage of existence.

Example 15: “Deseo,” mm. 24–29

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

More than ten years later, in “La primera pregunta: el adolescente muerto” (The First Question: the dead adolescent, 1956), Guastavino defines the tonality of B♭ minor in a slightly different way, one that is nearly as vague as that in “Donde habite el olvido.”

La primera pregunta
The First Question

Como una espiga rota,
la dorada cabeza,
yacía, oro y silencio,
en tu regazo.
Claros los dulces ojos detenidos
bajo la augusta comba
de la frente desierta,
te miraban sin llanto.
Y en la boca menuda,
inmóvil y entre abierta
donde se acababa de morir el canto,
quedaba para siempre,
pájaro en sombra,
trino, sangre adentro,
la primera pregunta.

Like a broken spike
the gilded head,
was lying, gold and silent,
in your lap.
Clear the sweet halted eyes
under the august bend
of the vacant forehead,
were looking at you without crying.
And in the minute mouth,
unmoving and half-open
where the song had just died,
was staying forever,
bird in shade,
warble, blood inside,
the first question.

—Nina Cortese (my translation)

This is a sad poem with dark images, and Guastavino returns to the more impressionistic style of his early Cernuda settings, with much use of chromatic harmony and a melody that, while lyrical, is not at all tuneful. Considered within the context of Guastavino’s normal melodic style, it is nearly devoid of contour.

The key of B♭ minor is suggested by the key signature and defined largely by melodic means. The piano part opens with a neighbor figure of B♭–C–B♭, and the vocal line features B♭ in such an insistent way that it almost becomes a reciting tone.

Example 16: “La primera pregunta,” 1–13

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The enigmatic opening gesture, with its halting and questioning attitude, seems to represent “the first question” that died in the adolescent’s throat. It is a highly unlikely accompanimental figure, providing no harmonic support and not really defining any tonality. Soon it gives way to a texture with chords in one hand and arpeggiated triplets in the other. This “first question” motive is rather unsettling both tonally and rhythmically. It never begins on the downbeat, and it seems never to finish what it starts, always stopping short on the last beat of a measure instead of continuing until the downbeat of the following measure. Also, it has only a vague tonal meaning; it seems as if it needs one more pitch to give it relevance to any specific key. As it stands, it begins on the tonic but then leaps up to the 7th degree and descends to the 6th degree. Only at the very end of the song does the motive finally complete its descending line. Instead of ending on the G♭, it continues to descend and lands on fifth scale degree F on the downbeat of the next measure, a moment that is immensely satisfying after the listener has been left hanging so many times, metrically and tonally speaking.

Example 17: “La primera pregunta,” mm. 53–61

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

With this conclusive descent to F, Guastavino once again ends a song on the dominant. In keeping with the impressionist style of the song, however, the chord is not a triad, but open fifths built on F.

For a composer who says the only authentic music is “perfectly tonal,” these examples come close to falling outside his own definition of music. They are not “perfectly tonal,” but rather are at times marginally tonal, somewhat modal, and violently bi-tonal—hardly what one expects from Guastavino. This is a little-known but essential part of his aesthetic identity, one that is rarely seen on account of the overwhelming dominance of his popular-style works in the consciousness of listeners and critics.

In the previous examples we have seen that Guastavino uses various means to define the tonic. A feature common in his explicitly tonal music is a delayed presentation of the tonic. Gaustavino withheld the tonic for an extended time in “Violetas,” but that song had the additional complication of a somewhat ambiguous tonal definition—it was unclear whether the “C-ness” of the beginning was a dominant or tonic “C-ness.” In many other songs, the tonality is clearly implied from the beginning, but there is no cadence on the tonic chord until later in the work. This phenomenon is not limited to his songs, but appears also in many of his instrumental works and is one of the signatures of Guastavino’s style.

One of the nicest examples of “tonic delay” is found in the song, “Cantilena” (Ballad), the second song the Tres canciones on poems of José Iglesias de la Casa (1748–1791), one of only two non-contemporary poets Guastavino used in his songs. (The other was Francisco de Quevedo y Villegas, 1580–1645). Here, Guastavino finds reason in the poem to delay the appearance of the tonic chord.

Cantilena
Ballad

Por esta selva umbrosa
busqué anoche a mi amado:
busquéle congojosa;
¡Ay triste! y no le he hallado
antes que el sol dorado
con sus rayos brillantes
alumbre estas campañas,
despierte los amantes,
cercaré las cabanas
de los demás pastores
buscando a mis amores
con un ansia importuna;
por si le esconde alguna
zagala codiciosa
que envidie mi fortuna.
No quedará al fin cosa
que mi pasión celosa
no la haya registrado
hasta que halle a mi amado;
que en esta selva umbrosa
anoche busqué ansiosa
¡Ay triste! y no le he hallado.

In this shady forest
Last night I looked for my beloved:
I looked for him in anguish;
Ay, sadness! And I did not find him
before the golden sun
with its brilliant rays
would illuminate these countrysides,
awake the lovers,
I will surround the cabins
of the other shepherds
Looking for my loves
with a troublesome anxiety;
in case some greedy shepherdess
jealous of my fortune
is hiding him.
There is no end to what
my jealous passion
would do until I find my beloved;
hasta que halle a mi amado;
who in this shady forest
I looked for anxiously last night.
Ay, how sad! and I did not find him.

There are a few ways in which Guastavino reflects the girl’s desperate search for her lover in the music. First of all, unlike most of his songs, this one has no piano introduction; the voice begins immediately, suggesting the urgency of her search. The futility of the search is symbolized by the arching shape of the primary motive of the song; she always ends up back where she began, without her lover. We can see this in the first two vocal phrases, as well as in the interior voice of the left hand in the piano in mm. 3–5, which starts on G, ascends to E and goes back down to G again.

Example 18: “Cantilena,” mm. 1–6

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The more subtle musical illustration of the poem, however, is in the harmony. The key is F♯-minor, but throughout most of the song it is only suggested. The strongest hint of F♯ in the first half of the song comes in the voice part in mm. 21–23. Here the melody emphasizes the first and fifth scale degrees, F♯ and C♯, but then the song goes to tonal region of the (minor) dominant C♯ for the next several bars.

Example 19: “Cantilena,” mm. 19–26

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

In a wonderful manipulation of harmony for poetic purposes, Guastavino withholds the tonic until measure 44, where the poem says “hasta que halle a mi amado” (“until I find my beloved”); we do not arrive at home harmonically until she has found her beloved. There is finally a cadence on F♯ on the word “amado” (beloved) in m. 44, but even so, it is weakened by its metric placement on beat 2 of the bar. After all, she did not really find her lover, she only said there was nothing she would not do until she found him. This being the case, Guastavino does not allow us to enjoy the tonic for long, switching right back to the opening arch-like gestures without giving the singer so much as an 8th rest (or even a breathmark) before resuming the search for her lover.

Example 20: “Cantilena,” mm. 40–47

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Incidentally, Guastavino does end the song on the tonic chord in spite of the fact that the girl’s fruitless search might have suggested that he not provide such pleasant harmonic closure.

“Préstame tu pañuelito” is another song in which Guastavino delays cadencing on the tonic. Stylistically and chronologically, it belongs to the second song period (1963–1975), but I choose to discuss it here since it is relevant to the topic at hand. This is a simple setting of a beautiful and sad poem. Benarós creates lovely images of the handkerchief, the tears and the relationship between the two. First, the handkerchief dries the man’s tears, then the tears wash the handkerchief, and finally the tears water the flowers embroidered on the handkerchief.

Préstame tu pañuelito,
para secarme los ojos,
porque llorando me vi
por tus desdenes y antojos.
Ay, ay de mí. llorando por ti.
Préstame tu pañuelito,
que yo te lo lavaré
con lágrimas de mis ojos,
de nieve lo dejaré.
Ay, ay de mí, penando por ti.
Préstame tu pañuelito,
que tiene flores bordadas,
que yo te las regaré
con mis lágrimas lloradas.
Ay, ay de mí, ausente sin ti.

Loan me your little handkerchief,
so I can dry my tears,
because I saw myself crying
because of your disdains and whims.
Oh, what shall I do? weeping for you.
Loan me your little handkerchief,
and I will wash it for you
with tears from my eyes,
I will leave it like snow.
Oh, what shall I do, suffering for you.
Loan me your little handkerchief,
which has embroidered flowers
that I will water
with my tears.
Oh, what shall I do, absent without you.

Coming from the second song period, a time when Guastavino was writing most of his songs in a simpler, more popular style than what we have seen so far, the tonic is not really in doubt here the way it was in “Violetas” or “Donde habite el olvido,” for example. Like many of the songs where he withholds tonic, Guastavino begins on a rather unstable chord (in this case a iv9). As soon as we reach measures 5–6, however, the tonic chord of F minor is clearly implied by its dominant, a C major chord. He avoids the tonic here and in measure 9, though, by deceptive resolutions of the dominant, going to a iv7 in m. 7, and a ii7 in m. 9. The tonic arrives in m. 13 with a V7-i cadence, but here its effect is weakened somewhat by the presence of the supertonic G in the tonic chord (m. 13), as well as the fact that there was no leading tone (E♮) in the dominant chord leading up to it in m. 12.

Example 21: “Préstame tu pañuelito,” mm. 1–13

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Incidentally, the sonority found in m. 13—a tonic chord with added 2nd scale degree—is the one with which he ends the song, perhaps a musical realization of the pain suffered by the poem’s protagonist.

There is finally a perfect authentic cadence at the beginning of the second verse in m. 33, without any non-chord tones, with a complete V7 chord that resolves with proper voice leading.

Example 22: “Préstame tu pañuelito,” mm. 28–34

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The Guastavinian Melody

Perhaps Guastavino’s greatest gift was his melodic facility. If there is one characteristic in his music that endears him to performers and audiences more than any other, it is the unending supply of beautiful melodies. His melodic style changes according to the texts with which he is working, but it is unfailingly lyrical, flattering to the voice, and sensitive at all times to the structure and contents of the text. He avoids the extreme reaches of the voice’s range, making it easier for the singer to project the text clearly. He generally avoids writing long melismas, as these also impede intelligible delivery of the poem. When he strays from these tendencies, he invariably does so for expressive purposes.

A fine example of the composer adapting his melodic style to the poetic environment is “El vaso” (The Vase). This is a beautiful and sad poem by one of the most famous poets of Chile, Gabriela Mistral (1889–1957). In the first part of his career, Guastavino set a number of her poems to music, including the Seis canciones de cuna (Six Cradle Songs, 1943). “El vaso” is a single song, written in 1942 but not published until 1961. The poem tells about a woman whose husband has died, and who dreams about putting his ashes in a simple clay urn of her own making. The urn will substitute for her cheeks, as his ashes brush against its walls. She does not want a vase of gold, but a humble vase made from the clay by the river. The vase will represent the simple purity of her love for him. Guastavino constructs a perfect musical equivalent of this simple earthen vase, writing a melody and accompaniment devoid of pretension. The music is simple and four-square with no syncopation, which is rare for Guastavino even in pieces without obvious nationalistic traits. The bass line moves in straight quarter notes, while the voice part moves in even eighths and quarters. The vocal line has mostly stepwise motion and regular periodic phrase structure.

Example 23: “El vaso,” mm.1–6

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Many of Guastavino’s melodies are marked by simplicity, but they also have subtleties that reveal his expertise at melodic writing. In “Anhelo” (“Desire”), for example, there is not only careful phrase structure, but also a wonderful unpredictability to the melodic lines.

Anhelo
Desire

Quisiera hacer de mi vida
un farolcito de aldea
ser en ella labrador
o ser maestro de escuela
si labrador que me alumbren
las estrellas de mi huerta
si maestro las sonrisas
de unas caritas morenas
Que mi huerta esté en el valle,
Que esté en el valle mi escuela.
Aunque mi casa en la
cumbre no tenga techo
ni tenga puertas
Quisiera hacer de mi vida
un farolcito de aldea
de día no alumbrar nada
de noche ser una estrella.

I'd like my life to be like
a little village lantern
to be in it a worker
or to be a school teacher
If a worker, let the stars
of my garden illuminate me
if a teacher, the smiles
of some little dark faces.
May my garden be in the valley,
may my school be in the valley, too.
Even though my house may not have
a roof on top
or have doors
I'd like my life to be like
a little village lantern
By day not lighting anything
by night, being a star.

—Domingo Zerpa (my translation)

Written in 1942, this is one of Guastavino’s earliest songs, but it was not published until 1951. It has a wonderful simplicity of melody and harmony, a smooth flowing quality to the melody, and a gentle, rocking inner voice in the left hand of the piano. All of these traits match the desire expressed in the poem, a simple wish to make a difference in the life of a village, either as a school teacher or a worker in the fields. The meter is a broad, pastoral-sounding 6
4, with hemiola in effect nearly throughout between the right and left hands of the piano. In the melody there is an alternation between 6
4 and 3
2 meters from one measure to the next.

Guastavino’s melodic lyricism is at its finest here, and it is nearly identical to what we will see as the typical melodic style in his second song period. It is tuneful, rooted firmly in tonality, with syllabic text-setting and mostly stepwise motion. Rhythmically, it relies on the typical folk-music phenomenon of hemiola. There is no real break for the singer from beginning to end, yet the melody still sounds relaxed and does not present any special breathing difficulties.

He is also careful with the phrase structure of the song, building the melodic phrases up to the song’s climax in a wavelike fashion. First, many of the individual phrases have an arched shape. Secondly, there is a rise and fall in register from one phrase to the next. It does not begin low and ascend phrase-by-phrase until the climax, but instead rises and falls unpredictably until suddenly the climax, defined by dynamics and register, is upon the listener.

The phrases proceed in two-measure units. The first unit (mm. 3–4) is in the lower register, and the second unit (mm. 5–6) rises a third higher. The accompaniment also provides a sweeping ascent below the voice here (mm. 5–6), with a slightly dissonant series of parallel chords that follow the voice, but do not double it. Guastavino also writes a wonderful countermelody here, as the interior voice of the left hand continues ascending until the end of m. 6, after which the right hand takes up the line and extends it until the end of m. 7, where it follows the voice in parallel thirds for the last three notes of the bar.

Example 24: “Anhelo,” mm. 1–10

© Copyright 1951, 1963 by Editorial Argentina de Música. International Copyright Secured. All rights owned and controlled exclusively by Southern Music Publishing Co., Inc. for Japan and the Western Hemisphere. Reprinted by Permission.

The next few phrases emphasize the middle part of the voice’s range, then in m. 15 he begins the ascent to the song’s melodic climax. The high note of the song is F, and on the approach to that pitch Guastavino sets it up first by reaching the E just below it as an escape tone in m. 13. Then the next phrase (mm. 15–18) ends on the high E, leading inevitably to the high F, to which the voice leaps dramatically from the C a fourth below it, followed closely by an equally dramatic leap in the piano part marked forte with a crescendo. He then repeats the climactic phrase almost verbatim in the next two measures before settling into a transitional passage that leads to a reprise of the opening material.

Example 25: “Anhelo,” mm. 14–22

© Copyright 1951, 1963 by Editorial Argentina de Música. International Copyright Secured. All rights owned and controlled exclusively by Southern Music Publishing Co., Inc. for Japan and the Western Hemisphere. Reprinted by Permission.

Along with the careful structuring of climax and judicious use of register, there is also a subtle rhythmic unpredictability that is wonderful in this song. For example, the composer sets up a predictable alternation of 6
4 and 3
2 meter in the melody, a common feature in Latin-American folk and popular music. But in a particularly nice piece of text-setting, he puts an unexpected rhythm on the word “Labrador” that not only slightly undermines the feeling of 6
4 meter in that measure, but also keeps the melody from becoming “sing-songy” and predictable (in the way that Medieval pieces in rhythmic mode 1 often do, for example). Instead of giving the first syllable of “Labrador” a half note, as one would expect, he gives it a quarter, while the second syllable has a half-note. He also breaks the pattern of alternating meters for one bar in m. 9, which should be in 3
2 according to the pattern, but is instead in 6
4 while the next bar is in 3
2. (See Example 24 m. 1–10)

As mentioned in passing during the discussion of “Jardín antiguo,” Guastavino’s melodies are unfailingly lyrical and mostly diatonic, especially when the accompaniments have gone tonally far afield. This is an important quality, one that endears singers to a composer and gives them something to grasp in difficult passages. In places where the harmony is simply chromatic (but not bitonal or atonal), it may not be strictly necessary to keep the voice part simple, but it is always helpful to the singer. Such is the case in “Elegía” (“Elegy”), from the Seven Songs on Poems of Rafael Alberti (1946). In mm. 95–104, the piano part has a series of chromatic secondary dominants and diminished seventh chords, while the vocal line has no accidentals at all, making it easy for the singer to stay on pitch.

Example 26: “Elegía,” mm. 95–104

Copyright 1975 by Editorial Lagos. Reprinted by permission.

Guastavino and Early Music

Many of Guastavino’s works have features that suggest an interest in early music.¹⁷⁰ For example, he often uses church modes in his works, either harmonically or melodically. Initially, he says he did so without realizing it, but in at least some of his songs, he employed modes intentionally because “the modes produce special kinds of atmospheres, at times archaic, at times mysterious, that charm and move me.”¹⁷¹ In “Se equivocó la paloma,” we will see in a later discussion that he effects the Aeolian mode simply by failing to raise the 7th scale degree where it would normally be raised in tonal music. The harmonic result is that what would be “V” chords are in fact “v” chords. In “La rosa y el sauce,” a song that is largely in the Dorian mode (with a final of F♯), not only does he raise the 6th scale degree to D♯, but he goes to the trouble of writing courtesy ♮ signs in places where performers might be tempted to raise the 7th scale degree, making sure that modal ambience remains intact. Modes are what gives much of Guastavino’s music its haunting quality. As a composer who was not interested in modern techniques (apart from the few we saw in the first part of chapter 5), he turned to elements of early music to give his works something of a non-traditional sound.

Guastavino also made frequent use of baroque techniques, especially imitative counterpoint. One of his finest achievements as a composer of instrumental music is the finale of the Sonata in C♯ minor for solo piano (1947), in which he uses the melody of the folk song “Viniendo de chilecito” as the subject of an energetic and well-executed fugue. (He would later make an arrangement for voice and piano of “Viniendo de Chilecito” in Cuatro canciones argentinas, 1949.) Interestingly, nearly every time he writes a fugue, the subject is an Argentine folk song; to cite a few examples, he wrote fugues for chorus on the traditional songs “Arroz con leche,” “Margarita,” and “La torre en guardia.”¹⁷²

In addition to these formal displays of baroque style, there are countless examples of fleeting references to it, mostly in the use of brief passages of imitative counterpoint. We saw this repeatedly in “Se equivocó la paloma,” where the piano reliably countered each vocal statement of the words “se equivocaba” with an instrumental echo of the motive associated with that text.

An example that combines several elements of early music is “La palomita” (The little dove), written in 1950 and premiered in the same year by Victoria de los Angeles.¹⁷³ This is the first of the Tres canciones on verses by the Spanish poet José Iglesias de la Casa (1748–1791). As mentioned earlier in discussing “Cantilena,” this poet is one of only two non-20th-century poets Guastavino used. Given that fact, it is not surprising that the composer would resort to techniques of earlier music in setting his poetry, but in this case he goes a bit too far back into music history. José Iglesias de la Casa belongs firmly to the classical era chronologically, yet Guastavino uses elements of renaissance and medieval music in the song. One should not be troubled by this, however, since neither of the other Iglesias de la Casa settings show signs of early music. Evidently there was something in the text of “La palomita” that triggered the early-music response, not an a priori commitment to early music based on the poet’s chronological place in history.

La palomita
The Little Dove

Una paloma blanca
como la nieve
me ha picado en el alma,
mucho me duele.
Dulce paloma,
¿como pretendes
herir el alma
de quien te quiere?
Tu pico hermoso
brindó placeres;
pero en mi pecho
picó cual sierpe.
Pues dime, ingrata,
¿por qué pretendes
volverme males
dándote bienes?
¡Ah! Nadie fíe
de aves aleves,
que a aquel que halagan
mucho más hieren.
Una paloma blanca
como la nieve
me ha picado en el ama,
mucho me duele.

A dove, white
like the snow
has pricked me in the soul,
it hurts me very much.
Sweet dove,
what do you mean by
wounding the soul
of someone who loves you?
Your beautiful beak
offered pleasures;
but in my breast
it bit like a snake.
So tell me, ungrateful one,
what do you mean by
repaying my goodness
with bad?
Ah! Don’t anyone trust
young birds,
who most wound
whoever shows them the most affection.
A dove, white
like the snow
has pricked me in the soul,
it hurts me very much.

This is yet another poem in which birds are symbolic of larger issues. In “Se equivocó la paloma” (Rafael Alberti), the dove represented either the confused person in exile or the rebuffed lover, depending on one’s interpretation. In “Pájaro muerto” (Luis Cernuda), the dead bird represented the uselessness late in life of suffering the pain of love in earlier days. Here, the dove represents the innocent-looking girl who casually wounds a faithful and earnest suitor.

The beginning of “La palomita” is extremely odd. The piano introduction is a forceful exclamation emphasizing the open fifths of G–D, and featuring ascending and descending parallel fifths in the manner of improvised medieval polyphony.¹⁷⁴ Although the key signature has two flats, suggesting the key of G minor, Guastavino consistently raises the 6th scale degree (from E♭ to E♮), evidently for the same reason as in medieval times, to avoid producing diminished fifths. With E♮, each fifth remains perfect as it ascends and descends, and the result is a passage in G-Dorian mode. In mm. 5–6, he transposes the same material down a fourth to D and cancels both the E♭ and the B♭ in the key signature, producing the D-Dorian mode.

Example 27: “La palomita,” mm. 1–6

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The most striking feature of this passage, though, is the syncopation in the piano part. Rhythmically, there is a distinct lack of correlation between what is written and what the listener hears. It sounds as if the anacrusis is actually the downbeat. This is inevitable, since the first point of reference the listener has is the syncopated figure, which played by itself does not sound syncopated. Even when Guastavino introduces accented bass notes right on the beats in m. 7–8 (see example 5.39), it sounds as if the bass notes are syncopated instead of the open fifths held across the bar lines in the upper part of the piano. In example 5.36, I have re-aligned the music so that it corresponds visually to the way I perceive it aurally.

Example 28: “La palomita,” mm. 1–2, re-barred

As often happens in Guastavino’s songs, there is a marked contrast between the song’s piano introduction and the beginning of the verses. When the voice enters in measure 10, there begins a new section, one where the meter is clearly defined and the accompaniment moves in slow, serene chords. Note how Guastavino defines the modal environment in m. 12, not only by raising the 6th degree (E♭ to E♮), but also by placing a courtesy (♮) sign next to the F in the left hand on beat three, making sure that the pianist does not turn the chord into a dominant harmony.

Example 29: “La palomita,” mm. 7–15

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

What gives this section its aura of early music is the vocal line. The vocal line’s opening gesture, for example, is the type of figure common in renaissance polyphonic vocal music, beginning on the final of the mode and leaping upward by a perfect fifth. The voice also begins with one of the archetypal rhythmic mottos of the 16th century, one used ubiquitously in the popular Parisian chansons of the 1520s and 30s, and later in the instrumental canzonas

of Giovanni Gabrieli and others: . This rhythmic motive was so common that it is known as the “typical canzona rhythm.”¹⁷⁵ Shown here is an example from a Parisian chanson by Claudin de Sermisy (ca. 1490–1562).

Example 30: Claudin de Sermisy, Tant que vivray, mm. 1–9

From the Norton Anthology of Western Music, vol. 1, fourth edition, ed. by Claude Palisca. (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1996).

Note how each phrase begins with this “long-short-short” rhythm, the same one Guastavino uses in the opening vocal phrase shown above. (In fact, Guastavino’s melody has the same rhythms as Sermisy’s for the first eight notes of the song, only diminished by one-half.)

The accompanimental chords of the first section of “La palomita” soon give way to a four-voice polyphonic texture as the second stanza of text approaches. The way Guastavino uses short motives in sequential repetition suggests baroque music, but there is still a modal quality to the song that speaks more of the renaissance. It is difficult to tell which era Guastavino wishes to evoke, as he seems to cultivate a hodgepodge of different ancient styles. Perhaps it is not as important to know precisely which era he is using as it is to recognize that he is evoking Early Music writ large. The composer builds on one motive in particular, a rhythmic motive that might be viewed as a diminished version of the opening long-short-short rhythm of the vocal line:

This motive appears in various melodic configurations. He either strings a few of them together in upper- or lower-neighbor figures (mm. 12 and 15—see Example 29) or uses a single one in a descending scale (m. 14—see Example 29).

The fact that he has already developed this motive in brief melismatic passages for the voice makes the appearance of a long melisma in mm. 27–28 seem natural enough musically, but of course Guastavino never writes a long melisma for its own sake; appropriately, this melisma occurs on the word “serpent” (“sierpe”), and not only does it sound “snaky,” but it also sounds like the sort of passage one would hear in a baroque opera aria, imitated by the piano in the next two bars as a baroque orchestra would undoubtedly have done.

Example 31: “La palomita,” mm. 25–32

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The vocal phrasing of the song also has a baroque feeling to it, an insistent quality that is unusual for this composer. For example, the melody in mm. 13–15 (see example 29) seems strange for Guastavino in that he does not give the singer a break where the comma falls after “alma,” but instead keeps driving ahead to the cadence. It is still not a long phrase and so is not very difficult to sustain; it is simply unusual for Guastavino’s melodies to have this sense of urgency to continue. This is even more apparent in mm. 25–28 of the example just given.

Soon Guastavino brings back the syncopated piano part from the introduction, but this time it is joined by the voice, which is singing right on the beats, without any syncopation. It seems as though this would help keep the listener anchored in the proper metrical position, but it still sounds as if the parts simply do not line up correctly. Beginning in m. 36, the voice could not be more clearly positioned in  meter, but someone listening to the song without the score might think the singer began a half-beat too late.

Example 32: “La palomita,” mm. 33–39

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

In the last stanza of the song, a textual reprise of the first stanza, Guastavino brings back the same melody he used originally, but this time he reinforces the feeling of medieval music by changing the accompaniment. In mm. 10–15, he used a chordal, tertiary style appropriate for either renaissance or early baroque music, but at the end of the song he supports the same melody with an accompaniment of parallel fifths and octaves.

Example 33: “La palomita,” mm. 43–57

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

There is only one recording of this song available commercially,¹⁷⁶ and on that recording the performers clearly interpret the song’s style as pertaining to the Baroque era. My own instinct is to think it has more to do with the Middle Ages and Renaissance when it comes to tonality (or modality), but I can also see Baroque elements in the melodic lines. Margot Peres-Reyna and Georges Rabol seize upon the Baroque qualities of the song and exaggerate them, much to the composer’s annoyance. There are several places where the accompanist adds baroque-style trills, and both the singer and accompanist treat the 8th 16th 16th rhythm rhythmic motive as if it were written dotted rhythms, giving it the feeling of a French-style overture. They also slow the tempo down considerably for any part of the song that does not have the syncopated fanfare-like piano part, even though there is no indication to do so in the score. This was all outrageous to Guastavino, as he wrote in a letter to Douglas Crowder. Although he did not mention this song specifically, I am almost certain this was the song that offended him most. I have listened to all of the songs with scores in hand, and “La palomita” has by far the most egregious deviations from the score. The composer says,

Unfortunately, this disc is worthless in the musical sense. The performers are said to be professionals, but in reality they do not show it: They don’t respect what is written, they capriciously alter the rhythms, even within a single song, all of the songs are taken too quickly and the piano accompanist scandalously alters the written part. Given the apparent limitation of the extension of the soprano’s voice, they have transposed many songs to adapt them to her range, and so all of the climaxes are on the same notes, which makes it tiring and monotonous to hear. Really a deplorable recording. I think that these alterations were done trying to give a popular Latin-American picturesqueness to the songs. In any event, it’s a shame…I knew that they were doing [the recording], since a French friend of mine, don André Bornhauser, had told me, and receiving it was the greatest frustration and disappointment of my life. But I am comforted in the fact that other compact discs are arriving done by people with good taste.¹⁷⁷

My impression upon listening to “La palomita” for the first time was that the opening had some sort of folk influence, with its use of open intervals and syncopation. I thought that perhaps this was a rare example of his using indigenous music as a compositional inspiration. Based on other evidence in the song, however, I decided that it had more to do with the Medieval and Renaissance Western art music tradition. These concepts are not mutually exclusive, however. Many folk musics of the world still have features similar to those of Western European Medieval sacred and secular music, such as the use of parallel fifths in polyphony.¹⁷⁸ In “El labrador y el pobre” (“The worker and the poor man,” published in 1954), Guastavino combines elements of both Medieval music and folk music, or perhaps simply of ancient Latin-American folk music. The anonymous poem comes from a Spanish Romancero.

El labrador y el pobre
The worker and the poor man

El labrador y el pobre
Caminaba un labrador
tres horas antes del día
y se encontró con un pobre
que muy cansado venía.
El labrador se apeaba
y el pobre se montaría
Le llevó para su casa
y de cenar le daría
de tres panes de centeno,
porque de otro no tenía;
cada bocado que echaba
de trigo se le volvía.
A eso de la medianoche
que el labrador no dormía,
se levantaba en silencio
por ver lo que el pobre hacía.
Lo estaban crucificando,
lo estaban crucificando:
La cruz por cama tenía,
La cruz por cama tenía
¡Oh, quién lo hubiera sabido!
Yo mi cama le daría.

The worker and the poor man
A worker was walking
three hours before dawn
and he encountered a poor man
coming who was very tired.
The worker dismounted
And the poor man mounted.
He carried him to his house
and he gave him to eat
three penny loaves of bread
because he had nothing else;
every mouthful he threw down
came back to him made of wheat.
At around midnight
since the worker wasn’t sleeping,
he got up in silence
to see what the poor man was doing.
They were crucifying him,
They were crucifying him:
the cross was his bed,
he had a cross for a bed.
Oh! Who would have known it!
I gave him my bed.

Inspired by the old anonymous romance, Guastavino made a setting that evokes medieval music with its modal harmonic structure (consistent use of C♯ makes it Dorian mode for most of the song), and its emphasis on perfect intervals in both hands of the piano. The vocal line has a folkloric profile, with modal scale structure, antecedent/consequent phrases, and galloping rhythms in 6
8 meter with frequent hemiola effects.

Example 34: “El labrador y el pobre,” mm. 1–13

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

It has the sort of awkward dissonance common in medieval music, as well. This is partly on account of the accented non-chord tones in the bass (practically instantaneous echoes of the ornaments in the right hand), and partly because of the strange sound of the parallel voice leading. Notice how in mm. 7–8 of the previous example, the piano accompaniment lags behind the voice in changing harmonies. One would expect the accompaniment to change chords on the strong beats of the bar, but here it slides into each chord change an 8th note later than the voice. The delay is even more pronounced because of the non-chord tones at the bottom of every chord that resolve down to the root of the chord. It sounds almost as if the sound is echoing off of a wall and arriving after the initial sound has already moved on.

The song is cast in an AABC form. Beginning in the second verse (second A section), the piano part has imitative counterpoint, taking up the melody of vocal line a measure later and a fifth higher. Since Guastavino had already established the E-Dorian mode by using C♯s earlier in the song, the use of C♯ here in the canonic imitation is not surprising. In addition to conforming to the Dorian mode, it means that the imitation at the fifth is “real,” rather than tonal imitation. Also, the harmony changes in this section from quartal (or quintal) to tertian, and the left hand also gains rhythmic stability, with chords landing on the strong beats instead of lagging behind the voice part.

Example 35: “El labrador y el pobre,” mm. 18–26

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

These examples show that Guastavino uses elements of early music in a way that is referential, rather than scientific, and sometimes in conjunction with elements of folklore. In “La palomita,” one could interpret various passages as references to music of at least three different eras—Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque—making it difficult to know exactly what he is seeking, considering that the text comes from the latter half of the 18th century. In “El labrador y el pobre,” he is clearly trying to evoke the style and spirit of the early Spanish or Latin-American romance, with folk-like rhythms and melodies, as well as primitive-sounding polyphony in parallel fifths. Yet in the same song he also uses a technique more often associated with música culta, canonic imitation at the fifth. Examples abound where Guastavino makes such references, especially in his use of modes, and in these two songs we have examples of what the composer does most often in his evocations of early music.

Influence of Opera

Italian opera has had an enormous presence in Argentina for over two hundred years. Add to this the fact that Guastavino worked in the early 1940s as a rehearsal accompanist at the Teatro Colón, one of the grandest opera houses in the world, and it is not surprising that one finds elements of opera in many of his songs. Most often it amounts to no more than a brief recitative-like passage near the end of a song, such as we saw in “Cita.” Other songs with short recitatives include “Donde habite el olvido,” “El labrador y el pobre,” “Jardín de amores,” “Piececitos,” “Se equivocó la paloma,” “El prisionero,” and “Pájaro muerto.”

A particularly charming example of this is seen in “Dones sencillos” (“Simple Gifts”). This is the third of the Tres canciones on poems by José Iglesias de la Casa, a collection written in 1950 and published in 1952. “Dones sencillos” is a sweet poem about the little gifts that a child gives to his parent in daily life. The boy Alexi gives his mother two turtle doves he found in a nest or a basket of fresh apples, and in return she gives him a little jar of honey (and more if she has something better). The sweetest honeycomb for her taste is simply to see the face of her little shepherd. There is a short recitative-like passage on the last verse of text:

Luego que en mis brazos
ve que lo he cogido
se ríe; y me dice…
mas no, no lo digo.

Later as in my arms
he sees that I’ve gotten him
he laughs; and he says…
but no, I’m not going to tell.

At the last moment, the mother decides to keep his words a secret, but while she is deciding, Guastavino represents her train of thought musically with an instrumental and vocal recitative. The beginning of the recitative is marked by the typical harmonic gesture, as the piano pauses on the dominant seventh chord. The tempo changes from “Andante” to “Lento,” and the piano plays a two-measure improvisatory phrase, as if deciding what to do next. Still in the slow tempo, the mother makes up her mind and sings what sounds like an operatic cliché on the words “mas no,” (“but no,”). One could as easily imagine a Wagnerian character in a decisive dramatic moment singing, “Ach, nein!” and having his line punctuated by the same halting accompaniment. Once made, the decision is final as the music resumes the original tempo and style, a Schumann-esque texture with sixteenth notes in the right hand, simple quarter notes in the left, and a tuneful melody in an interior third voice.

Example 36: “Dones sencillos,” mm. 47–60

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

In “La rosa y el sauce” (“The Rose and the Willow,” 1942), there is a passage where the melodic profile, register, text, and accompaniment all combine to make the music sound more like part of an Italian opera aria than an art song. This is a rare example where Guastavino indulges in vocal dramatics.

La rosa y el sauce
The rose and the willow

La rosa se iba abriendo
abrazada al sauce.
¡El árbol apasionado
la amaba tanto!
Pero una niña coqueta
se la ha robado
y el sauce desconsolado
la está llorando.

The rose was opening
As it embraced the willow.
The impassioned tree
loved her so!
But a vain little girl
has stolen the rose away
and the disconsolate willow
is weeping for it.

—Francisco Silva (my translation)

Here is Francisco Silva’s explanation as to why a weeping willow weeps. It is mourning a lost love. A silly girl has picked its flower, and in its grief, it weeps. This type of metaphorical poem is reminiscent of the aria texts from Italian opera seria of the eighteenth century. (If it had been cast in da capo form, one could easily imagine a heroic figure singing this song as a reflective aria after his lover has been stolen away or killed.) Guastavino seizes upon lines three and four of the poem and sets them in such a way that it allows the singer to open up the voice and hit a high note on just the right word, “apasionado” (“impassioned”). True to his reserved personality, though, Guastavino does not dwell on the passionate feelings. The high note is not nearly as high as it might be, and the moment does not last long. For a tenor or a soprano, the F♯ does not nearly reach the limit of the range, and almost as soon as it arrives, it is gone. It is a fleeting moment of operatic-style drama prompted by the willow’s passion for its rose. For this brief moment, however, Guastavino builds the drama perfectly. The previous vocal phrase, containing the first two lines of text, is set entirely in the lower register of the voice, ranging from middle C up a minor sixth to A, with a dynamic level of piano.

Example 37: “La rosa y el sauce,” mm. 6–11

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

He begins the “operatic” phrase in m. 13 on C♯, a major third higher than the highest note of the previous phrase. He builds tension by holding the C♯ out in a crescendo before leaping upward to F♯. While the voice part has a dynamic marking of mf, without a crescendo, the singer almost automatically swells anyway since the piano part is growing so loud with its crescendo and accented tones in both hands. Also, a singer’s natural instinct when singing the word “apasionado” will be to do so in an impassioned way, even though in the very next phrase Guastavino asks for restraint, when the word is repeated sequentially at the dynamic level of piano without a breath.

Example 38: “La rosa y el sauce,” mm. 12–17

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Occasionally a song shows more than a passing reference to operatic conventions. “Déjame esta voz” (“Leave me this Voice,” 1944), another of Guastavino’s Luis Cernuda settings, has clear allusions to opera in both its style and its structure. Incidentally, the song is dedicated to Gerard Souzay, and as such is the only example in more than 150 published songs where the vocal line is written in the bass clef. Operatic elements are obvious from the first measure, as Guastavino’s performance indication says, “With a certain freedom, in the manner of a recitative.”¹⁷⁹ The piano part is marked by passages of improvisatory 16th notes in octaves, punctuated by chords when the voice is present. Even without Guastavino’s directions, any performer would see the music and immediately know that this is a recitative.

Example 39: “Déjame esta voz,” mm. 1–6

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Not surprisingly, the recitative is followed by what could be called an “aria.” In m. 29 the meter changes from 2
4 to 6
8, and the tempo marking changes from “free” to a measured “Andante.” The music at this point has clear folk references in the use of zamba rhythms, and the harmonic environment is modal rather than tonal (B♭-Aeolian). This is apparently a prison song, as the protagonist says that he has drowned his friends and now sleeps where he will never awake.

Example 40: “Déjame esta voz,” mm. 24–32

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The folk ambience of the song is strengthened as we discover at the end that the accompaniment has really been a “guitar” throughout the song. In m. 54 the voice sings, “give me the guitar so I can drown my tears,” and there follows a passage similar to that in the opening recitative, with improvisatory 16th notes in octaves, followed by a series of crisp strummed chords.

Example 41: “Déjame esta voz,” mm. 54–62

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

This is similar to what one hears in much Spanish guitar music of folk origin, especially flamenco music—passages of rapid scales followed by strummed chords. Now, a guitarist could never play these passages in octaves as it appears in the piano score. Instead of writing monophonic lines as the guitarist would play, Guastavino has adapts the style to the piano in nearly the same way as Isaac Albéniz (1860–1909); he doubles the line at the octave, making it idiomatic to the piano while still imitating the guitar. When Albéniz wrote “guitar music,” however, he normally doubled the melodic line two octaves away, such as in this passage from “Asturias,” in which melodies in an improvisatory style, doubled two octaves away, are punctuated by chords at the end of each phrase.

Example 42: Isaac Albéniz: “Asturias,” from Suite española, Op. 47, mm. 63–78

“Déjame esta voz,” then, can be understood as an imitation of both operatic conventions (in the use of the recitative/aria formal design) and a nationalist expression in its allusion to the style of the guitar. The next section is devoted more specifically to nationalism, and in it we will see examples of pianistic interpretation of the guitar and other folk instruments.

Text-Music Relationship

In the following section I will look at the various ways in which Guastavino’s music relates to the texts he is setting. In presenting a separate section on the text-music relationship, I do not want to imply that examples from the previous section are not also intimately related to issues of text-music relations. Of course, in nearly every case, whether it be a passage of bi-tonality, ambiguous tonality, or impressionistic colorings, Guastavino was not simply reaching into a bag of compositional tools for the sake of showing stylistic diversity, he was reacting to ideas, sentiments, and images presented to him in the poems. In stressing the technical aspects of these examples, I meant only to show that his harmonic means are more sophisticated than is generally believed, and that they sometimes push the boundaries of what he himself has defined as “music.”

The present section will deal with examples that fall well within the parameters of Guastavino’s “authentic music” stylistically, but which show especially fine handling of the music in response to text. This does not refer only to “text painting,” which often amounts to gratuitous musical clichés, but rather to a broad range of musical responses to poetic images that includes text painting, evocation of historical eras or geographical locations, and the creation of musical environments that reflect the poetry in more subtle ways.

There are many examples, but one of the finest is “Cita,” on a poem by Lorenzo Varela. One of his earliest songs, it was written and published in 1943, and dedicated to pianist Rudolf Firkusny. Firkusny was one of the first internationally renowned artists to take an interest in Guastavino’s music. The composer also dedicated to Firkusny the third of his Tres sonatinas for piano solo (No. 3, “Danza”). Guastavino and Firkusny met in 1943 when the pianist was in Buenos Aires to give concerts. He is reported to have performed Guastavino’s music often in subsequent years.¹⁸⁰ However, searching the archives of the New York Times, I found that Firkusny gave a concert in New York every year from 1943–1948, yet he never played any of Guastavino’s works on a concert program there during that time.

The only information the Diccionario de la Literatura Española has about the poet Lorenzo Varela is that he is “one of the young Spanish poets who, due to the Civil War or for some other reason, lives in exile in America.”¹⁸¹

Cita
Date

Te espero en el mediodía, amiga.
Por el camino del río,
a la sombra de la encina.
Llámame si estoy dormido, amiga.
Que hace mucho que no cierro
los ojos por verte, niña.
Y es muy traidora esta sombra,
soleada, de la encina.
Y al otro lado del río
duerme el ganado entre brisas
de los trigales y olivos, niña.
Y ya sueño tu pañuelo
sobre mi frente dormida.
Y las cigarras ensayan
sus coros en las encinas.
Te espero en el mediodía, amiga.
Dile a tu madre que vas
a lavarte la camisa,
y que el río está impaciente
esperándote en la orilla.

I wait for you at midday, amiga.
Along the river road,
In the shade of the oak tree.
Call me if I’m asleep, amiga.
Since for a long time I haven’t closed
my eyes so I can see you, niña.
And this oak’s shade is very traitorous
when the sun hits it.
And on the other side of the river
sleeps the conquered among breezes
of the wheat fields and olive trees, niña.
And already I dream your handkerchief
over my sleeping forehead.
And the cicadas are practicing
their choruses en the oak trees.
I await you in the noon hour, amiga.
Tell your mother that you are going
to wash your blouse,
and that the river is impatient
waiting for you on the shore.

—Lorenzo Varela (my translation)

The theme that seems to interest Guastavino the most in this poem is that of lethargy and languor. There is a sense of idleness, drowsiness, and dreaminess about the boy in the poem. As he waits for his girlfriend, everything around him is conspiring to put him to sleep so that he might end up missing her: it is midday, the traditional siesta time; the “traitorous shade” of the oak tree on a warm day makes him perhaps a little too comfortable; the river flows by unhurriedly, and gentle breezes caress him luxuriously. Plus, in fear that he would miss her, he has forced himself to stay awake, making it even more difficult to do so. The dreamy quality of the poem might also be a reflection of the boy’s state of mind whenever he thinks of his beloved. We are not even certain that he knows the girl in question. He might simply be waiting under the oak tree to catch a glimpse of the girl with whom he is infatuated, knowing that she passes by at that hour every day on her way home from school. My instinct is to interpret “Cita” as a situation of unfulfilled longing in the manner of courtly love. The boy is not only sleepy, but is also in a rapturous daze as he dreams about the girl and hopes to see her, naively imagines that she might wake him up as she goes by so that he does not miss her.

In the piano introduction one can hear a number of things that perfectly reflect the environment of the poem. The 6
4 meter and a tempo marking of “Andantino” give the music a lazy breadth appropriate for siesta time. We can hear the flowing river in the right hand, with its gentle, unhurried arpeggiations. There is a gradually descending profile to the right hand that could be heard as the boy’s slow descent into slumber. There is also an ambling quality to the pitch patterns of the right hand, suggesting a certain laziness or lack of focus in the protagonist. In the left hand, Guastavino further sets the scene by calling upon the traditional musical symbol for pastoral settings, open-fifth pedal tones.¹⁸² Guastavino does this often enough that it might even be called a “fingerprint” of his style, an appropriate one considering how often his songs have themes of nature. Adding to the lethargic quality of the music is the nearly total lack of movement in the left hand of the piano for the first part of the song. This is true as it pertains both to rhythm and to harmony. The fifths E–B are sustained for long durations, and when they are re-articulated (at least for the first few measures), it happens on weak beats, helping to obscure the meter. The harmony seems never to change, staying on an E-major chord for measures on end. There are non-chord tones in the right-hand figurations (F♯ and C♯), but the fundamental harmony is E-major. It only changes for a short time in mm. 23–28, where an A♯ is introduced to suggest the secondary dominant chord of F♯. Even so, the low Es keep sounding in the bass as a constant drone. Staying on the same harmony for such a long time in the presence of water is reminiscent of Wagner’s never-ending E♭ chord at the beginning of Das Rheingold.

Example 43: “Cita,” mm. 1–6

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Like much of Guastavino’s early music, this song has a markedly impressionistic quality. He uses a pentatonic scale in the accompaniment for most of the song (E–F♯–G♯–B–C♯), and the notes are sustained so that their sounds blend together into a colorful wash of sound. One might interpret the ambling right-hand music not as simply a musical representation of the lethargic atmosphere of the poem, but as a more specific reference to the river. Stretching this idea even further, the right hand might represent the river, while the nearly stationary left hand represents the boy sitting under the oak tree. Whatever one’s interpretation, the effect is the same. Guastavino has created a musical atmosphere of tranquility and lethargy.

The voice part also has a flowing quality that suggests the river, not only in its gentle contours, but also in the composer’s frequent use of two-note melismas. Such melismas serve to keep the rhythmic activity of the melody at a consistent level, while at the same time allowing Guastavino to let the text declamation unfold at the proper pace, with correct accentuation.

Example 44: “Cita,” mm. 10–14

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

In the second section of the song he introduces an element that gives greater rhythmic regularity to the left hand of the accompaniment, a gentle echo in the tenor register. This change in the accompaniment occurs as the poem shifts focus to what is happening on the other side of the river. The added element not only helps define the meter, but also adds sweetness to the harmony since it provides the third of the tonic chord, G♯. (Note that the harmony still has not changed from E major. and even in the section from mm. 23–28 when he goes to the key area of F♯- major, there is still an E pedal tone.) Even as he adds metric stability in the left hand, however, he takes it away in the right hand. Furthering the sense that the boy in the poem is in a dazed slumber (or to the river imagery, depending on interpretation), Guastavino creates a fluid pattern in the right hand that consists of five-note groups,¹⁸³ each marked off by an ascending diad with upward stems. Since there are only five notes in each group, the ascending diad of either G♯–B or A–B falls at a different place in the measure each time it occurs, thereby obscuring the sense of meter in the right hand, even as the left hand continues its lazy, yet clear articulation of the 6
4 meter.

Example 45: “Cita,” mm. 17–19

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Guastavino changes the style of the right hand for the first time in the song in measure 25, from flowing eighth notes to a series of gentle, rocking dissonances. He sets up these little clashes in the previous two measures by changing the ascending melodic diads mentioned earlier from G♯–B or A–B, to A♯–B. In measure 25, when he presents the pitches simultaneously instead of consecutively, it seems like a natural musical development, but there is also a textual reason for the change in style. The voice enters at the end of the bar, and that is when we realize that the dissonant diads are really “the cicadas practicing their choruses in the oak trees.” (Note also the continued use of two-note melismas in mm. 23–24 and 26–27.)

Example 46: “Cita,” mm. 23–28

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

There is one other moment in the song where Guastavino engages in word painting (as opposed to the sort of environmental evocation we have seen thus far). With a wonderfully subtle touch, Guastavino renders the moment in which the boy tells his girlfriend to call out to him if he is asleep. When the word “llámame” (“call me”) is uttered in measure 9, the right hand of the piano stops its pattern for a moment, as if to suggest that the boy has just been roused from his slumber. However, realizing that she is still not there, he says, “If I am sleeping” (“si estoy dormido”) and falls right back into his blissful slumber as the right-hand figurations begin again in the next measure.

Example 47: “Cita,” mm. 7–9

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Like many of Guastavino’s songs, “Cita” has a recitative-like passage near the end. It features declamatory text-setting punctuated by staccato chords on the piano. Guastavino’s musical setting shows that the boy is improvising, apparently trying to think of excuses that might persuade the girl’s mother to let her leave the house and come to see him. Each staccato chord on the piano represents the boy racking his brain for something convincing: “Tell your mother that you’re going […err…uh…let’s see…] to wash your blouse in the river […uh…yeah…] and that the river [read “the boy”] is getting impatient waiting for you on the shore.” The last notes of the song have a wonderful chromatic color. Against an E-major chord he repeats a series of A♯s into “infinity,” a final ambiguous sonority to conclude a song about daydreaming.

Example 48: “Cita,” mm. 32–41

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

“Soneto a la harmonía” (Sonnet to Harmony, 1962), on a poem by Ana María Chouhy Aguirre, is the last song Guastavino wrote before his period of canciones populares, which began the following year. Here, he takes the idea of harmony and uses it to create the environment of the song. The accompaniment is appropriately “vertical,” homophonic, chordal. Instances of word-painting are effected entirely by means of changes in harmony. After going through many unusual harmonic progressions in the key of E♭ minor, he shifts to E♭ major in measure 30 as the poem says, “I live a clean and eager life / and I have hope for the future” (“vivo una vida limpia y afiebrada / y tengo mi esperanza en el futuro”).

Example 49: “Soneto a la harmonía,” mm. 27–31

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The strongest piece of word-painting, however, comes in the very next lines, “in an expression as naïve as it is pure” (“en un gesto así ingenuo y así puro.”), where Guastavino suddenly turns to the purest, most naïve chord of all, C-major, which is sustained for three bars. But it soon vanishes as the poem says, “Oh! fleeting clarity revived” (“¡Ah! fugaz claridad resucitada.”). The clarity of C major is replaced with E♭ major, and there follows a passage of very little harmonic clarity—a series of major chords with little or no relationship to one another en route back to the home key of E♭.

Example 50: “Soneto a la harmonía,” mm. 32–40

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Text and Music: Images of Death

The theme of death arises in a number of Guastavino’s songs. The composer represents death in a number of ways. One way is by drawing on a traditional musical representation of death, the descending chromatic scale. Ever since Henry Purcell wrote “Dido’s Lament” (1689), and well before that with works such as John Dowland’s Forlorn Hope Fancy (for solo lute, ca. 1600), the descending chromatic line has been synonymous with death, mourning, and loss.

Example 51: John Dowland, Forlorn Hope Fancy, mm. 1–3

One of the songs discussed earlier in relation to tonal ambiguity, “La primera pregunta,” is subtitled “The Dead Adolescent,” and not surprisingly, the music reflects the theme of death. In mm. 34–37, all voices of the texture descend by half-steps as the text says, “where the song has just died, stopped forever…” (“donde acababa de morir el canto, quedada para siempre…”).

Example 52: “La primera pregunta,” mm. 34–39

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

“Pájaro muerto” (“Dead Bird”) comes from the same collection as “Violetas” and “Donde habite el olvido,” the Tres canciones on poems by Luis Cernuda (1945). In this song he combines the descending chromatic line with the slow, solemn, chordal texture associated with the funeral march. The poem says that the inert form of the bird on the ground makes all the glories of his days of flight seem useless, “just as the pain of love seems useless when suffering has fled for the beauty that ages, the urge of light to negate the shadows.” (“Inútil ya todo parece, tale parece / La pena del amor cuando se ha ido / el sufrir por lo bello que envejece, / El afán de la luz que anegan sombras.”) The song begins with a contrapuntal piano introduction, after which it settles into a solemn, funereal accompaniment with chant-like vocal line that emphasizes the stark open fifth of E–B. The descending chromatic line in this example is subtle, occurring in the top line of the chordal texture and only continuing for a short span, from E down to C, skipping the C♯ in the process. In mm. 15–17, however, an interior voice makes the descent of E–D–C♯–C♮–B as the consequence of a chord progression in the key of E minor that goes I–V7/IV–IV–iv–i. In this case, the changing qualities of the chords seems as important as the descending chromatic line; the plagal cadence that is so common in funeral marches is all the more pathetic when a major IV chord turns minor before returning to the tonic.

Example 53: “Pájaro Muerto,” mm. 6–13

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The next example is somewhat cruel, dealing with death and suffering in only an indirect fashion. In the “Lullaby for a naughty boy,” (“Nana del niño malo,” from Siete canciones on poems of Rafael Alberti, 1944), a naughty child is told that bad things will happen to him if he does not go to sleep. He’ll be sent off to the sea, where the winds are howling and the dogs are barking; off to the mountain, where the owl and the sparrow hawk will come from the woods to get him. If he goes to sleep, however, off to the almond tree and the star of mint! Guastavino, normally austere, here shows a sense of humor in the fact that the basic underpinning of the song is a dirge, spelling out the doom that surely awaits the child if he does not go to sleep. The crescendo from piano to forte, as well as the forte marking on the first phrase of the voice part, add to the menacing tone of the opening. The left hand of the piano plays nothing but the alternation of i–IV–i through nearly the entire song. The IV chord is major because the song is in the Dorian mode (with a final of D), and this is one of the rare cases where Guastavino uses a modal key signature instead of simply writing in accidentals to effect modal inflections. The composer indulges in some rather obvious word-painting when the pianist has to play a white-note glissando on the word, “viento” (wind). The glissando has a slightly exotic sound, however, since it begins and ends on D (ascending an octave and a fifth to A in between) thereby defining even more clearly the modal environment of the song.

Example 54: “Nana del niño malo,” mm. 1–5

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

In subsequent measures, Guastavino makes his modal harmonic intentions even more clear by extending the glissando upward by one more pitch to B♮, the one pitch that defines the mode as Dorian. In the final bars, the dirge-like chords stop, and the wind motive has one last appearance, once again spanning the interval of an octave and a major 6th, emphasizing the primary pitches of the Dorian mode. We might assume that since the chords have stopped and the wind motive is broken off halfway, descending only a 6th instead of continuing for another octave, and doing so in 16th notes instead of 32nd notes, that the child has finally gotten the message and fallen asleep.

Example 55: “Nana del niño malo,” mm. 24–27

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Nationalism in the First Song Period

“Yo siento la música argentina, desde chico siento la música argentina. Entonces toda mi producción salió argentina y sale a propósito argentina.”¹⁸⁴

As discussed in chapters three and four, nationalism played an important role in Guastavino’s musical output throughout his career, but in spite of the composer’s statement at the head of this section, its impact is relatively slight on the songs of the first period, from 1939–1962. This is especially true when compared with his instrumental music of the same period and with the songs of the second period. Even though nationalism is not as critical in the early period as, say, impressionism, it is still at least visible in a number of songs. The presence or absence of nationalist elements in the songs from 1939 to 1962 is related largely to the texts of the songs; one hears Argentine musical elements in settings of Argentine poetry, while settings of Spanish or Chilean poetry are stylistically more diverse and tend to lean toward impressionism, as we have seen especially with the settings of Luis Cernuda.

In the handful of early songs that do exhibit nationalism, the nationalist traits take two primary forms. First is the use of characteristic folk rhythms. Guastavino turns most often to the zamba, a moderate-tempo dance in 6
8 meter. One can hear references to the zamba in many of his songs, as well as his extended instrumental works such as the Sonata no. 1 for guitar (1967). Two of Guastavino’s first songs feature rhythms of the zamba, “Arroyito serrano” and “Propósito” (both 1939). These are canciones escolares (school songs) with texts by the composer. The most common rhythms of the zamba are shown in the following example.

Example 56: Characteristic rhythms of the zamba

The zamba also features frequent alternations between measures in 6
8 meter (using one of the rhythmic patterns shown above) and measures emphasizing 3
4 meter, creating the effect of hemiola (sequialtera). The first few measures of “Propósito” illustrate these patterns clearly. In the two-bar piano introduction, the first measure has the characteristic dotted rhythm in 6
8 meter, while the second measure emphasizes 3
4 meter. When the voice begins in measure three, there is a clear hemiola effect in the piano part, as the two inner voices of the piano are in 3
4 meter (emphasized by accents on each beat in the left hand), while the bass line and upper-most melody (voice and piano) are in 6
8 meter. Additionally, the voice line in m. 4 switches to 3
4 meter, while the inner voice in the right hand changes to 6
8, echoing the melody just heard in the previous measure of the voice part.

Example 57: “Propósito,” mm. 1–4

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Another common folk source for Guastavino is the milonga, a dance type whose rhythms mirror those of the Cuban habanera. “Siesta” (1953) is based on the milonga rhythmic pattern, but Guastavino’s handling of the rhythms—using ties to repartition the measures into groupings of 3+3+2—suggests that he might have been thinking more of Cuban music than of Argentine folk music. The poem is by Francisco Silva, who also wrote the texts for “La rosa y el sauce” and “Pueblito, mi pueblo.” The ambience of the poem is reminiscent of “Cita” in its overwhelming spirit of midday idleness. Sights and sounds of daily life are a distant sensation as a young man dozes under a willow and a straw hat. The composer even gives the song a tempo marking of “Lazily, abandoned” (“Perezoso, abandonado”).

Siesta Siesta

Ordinario rosal, trébol reciente. Ordinary rose bush, new clover,

el rumor tan apenas de un carruaje The barely audible sound of a carriage

El patio recogido en el follage The yard covered softly with

de la espesa glicina blandamente. foliage of the thick glycerine.

Un verde sauce añoso A green, grieving willow

dá hospedaje a un holgazán tostado, gives shelter to a tanned idle person,

adolescente. adolescent.

Cuyo gorro de hilo levemente Whose fiber hat lightly

lo aprisiona en un sueño de pillaje. imprisons him in a dream of plunder.

Guastavino picks up on the theme of the dreaminess that overcomes a person as siesta time approaches in the early afternoon. As in “Cita,” Gaustavino reflects this theme harmonically by using dreamy-sounding major- and minor-7th chords freely. Further to this point, on the words “imprisons him in a dream” at the end of the song, Guastavino relies on a portion of the descending whole-tone scale (B–A–G–F♮–E♭), the archetypal emblem of dreaminess.

Example 58: “Siesta,” voice part, mm. 48–52

His use of milonga rhythms in “Siesta” is slightly unconventional, but still recognizable. In the next two examples, note how Guastavino does a variation on the regular pattern, tying the 16th note to beat two of the measure instead of articulating beat two separately.

Example 59: Typical rhythm of the milonga

Example 60: “Siesta,” mm. 5–9. (16ths in bass are tied to following 8ths)

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The aural effect of this variation is that he has repartitioned the measure into a rhythmic grouping of 3+3+2, which in Cuban popular music is known as the trecillo pattern and constitutes one-half of the rhythmic figure associated with the clave.

Example 61: Regrouping of notes in 2
4 meter

The temptation to view this music as having Cuban roots grows when Guastavino begins to tie bass notes across the barlines in mm. 19–28. This is the pattern played by the bass in most variants of the Cuban son. The constant 16th notes in the right hand also point to Cuban popular music, where there is always at least one instrument keeping up a steady pattern against which other rhythmic layers (tumbaos) are syncopated. (In Cuban son, the rhythm guitar and the bongo drums play this part of the texture.)

Example 62: “Siesta,” mm. 20–24

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Whether one views the folk elements in this song as Cuban or Argentine is really immaterial. There is no evidence that Guastavino knew the specific features of Cuban popular dance music, but this type of rhythmic grouping has come to represent the sound of Latin-American dance music in a generic way. In his reference to the milonga, with its close associations with Cuban dance music, Guastavino was perhaps trying to give the siesta hour a seductiveness similar to that of the suggestive Cuban dances on which the music is based.

Another type of nationalistic manifestation is the imitation of folk instruments in the piano accompaniments of his songs. Most often this means the guitar, which was the gaucho’s instrument of choice. Reference to the guitar is a vague nationalist factor at best, however, because the guitar is popular throughout Latin America, Spain, and the United States. He occasionally imitates the sound of other folk instruments, such as the folk harp or the bombo, a typical Latin-American drum, of which we will see examples below.

One of the clearest references to the guitar and the way the gaucho performers used it is found in “El prisionero” (1947). This is a setting of an anonymous text, presumably from a Spanish romancero. It is written in a folk style, although it is not clear to which genre it refers. The piano introduction mirrors the sort of improvised introduction that gaucho performers used in their songs, playing in punteado (plucked) style. Typically, when the voice begins, the accompanimental texture becomes chordal, played in the rasgueado (strummed) style.¹⁸⁵ If the guitar part is not strummed, then the guitarist might play a simple arpeggio pattern instead. This is not only a stylistic tendency, but a technical necessity for all but the most skilled performers. The gauchos accompanied themselves on the guitar. Anyone who has tried to play a polyphonic accompaniment while singing at the same time knows how difficult it is. By changing to a strummed accompaniment, or a simple arpeggio pattern, the performer can focus on singing and avoid the problems that arise when trying to do two complicated tasks at once, such as forgetting the text of the song, or remembering the text but fumbling the guitar part. Simplifying one part makes the other easier to execute. In “El prisionero,” Guastavino gives a nod to this practice when the voice part begins, presenting four chords strummed in the style of the guitar. However, having established that the accompaniment is supposed to be a guitar, he changes it to a sparse texture of non-arpeggiated chords with simple and brief countermelodies. Between stanzas of text, however, the more complicated punteado guitar part returns.

Example 63: “El prisionero,” mm. 5–18

A more abstract reference to the guitar appears in “Pueblito, mi pueblo.” More important than the song’s allusion to the guitar, however, is its sentiment of nostalgia, one of the key forms of Guastavino’s nationalism as discussed in chapter three. Given the song’s importance in Guastavino’s career, the following discussion of “Pueblito, mi pueblo” will be more detailed than that of the previous examples.

Nostalgia as a Nationalist Expression: “Pueblito, mi pueblo”

Pueblito, mi pueblo
Little town, my town

Pueblito, mi pueblo,
extraño tus tardes.
Querido pueblito,
No puedo olvidarte
Cuanta nostalgia ceñida
tengo en el alma esta tarde
¡Ay! Si pudiera otra vez
bajo tus sauces soñar
viendo las nubes que pasan;
y cuando el sol ya se va,
sentir la brisa al pasar,
fragante por los azahares.
Pueblito, mi pueblo.
extraño tus tardes.
Querido pueblito,
No puedo olvidarte

Little town, my town,
I miss your afternoons.
Dear little town,
I can not forget you.
How much clinging nostalgia
I have in my soul this afternoon.
Oh! If I could dream under
your willows again,
watching the clouds that pass by;
and when the sun goes away,
feel the breeze as it passes by,
fragrant with orange blossoms.
Little town, my town
I miss your afternoons.
Dear little town,
I can not forget you.

—Francisco Silva (my translation)

Written in 1941 and published the following year, “Pueblito, mi pueblo” is one of Guastavino’s most successful songs.¹⁸⁶ It is also perhaps the best example in his entire output of the sort of sentimental nostalgia to which he often succumbed. It even has a tempo marking of “Andante nostálgico.” The author of the text, Francisco Silva, was a poet only sporadically, hence the complete lack of references to him in literary dictionaries and histories. He was born December 14, 1915 in Martínez, in the Province of Buenos Aires. He was primarily a theater director, but his close friendship with Carlos Guastavino inspired him to write poetry to be set to music. Their relationship has been described as “very intimate” (“una relación muy intensa,” suggesting that they were probably lovers at one time—see footnote 32), but they separated after a few years and never reconciled their differences. Silva’s poems were the bases of two of Guastavino’s biggest hits (the present song and “La rosa y el sauce”), thus bringing his few verses international exposure. He also wrote the texts for several of Guastavino’s other songs, including “Siesta,” “Paisaje” (“Landscape”), “Canción de Navidad” (“Christmas Song”), and “Campanas” (“Bells”). Also a trained musician, Silva composed unpublished settings of poetry by Luis Cernuda and Federico García Lorca. He died on August 7, 1992.¹⁸⁷

Years after Silva wrote these verses, he became friends with the choral director Carlos Vilo. Vilo relates that one day the poet told him he had written another verse to “Pueblito, mi pueblo,” but that Guastavino had always been opposed to it. He wrote it down for Vilo to keep:

Pueblito, mi pueblo
extraño tus tardes.
Querido pueblito,
no puedo olvidarte.
El polvo en tus callecitas
mi sulky, las casuáridas,
en mi recuerdo otra vez
se vuelven a aquerenciar
con el otoño que viene.
Pueblito querido,
¡qué lejos te has ido!
querido pueblito
no hay donde olvidarte.¹⁸⁸

Little town, my town
I miss your afternoons.
Dear little town,
I can not forget you.
The dust on your little streets,
my carriage, the cassowaries,
fondly they return to
my memory once again
with the autumn that approaches.
Dear little town,
How far away you’ve gone!
Beloved little town,
There’s nowhere I can forget you.

It is unclear why Guastavino objected to the new verse. The tone and form are identical to the first verse, so that to add it to the song would require no changes at all. Perhaps he felt that the song simply did not need a second verse. As it stands, the pacing is good, the length is about the same as most of his other songs (about two-and-one-half minutes), and the listener is left with a feeling of completion because of the textual and musical reprise. As sentimental as Guastavino was, it might have seemed even to him that repeating the entire song with new text would be overkill, especially since the first and last stanzas of the new verse were nearly identical to the ones in the first verse.

The existence of a second verse presented Carlos Vilo with a problem for future performances of the song. Both Guastavino and Silva were close friends of his, and either way he went, one of them would be upset. His solution was to please both men when he could:

In the concerts that I gave with my vocal group in the 1980s, “Pueblito, mi pueblo” was always on the program, because it’s a “classic.” Sometimes I included the second verse. But whether to include it or not was a conflict for me. It used to be that Guastavino and almost all of the poet co-authors came to the concerts: When Guastavino was present and Paco [Francisco Silva] was not, I did not do it. When Paco came and Guastavino did not, I did it. But one day both of them came (it was a large hall and they sat far away from each other). For me, the figure of Guastavino was the more important, and so I did not include the second verse. But the next day Paco called me to ask why they did not sing the second verse. I told him that I had forgotten since for many years I hadn’t done it.¹⁸⁹

Although we know Silva was from Argentina, it is still not clear that he was speaking of any specific Argentine town in “Pueblito, mi pueblo.” This is irrelevant, though, since a certain ambiguity was undoubtedly intentional on the poet’s part. By avoiding specific towns, he lent the poem a universality it might not otherwise have had. It could be any town for which someone yearns while away from it. For Guastavino, the town was probably his childhood home of Santa Fe. Although anyone singing or listening to the song may have a different town in mind, the sentiment is valid for everyone—nostalgia for home and perhaps for happier, simpler times. For those who grew up in the city, it might represent their sense of yearning for a simpler life in a small town where one enjoys the warm breezes in afternoons under the willows.

The music sounds vaguely nationalistic, but it is difficult to point out any features that speak of folk music. Illari points to this song as a perfect example of Guastavino’s “atmospheric” type of nationalist writing. He says these are atmospheres

that whoever knows the folk repertory recognizes as being saturated with associations, but whose ‘folkness’ is difficult to define by musical analysis. A large part of the Guastavino’s production is framed in this variant, which finds a clear example in Pueblito, mi pueblo.¹⁹⁰

Illari says the accompaniment’s rhythms resemble those of the estilo or tonada from the Cuyo region of Argentina, although he acknowledges that it is difficult to say this with certainty.¹⁹¹

Example 64: “Pueblito, mi pueblo” mm. 1–7

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The piano part seems to imitate the guitar, but since the guitar is popular throughout Latin-America, this also is not necessarily a reference to Argentina. ¹⁹² However, the fact that one can not readily associate the musical style with any one genre or country lends the song a broader appeal, so that people almost anywhere could relate easily to the music and claim it as their own. Its popularity is such that there is reportedly not “a child in Argentina who has not sung ‘Pueblito, mi pueblo’ in some vocal arrangement for schools.”¹⁹³ It thus followed a path opposite to that of songs such as Flores argentinas, which Guastavino intended as canciones escolares, but which have been sung more often as canciones de cámara. “Pueblito, mi pueblo” is still sung in concert and has been included on a number of recordings (including those of Ulises Espaillat and Raúl Giménez), but it enjoys its most widespread diffusion among the grade schools of Argentina.

One of the reasons for its success with amateur and school choruses is its musical simplicity. It is cast in an ABA form, where the A section is a refrain. The melodies are also simple and easy to remember, so that one could learn it quickly by ear. It is scored for voice, piano, and an optional 2nd voice. There is also a part for chorus in the return of the A section. Since the original version already incorporated a chorus, it was a small step to arrange the whole song for chorus, which he did in 1951.

The accompaniment is clearly subservient to the vocal part and consists mostly of an arpeggio figure repeated over and over in a rather predictable harmonic progression. It has none of the counterpoint or imitation that we will see in “La rosa y el sauce” or “Se equivocó la paloma,” but the setting fits the text. The poem is a simple utterance of nostalgia, and the composer has set it in a way that anyone could sing. The accompaniment is simple enough that an average pianist could play it, and any folk guitarist could hear the song once and adapt it for guitar on the spot. In other words, it has the qualities of folk music.

Folk Song Settings

A discussion of nationalism in Guastavino’s early song period would not be complete without at least a brief mention of the Cuatro canciones argentinas, a set of folk-song arrangements made by the composer in 1949. Following are the titles of the four songs:

Desde que te conocí (Since I met you)

Viniendo de Chilecito (Coming from Little Chile)

En los surcos del amor (In the furrows of Love)

Mi garganta (My Throat)

According to a note at the bottom of the score, the first, third, and fourth melodies were sung to him by Sra. Yolanda Pérez de Carenzo in the city of Jujuy on August 16, 1941, while the second was sung by a group of young people in Anillaco, in the province of La Rioja in March 1940. The melody of “Viniendo de Chilecito” appears earlier in Guastavino’s output as the subject of a fugue in the finale of his Sonata in C♯ minor for solo piano (1947).

“Desde que te conocí” and “Mi garganta” fall into the category of huayno, a dance/song genre common in Andean regions of Latin America, and one of the only genres of indigenous derivation that Guastavino uses in his music. Both songs have many harp-like flourishes and the same insistent homorhythmic bass pattern in the left hand, modeled on the rhythmic figures of the bombo, a bass drum commonly used in this repertoire. They also use the basic melodic style (including rhythms) associated with the huayno as set forth by Isabel Aretz:

Example 65: Patterns of the huayno¹⁹⁴

In both “Desde que te conocí” and “Mi garganta,” Guastavino’s accompaniment imitates the sound of the Andean instruments that would normally accompany a huayno. The 32nd-note flourishes in the introduction of “Mi garganta,” for example, clearly suggest a folk harp, while the left-hand plays the typical rhythmic pattern of the bombo.

Example 66: “Mi garganta,” mm. 20–27

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The melodies also have the huayno’s characteristic descending pentatonic profile. Note the syncopation of the melody on the words “nada te debía” in m. 30 of “Desde que te conocí,” as well as the consistent mis-accentuation of text. Guastavino hardly ever commits an act of misaccentuation in setting text, so it is clear that in this example he did not change the text underlay of the original folk source. For example, in m. 31 the last syllable of “debía” is emphasized, so that instead of “de-BÍ-a,” we hear “de-bí-A.” Then in m. 34 the same happens with “robaste.” The correct accentuation is “ro-BAS-te,” but this melodic setting shifts the accent to the last syllable: “ro-bas-TE.” This type of misaccentuation is typical of the sung huayno repertory, in which the syncopated rhythmic profile of the melody remains intact regardless of what the text is saying. The arpeggiated bass figures emphasizing fifths and octaves (systematically avoiding the thirds of chords) is also characteristic of the huayno, specifically the part of the bass harp.

This passage also includes a moment where Guastavino’s hand can be seen clearly in the harmony. In measure 35, the meter shifts to 3
4 and, in the context of E♭-minor (or E♭-Dorian), Guastavino writes two chromatic chords descending in parallel motion (G7+♭5 to F7+♭5) followed by the V7 of the key (B♭7), an impressionist-sounding progression that has nothing to do with folk music.

Example 67: “Desde que te conocí,” mm. 29–35

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

There is a similar passage in “Mi garganta” where Guastavino gives his own harmonic stamp to a diatonic folk melody. In this case, one can compare four different harmonizations of melodic fragment belonging to the words, “Esa cholita traidora.” Each time the melody appears, he gives it different harmonic support. The first occurrence is the most chromatic, but just as he gives singers a diatonic melody amidst chromatic passages of a song, here he also presents the melody unaltered in the uppermost voice of the piano, supported by dissonant dominant 9th chords descending in chromatic motion. The final dominant 9th chord on A resolves properly to the tonic D minor on the last beat of m. 18.

Example 68: “Mi garganta,” mm. 12–19

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

When this melody returns in m. 33, it is harmonized in what might be considered the “folk” version, supported by simple tonic and dominant harmonies in D minor. It is then repeated two more times to end the song, and each new harmonization casts the melody in a different light. First he tonicizes the submediant with the progression III—V7/VI—VI, then he returns to the home key via ♭II9—ii—V7—i.

Example 69: “Mi garganta,” mm. 32–40

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Nationalism by Association

As a final thought on nationalism in the first song period, it is appropriate to consider the nationalist aspect of Guastavino’s other “greatest hits,” “Se equivocó la paloma” and “La rosa y el sauce.” These songs have nationalist connotations, but their cases are more complicated than that of “Pueblito, mi pueblo.” The problem is that there is nothing musical in them that speaks of Argentina. Likewise, the texts of the songs have no nationalistic references, not even in the general way that “Pueblito, mi pueblo” does. These two songs have accumulated nationalist connotations simply by their long association with Argentina. They are firmly embedded in the canon of the “national music” of Argentina, that body of works created by Argentine composers that is known throughout the world as being the music of Argentina. “Se equivocó la paloma” and “La rosa y el sauce” appear on nearly every recording of Argentine songs that has been released since they were written in the early 1940s. They have been recorded by Teresa Berganza, Elly Ameling, José Carreras, José Cura, Alfredo Kraus, Raúl Giménez, Gerard Souzay, and Conchita Badía,¹⁹⁵ to name only the most famous. In 1999 Kiri Te Kanawa sang “La rosa y el sauce” as her third encore in recitals in Los Angeles and San Francisco.¹⁹⁶ It is in this way, through performances and recordings by renowned artists around the world, that these two songs have become synonymous with Argentine Art Song, and it is in this sense that they can be considered nationalistic. They represent Argentina to the outside world, although they do not do so in the same way as do the works of Astor Piazzolla, for example, which enchant listeners with sensual stylizations of the Argentine tango. On the contrary, “La rosa y el sauce” and “Se equivocó la paloma” belong firmly within the European art song tradition. Their strong association with Argentina has accumulated since birth, rather than being present at conception.

Toward Popular Success: “Se equivocó la paloma”

Guastavino’s position in the world of twentieth-century music is a strange one. He is a composer in the art music tradition who has had remarkable success with the public. In the next chapter we will see how Guastavino’s style changes in the early 1960s in such a way that one might view his works from that point onward as belonging more to popular music than to art music. The roots of this duality in his music lie in the earliest stages of his development, however, as we will see with the song “Se equivocó la paloma,” which has one of the most interesting stories of all of his songs.

“Se equivocó la paloma” is based on a poem by Rafael Alberti (1902–1999). Alberti was one of the leading Spanish poets of the twentieth century, and although he has been overshadowed somewhat by Federico García Lorca, he was (and is) well respected in his own right. His most important work is considered to be the collection Sobre los angeles (Madrid, 1929). He became a communist in 1931, and his political activities and beliefs were important in shaping the course of his life and works. With his wife María Teresa León he founded the communist journal Octubre in 1934. During the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), he was active on the Republican (or Loyalist) side, fighting against the rebel Nationalist forces of Francisco Franco, whose troops had assassinated Federico García Lorca in 1936. Alberti expressed political views in his poetry as well, especially in collections such as Un fantasma recorre Europa (A Spectre is Haunting Europe, 1933). When Franco gained power in 1939, Alberti began a life in exile, living for a time in France before moving to Buenos Aires in February of 1940. He would not return to Spain until after Franco’s death in 1975. A sentiment of loss and nostalgia pervades much of the poetry Alberti wrote in exile.¹⁹⁷

“La Paloma” comes from the collection Entre el clavel y la espada (Between the Flower and the Sword), a book of poems written between 1939 and 1940 and published in 1940 by Gonzalo Losada in Buenos Aires.¹⁹⁸ The title of the collection reflects Alberti’s ambivalence about his own status as an exile: “…on one side, a dry smell of trampled blood; on the other, an aroma of gardens, of new days dawning, of fresh, strong, inexpugnable life.”¹⁹⁹ Mansilla posits that the “flower” represents America and the “sword” is Alberti’s troubled homeland of Spain.

Guastavino first read Alberti’s poetry in 1940, shortly after the poet arrived in Argentina. According to Mansilla, he liked the brevity and concision with which Alberti synthesized his ideas, as well as the musicality of the verses.²⁰⁰ Guastavino finished setting “La paloma” on September 1, 1941, and it was premiered by Antonieta Silveyra de Lenhardson with Guastavino at the piano just over a month later at the Teatro del Pueblo in Buenos Aires. It was presented under the title “Canción” along with several of his other prize-winning songs.²⁰¹ These were some of the earliest performances of Guastavino’s music, and reviews were generally favorable, as his romantic/nationalistic style was still fashionable in the early 1940s. Ginastera had not yet changed to his more modernistic style, and the avant-garde movement had not really taken hold in Buenos Aires. Evidently Alberti approved of Guastavino’s setting, since the two men appeared at the same event on June 22, 1942, with Alberti reciting his poems and Guastavino performing his songs with singer María de Pini.²⁰² From this point onward, Guastavino appeared frequently as composer/accompanist, performing his own songs and piano music throughout Argentina, so that he became an active participant in the diffusion of his songs. His music soon became a part of the repertoire of other performers, as well. In October of 1942, Esther Plotkin (singer) and Francisco Amicarelli (pianist) included four of Guastavino’s songs on a program of Spanish and Argentine songs in the town of Rosario, among them “Se equivocó la paloma.”²⁰³ The American baritone Aubrey Pankey performed this song at Carnegie Hall in 1944, whereupon the reviewer said, “[Pankey] was especially happy in music of an almost mystical nature, such as ‘Se equivocó la paloma,’ by Carlos Guastavino.”²⁰⁴ “Se equivocó la paloma” has since been recorded and performed by Teresa Berganza, José Carreras, and José Cura, among many others. The song was successful enough in its original version for voice and piano that Guastavino saw fit to make four separate arrangements of it: two pianos (instrumental adaptation, 1952); female chorus and orchestra (1951); SATB chorus (1952); and women’s chorus in three voices, a cappella (1968). Additionally, there is an arrangement for soprano and orchestra by fellow composer (and former critic of Guastavino’s music) Roberto García Morillo, and a more recent version for tenor, guitar, and chamber ensemble by José Cura.²⁰⁵

“Se equivocó la paloma” achieved its most widespread fame, however, thanks to arrangements made by stars in the world of popular music, most notably Joan Manuel Serrat, a Catalán singer who recorded the song in 1969 under the poem’s original title, “La paloma.” It became one of the best-selling songs of its era in Spanish-speaking countries, elevating it nearly to the status of folk music. Invoking theories of Bordieu, Mansilla comments on the role of the performer in transforming the song and making it relevant for a different audience:

[The figure of the performer] is the one who puts the score ‘into action’ and, in these cases, acts as the ‘instance of consecration.’ If the edition published by Ricordi and the inclusion of the song in the repertoire of international singers of chamber music decided its consecration in a determined cultural environment (that of academic music), before the intellectual public, the university community, which had experienced the French May of ’68, the consecratory version was that of Serrat.²⁰⁶

Mansilla views the journey of “Se equivocó la paloma” as a process of “cultural hybridization” in which the song takes on different meanings in its different versions and its different methods of distribution to varying audiences. She argues that no single version is superior to any other, only that they are all different according to their purposes. Even among the several popular versions of the song it acquires different characteristics and nuances with each new artist who sings it, so that it can not simply be seen as having a bifurcated existence as “art song” on the one hand and “pop song” on the other. It is a clear example of a work that has gone well beyond the original s of the author and taken on a life of its own, one that he could never have imagined at the time he wrote the song.²⁰⁷

This characteristic in Guastavino’s music, the fact that it can be adapted successfully for many different artistic purposes, gave him a unique position among Argentine composers, one in which he had his feet in the worlds of both art music and popular music. This gave him what few other composers have had—the ability to make a living from his creations without also serving as a critic, professor, musicologist, or some other position. The fact that he did serve as professor in his later years was not from financial necessity but by his own choice. Roberto García Morillo summarized the situation this way:

What happens is that here we are a little bit composers, at times frankly critics or if not, then people who opine. But for professional reasons, all Argentine composers have been either professors or in institutes or in the critical profession, or rather people who opine. The fact of being able to live from your creation, that doesn’t exist. It doesn’t exist…I believe that in very few cases, very few opportunities…On the other hand, with popular music, yes. And Guastavino has that position, advantageous because he never looked for it. He found it inasmuch as his music awakened a response, and that response was translated into the influx of revenue. So, he was in the most independent and most respected position, proportionally, with the popular musicians.²⁰⁸

García Morillo feels that Guastavino is above all a composer of popular music, given his concentration on small-scale genres and the success that some of his songs and piano pieces have had with the general public. He says, though, that what sets Guastavino apart from other pop composers is the quality of his music. Guastavino writes the same sorts of things as most “pseudo-popular” musicians, only he does it at a much higher level.²⁰⁹ When García Morillo says that Guastavino is a superior composer of popular music, it sounds as if he is both paying him a compliment and demeaning his work at the same time. The fact remains, however, that García Morillo took the considerable trouble to orchestrate three of Guastavino’s songs for a performance at the Teatro Colón. At some level, then, he must be sincere about his regard for Guastavino. We will look now at “Se equivocó la paloma,” one of the songs that gave rise to this “serious vs. popular” debate with relation to Guastavino’s music.

La Paloma The Dove

Se equivocó la paloma,
Se equivocaba.
Por ir al norte, fue al sur.
Creyó que el trigo era agua.
Creyó que el mar era el cielo,
que la noche, la mañana.
Que las estrellas rocío,
que la calor, la nevada.
Que tu falda era tu blusa,
que tu corazón su casa.
(Ella se durmió en la orilla.
Tú, en la cumbre de una rama.)

The dove was mistaken,
He was confused.
To go north, he went south.
He thought the wheat field was water.
He thought the sea was the sky,
that the night was the morning.
That the stars were the dew,
that the heat was the snowfall.
That your skirt was your blouse,
That your heart was his home.
(He fell asleep on the bank.
You, high in a branch.)

—Rafael Alberti²¹⁰

There are numerous possible interpretations of this poem. Given the circumstances of the its composition, a plausible reading is that of Douglas Crowder, who views the disoriented dove as a metaphor for the poet’s mental state: Alberti was a recent exile, torn between feelings of hope and opportunity in his new life in Argentina on the one hand, and his sense of homesickness, loss, and separation on the other.²¹¹ Alberti also uses birds to explore the theme of exile in another poem that Guastavino set to music, “¡A volar!,” from the collection Siete Canciones on poems of Alberti. In that poem, he advises all of the birds living in the pine tree to fly away to the sea before the woodsman cuts it down. In “La paloma,” the dove does not know where he is or which way is up, and is constantly misinterpreting the world around him. Alberti surely had similar feelings on landing in a large new city, still reeling from the Loyalists’ defeat in Spain. Alberti’s quotation cited above concerning the title of the collection (Entre el clavel y la espada) rings just as true in reference to this poem. The choice of a dove as the protagonist of the poem is a pointed one, since migratory birds have an innate sense of direction and only a traumatic event could disrupt its orientation.

Another possible interpretation is that the poem describes a confused lover, one who missteps at every opportunity, saying or doing the wrong thing each time in spite of having the best intentions. This interpretation arises from the lines coming near the end of the poem saying, “that your skirt was your blouse, that your heart was his home.” After several lines of metaphorical descriptions of confusion, this passage is a sudden jolt of reality introducing things having to do not with birds, but with people (i.e. skirt and blouse). With the appearance of a woman, the poet suddenly sounds like a disappointed lover who got his signals crossed. Maybe he interpreted the woman’s friendship as more than it really was, or perhaps what seemed like a serious, long-term relationship to him (he thought he had a home in her heart) turned out to be a momentary diversion for her. Also, in this passage Alberti twice uses the familiar possessive pronoun “tu,” which gives the poem an entirely different tone. Suddenly the poet is addressing a particular woman in an intimate way, and perhaps in so doing he accuses her of causing the dove’s confusion.

In setting “La paloma” to music, Guastavino made a number of changes to the structure of the poem. Specifically, he turned the second line, “Se equivocaba,” into a sort of poetic and musical ostinato. Only after the voice enters do we realize that the piano’s opening motive was really whispering, “Se equivocaba.”

Example 70: “Se equivocó la paloma,” “Se equivocaba” motive

Guastavino uses this motive (or slight variations of it) over and over again, a total of twenty-eight times in the span of a two-minute song. He also takes the liberty of repeating the words “Se equivocaba” seven times in the song, whereas they only appear once in the original poem. With each repetition the dove’s confusion increases, so that when it is repeated twice in mm. 30–35, in the highest register and loudest dynamics of the song, the dove seems to be on the verge of desperation. Sometimes the motive appears in the voice part, after which the piano usually follows in imitative fashion. Guastavino establishes such a strong association between the musical motive and the words “Se equivocaba” that whenever we hear the motive in the piano part, it is nearly impossible not to hear the piano telling us, “He was wrong, he was mistaken, confused.”

Guastavino also represents the dove’s confusion musically, especially in the opening sections where he obscures the 3
4 meter by beaming notes across the bar lines (in measures 1–2 and 5–6), then changing to 2
4 meter for one bar and immediately back to 3
4.

Example 71: “Se equivocó la paloma,” mm. 1–9

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Of course there is also a technical explanation for changing to 2
4 meter in measure six. The word “equivocó” is accented on the final syllable, and instead of holding the B♭ on “-có” for two beats to conform with the prevailing 3
4 meter, he simply changes the meter to fit the rhythm of the text (m. 6, first beat). We know this is true because in the next phrase he uses the same melody but does not switch meters; the word “norte” falls perfectly into the 3
4 meter, so it is unnecessary to change to 2
4.

Example 72: “Se equivocó la paloma,” mm. 10–14

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Guastavino creates tonal ambiguity by using modes, something he claims to have done frequently in his compositions “before even knowing what they were.” Perhaps he felt here that the modal environment, which lacks a strong pull towards the tonic, reflected the surreal world of the dove, who was likewise unsure of his direction. “The modes produce a kind of special atmosphere, sometimes archaic, sometimes mysterious, that move and enchant me…[In] ‘Se equivocó la paloma’ I also use the Dorian, but not in its pure form.”²¹² Although he says he uses Dorian (with a tonal center of G), it is really more like G-Aeolian since he only uses the raised 6th scale degree in one passage. Even then, however, it is still not the Dorian mode since he also uses the leading tone F♯. With the sixth and seventh degrees raised, it is really the G minor scale in its melodic (ascending) form.

Example 73: “Se equivocó la paloma,” mm. 42–46

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Other than in this passage, though, he rarely uses the leading tone F♯, so that many of the cadences have a minor dominant chord that conforms with the Aeolian mode (for example, see mm. 8–9 in Example 71). Even in the climactic part of the song from mm. 32–38, he stays with the minor dominant when the ear accustomed to western music probably wants to hear an F♯instead of F♮ over the dominant pedal tone D.

Example 74: “Se equivocó la paloma,” mm. 30–41

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Although the cadences sound modal in their lack of a leading tone, there is also another delicious element to the cadence in the “Se equivocaba” motive, the use of a minor seventh chord. If he had used an F♯, this chord would have been normal dominant seventh chord, but since he uses F♮, it becomes a minor-seventh chord on the fifth scale degree. (see mm. 8–9 of Example 71, note the v7 chord on D). The effect is that Guastavino adds a bit of color to the harmonic palette, a sound normally associated with impressionism or jazz, but which is firmly within the diatonic mode of the song.

To keep the song interesting, and also perhaps to reflect the dove’s lack of assurance in flight, Guastavino alters the frequency and time intervals between appearances of the “se equivocaba” motive. The song begins with four statements of the motive, but the second is separated from the first by a whole measure, whereas the second, third and fourth appear in rapid succession, without any pauses between them (see mm. 1–6 in Example 71).

The voice enters in m. 6, and whenever it sings, “se equivocaba,” the accompaniment imitates the motive in a variety of ways, usually following it one measure later. In mm. 44–47, the accompaniment waits for the voice to present the motive twice before it echoes twice in response (see example 73). He uses this imitation to increase the sense of confusion, sometimes repeating the motive multiple times in the piano part after the voice says “Se equivocoba.” For example, at the climax of the song in measures 30–39, the voice sings “se equivocaba” twice in the highest register and loudest dynamic level to that point, after which the piano follows in imitation by stating the motive four times in a row, fading to a piano dynamic. (See Example 74, mm. 30–39)

Several elements contribute to the success of “Se equivocó la paloma” as both an art song and a popular song. From the start, Guastavino haunts us with the constant repetition of a simple motive, one that soon acquires text: “se equivocaba.” This motive and its words echo over and over again in the song and in the listener’s mind long after it ends. He seizes upon those two words, “se equivocaba”—which made only the most casual appearance in the original poem—and turns them into the overriding theme of the song, both textually and musically. Also, the text itself is interesting, with opposing elements placed side-by-side in stark contrast to one another. One feels for the dove, a tragic and sympathetic protagonist whose plight is ironic given its usually keen sense of direction. The song is successful as a piece of music because it is simple harmonically, melodically, and structurally, with plenty of repetition. Its simplicity makes the song appealing to general audiences, but it is not so predictable as to alienate more experienced listeners. Time has proven that “Se equivocó la paloma” is an unqualified success in the realm of both música popular and música culta.

Chapter 5: “La manera popular” (1963–1975)

In the early 1960s, Guastavino embarked on a new creative path with respect to songs. We saw in the previous chapter that Guastavino gained international acclaim and popularity with his song “Se equivocó la paloma.” This song, however, was a popular song only in the sense that it became popular through repeated performances in diverse venues and in various arrangements. It was not conceived as a popular song, it simply became one. At the invitation of Barbara Lagos, of Editorial Lagos in Buenos Aires, Guastavino began in 1963 to contribute to a series of songs released under the collective title “Canciones populares.”²¹³

This enterprise was part of a larger musical and literary movement, sometimes called the “Boom del folklore.” From about 1960 to 1970, a sector of the literary and musical world was turning toward the cultivation of a popular style, one that sought to reflect the Argentine cultural heritage, but also to appeal to a mass audience. This happened not only in Argentina, but also in neighboring Chile, where artists such as Violeta Parra (1917–1967) and Victor Jara (1932–1973) helped to establish the nueva canción chilena (Chilean New Song) as an important vehicle of popular and sometimes political expression. The style of the music and poetry was based on rural native folklore, which was in the process of rediscovery during the middle part of the century. A key figure of the corresponding movement in Argentina was Atahualpa Yupanqui (Héctor Roberto Chavero, 1908–1992), who not only collected folk songs and poetry throughout Argentina, but also adopted the humble lifestyle of the campesinos.²¹⁴

Editorial Lagos published songs pertaining to this movement in Argentina, and knowing Guastavino’s gift as a melodist, Barbara Lagos felt that he would be ideal for the composition of songs in a nationalist popular vein. He had already written a number of songs in a markedly popular style, such as “Pueblito, mi pueblo” and “Anhelo,” and much of his music was infused with the spirit of Argentine folklore. It would be natural, then, for him to cultivate this side of his creative impulse further. He wrote to Douglas Crowder, “I was enchanted by the idea of hearing some work of mine sung by the whole public without knowing anything about the author.”²¹⁵

As a composer whose activities up to that time had all been within the world of art music, Guastavino would also bring credibility and prestige to the series. He began setting poems by folklorists such as Atahualpa Yupanqui and León Benarós, and in turn his songs were arranged and performed by folk artists like Eduardo Falú and Mercedes Sosa. Guastavino’s involvement in the movement is different than that of these artists, as he limited his activity to the composition of songs. He did not involve himself in the public displays of nationalist ideology characteristic of the movement. Nevertheless, it is surprising and unusual for an established composer of art music to be associated with such a phenomenon as the “boom del folklore” even in a peripheral way.

Guastavino also wrote dozens of canciones escolares (school songs) during this period, and for the first time he focused on producing extended collections of songs. These include Flores argentinas (12), Pájaros (10), Edad del asombro (9), Quince canciones escolares (15), Los ríos de la mano (10), and Doce canciones populares (12). The songs of these collections defy easy categorization, as the lines between school song, popular song, and art song can be exceedingly blurry. Given the unique function of school songs, these will be considered separately in the next chapter. The rest of the songs will be viewed as belonging to a more-or-less unified group, that of the canción popular.

Poetry in the Second Song Period

The poetry used in Guastavino’s second song period is largely written in a folk or popular style. Atahualpa Yupanqui, Alma García, Guiche Aizenberg, and León Benarós all wrote poems that were ideal for setting to music in the popular style. Generally, each verse of a song text has two stanzas of either four or six lines, after which there is an estribillo (refrain) of varying length. In songs specifically labeled canciones populares, only the first verse of text is written under the melody. The entire poem is printed either before or after the song in its original format, so that the singer can refer to this for the second verse. For these songs, Guastavino normally uses what is known in medieval secular song as bar form. In almost every case, Guastavino is responding to the poetic form, which lends itself perfectly to this structure.²¹⁶ The poetic and musical structure can be represented as aaB, which is repeated for each strophe of the song. Lower-case letters represent musical repeats with new text, while the upper-case letter stands for the refrain, where both music and text are repeated.

Most of the poems are nationalistic in spirit, reflecting the intentions of the poets to cultivate a folkloric style reminiscent of their Argentine heritage. Many poems have what Deborah Schwartz-Kates identifies as a “pathos” that is typical of much gauchesco poetry.²¹⁷ This idea of pathos applies to songs about death, loneliness, lost love, or lost hope, such as “Pampa sola” (“Lonely Plain,” Aizenberg, 1968), “El sampedrino” (“The Man from San Pedro,” Benarós, 1968), and “El forastero” (“The transient,” Yupanqui, 1968). Finally, Guastavino set to music dozens of poems having to do with the wildlife of Argentina. These, too, can be infused with pathos, as in “Elegía para un gorrión” (“Elegy for a Sparrow,” Alma García, 1965) and “Adiós, quebrachito blanco” (“Adiós, white Laurel tree,” Yupanqui, 1963). Other nature songs have a lighter tone, however, and these are the songs with which Gaustavino has become most closely associated. In Flores argentinas and Pájaros, for example, León Benarós pays tribute to the flowers and birds of Argentina in poems that are by turns witty and sentimental.

Benarós (b. 1915) was the single most important poet for Guastavino’s song production in the second period. Benarós is a distinguished member of the Argentine literary community, active in a number of genres. An interest in the history and heritage of Argentina informs nearly all of his work. He is especially concerned with the traditional genre of the romance, having published several romanceros modeled on those of olden days. The romance is a popular narrative genre that originated in 15th-century Spain and survives until the present day in the new world.²¹⁸ It typically relates stories of famous (or infamous) people and political events. Each of Benarós’ romances has a history lesson, and often a moral lesson as well. His first collection, Romances de la tierra (Romances of the Earth) was published in 1950, and it was followed by Romancero argentino (1959), Romances de infierno y cielo: Figuras y episodios nacionales (Romances of Hell and Heaven: National Figures and Episodes,1971), Romances paisanos (1973), and several reissues or compilations of previously published romances. He writes in the traditional octosyllabic lines of the romance, which he says is the popular style that falls most easily on the ears of the public.²¹⁹ Guastavino was not as enamored of the genre as was Benarós (even though he wrote numerous instrumental Romances), but he did set a portion of text from “Cubas, te ha llegado el día (1841),” (“Cubas, your day has come”) a poem from Romances de infierno y cielo. This tells the story of the execution of José Cubas, who was once an elected governor of his town, but who in 1841 was hunted down and executed by the Rosas government. Guastavino selected a tiny portion of the long poem, and set it to music as “Romance de José Cubas” (1965).

The shorter poetry of Benarós is lyrical, descriptive, and sentimental, often dealing with the natural world of Argentina. These are the poems that most captivated Guastavino and inspired his compositions. In his 1962 collection Décimas encadenadas, there are several poems similar to those he would later write for Guastavino, including “Yo he visto un pájaro verde” (“I have seen a green bird”).

Benarós is also a literary critic and an author of popular-style histories. He has written the prologues for a number of novels of historical importance in Argentina, including El Chacho by Eduardo Gutiérrez,²²⁰ for which his prologue serves as a critical study of the work. His histories treat various aspects of Argentina. In El desván de Clio: Personajes, hechos, anécdotas y curiosidades de la historia argentina (Clio’s Attic: People, Facts, Anecdotes and Curiosities of the History of Argentina),²²¹ he gives an informal and amusing history of various aspects of Argentina in the form of brief essays, often dealing with issues that would escape the notice of traditional historians. For example, the eighth essay is a brief history of the official Cathedral post of espantador de perros.²²² The “shoo-er away of dogs” was charged with keeping the vagrant dogs out of the cathedral. It sounds amusing, but was probably a dire necessity, since even today there are thousands of stray dogs running the streets of Buenos Aires, and Benarós reports that the situation was much worse in the early 19th century. In another section, under the title “Rosas burócrata,” Benarós reproduces an official 1832 decree of the Rosas administration setting forth guidelines for the proper margins for departmental letters, including the instructions that all letters are to be signed with the salutation, “Dios guarde muchos años.”²²³ He also wrote a history of the city of Quilmes by looking at institutions and people important in the city’s history. Included are portraits of the city’s volunteer firemen; the Sarmiento public library; writer and nature lover Guillermo Enrique Hudson; doctor, writer, pioneering journalist, director of the national library, and philanthropist José Antonio Wilde; the Quilmes cathedral; and the Quilmes Indians.²²⁴

Guastavino and Benarós collaborated on more than sixty songs, and their works were indeed collaborations. Only a few of the Benarós settings are songs based on pre-existing poetry, including “La tempranera” (1963) and “Romance de José Cubas” (1965). The large majority are joint efforts; Benarós wrote verses with the knowledge that Guastavino would set them to music. This is true for all of their song cycles—Quince canciones escolares (1965), Flores argentinas (1969), Pájaros (1973), and Canciones del alba (1974), as well as the cantata Despedida, a work for baritone, chorus, and orchestra from 1972. Their arts are perfectly matched. Both men have the gift of writing in a style that is immediately intelligible, but which holds up under repeated listenings or readings. Benarós and Guastavino also share a love for Argentina and an interest in its musical and literary folk heritage. While Guastavino’s focus on nationalistic popular-style songs comes relatively late in his career, Benarós had been involved in the stylized revival of rural-folk poetry for a number of years before meeting Guastavino around 1963.

Style and Structure in the Second Song Period

If the first song period was marked by stylistic variety, then the second is distinguished by a comparative uniformity of style. We saw in chapter four that Guastavino’s early songs are influenced by impressionism, early music, nationalism, and occasionally modernism. His stylistic diversity reflects the corresponding diversity of the texts—verses by Spanish surrealists like Alberti and Cernuda, Chilean masters such as Gabriela Mistral and Pablo Neruda, and even amateur Argentine poets like Francisco Silva. In the second song period, Guastavino uses poetry from Argentina almost exclusively, much of which is written in a style meant to approximate poems of Argentine folklore. Given the distinct Argentine flavor of the poetry, Guastavino’s music was either frankly nationalistic or gently colored with Argentine inflections. The one group of songs based on foreign poetry from this period is the Cuatro sonetos de Quevedo, settings of four poems by the Spanish Renaissance poet Francisco de Quevedo y Villegas. Written in 1975, these were Guastavino’s last published compositions before his twelve-year silence. But even these songs on ancient Spanish poetry have stylistic similarities to the canciones populares with which Guastavino was most occupied in the second song period.

In general, these songs are much simpler than those of the first period, corresponding to their “popular” intent. About fifty percent of the songs are in a strophic form that includes a musical and textual refrain after each verse (whereas songs in the first period are more likely to be in through-composed form, or in some type of strophic form without a refrain.) Harmonically, the songs are marked by clearly-defined tonality and minimal use of chromaticism. What chromaticism there is usually appears in the piano introductions instead of the vocal portions of the song. The melodies are tuneful and lyrical, with regular phrase structure. Piano accompaniments are on the whole far simpler than those we saw in Guastavino’s songs from the 1940s and 50s. The textures are thinner, and the composer typically establishes an accompanimental affect—say an arpeggio figure with a certain rhythmic pattern—and uses it throughout the song with little change. Given that most of the songs are in strophic form, the piano part is repeated exactly when the second verse is sung. This is a departure from Guastavino’s earlier practice, where he often incorporated elements of strophic and through-composed form in such a way that there was melodic continuity (if not repetition) from one verse to the next, but a variety of musical affects in the piano accompaniment. One of the consequences of such consistent use of pure strophic form (as opposed to strophic forms that include some variation in the accompaniment and/or melody) is that the music can only express the poetry in a general way, one that is appropriate for all stanzas of text, but is not tailored to any one on a line-by-line or even word-by-word basis. Thus there are fewer instances of word painting in the songs of the second period. Since the refrain has the same text each time, however, it is possible to make more specific musical allusions to textual images there.

All of the songs are based in some measure on folk or popular genres. The most common is the zamba, but he also makes use of the milonga, the cueca, and the vidala. Several are written in the style of what he calls a “canción del litoral” (coastal song). Though the genres vary as to surface details, their underlying structural designs are nearly identical: strophic form with refrain.

This simplicity of style and structure might have been a factor in the quantity of songs Guastavino was able to write from 1963 to 1975. Approximately two-thirds of his songs date from this twelve-year span—nearly 100 songs, compared to around 50 composed in the much longer first period of 1939–1962. Maybe he was simply more interested in songs in the later years, but the simpler style must also have helped him produce them at such a rapid pace.

While many of the songs Guastavino wrote as part of the canciones populares series are clearly popular in style, still more of them hover somewhere between the worlds of popular and art music. This is true not only of those explicitly labeled “popular,” but also of those intended to be art songs. Their position within one realm or the other depends largely upon performance practice and the context of their presentation. When one hears Teresa Berganza singing them with a classically-trained voice and piano accompaniment, they sound like nationalist art songs. Eduardo Falú, on the other hand, casts them in entirely different but equally convincing light. He sings in a deep, rumbling, folk-style voice, and treats the score more as a “chart” (to use jazz terminology) than as a text. Instead of following the score explicitly to realize “the composer’s intentions,” as classically-trained performers normally do, he views the work as a fluid entity subject to re-interpretation with each performance. His guitar-and-voice versions of Guastavino’s songs are not transcriptions for a new medium, but free adaptations executed from a folk singer’s viewpoint. He respects the melodies and harmonies, but changes figurations to suit the guitar and freely adds improvisatory embellishments as he goes along. He has no reservations, either, about adding interludes or extra measures where he feels they are necessary.

The first several canciones populares were published as individual songs, including “La tempranera” (Benarós, 1963), “Adiós, quebrachito blanco” (Yupanqui, 1963), “Milonga de dos hermanos” (Borges, 1963), “El único camino” (Quintana, 1964), “Noches de Santa Fe” (Aizenberg, 1964), “Romance de la delfina” (Aizenberg, 1964), and “Severa Villafañe” (Benarós, 1964). In 1968 he published a collection of twelve, titled Doce canciones populares. Included in this set are some of his most famous second-period songs, such as “Bonita rama de sauce” (Arturo Vázquez), “El sampedrino” (Benarós), and “Mi viña de chapanay” (Benarós).

Guastavino’s canciones populares approximate actual popular music to varying degrees. Those that most closely resemble the practices of popular music have relatively sparse piano parts in which the composer establishes a single accompanimental figure that is repeated continuously throughout the song. Such uniformity in a song accompaniment is something found much less often in songs of the first period. “Romance de la Delfina” (“Romance of the Delfina,” 1964) is subtitled “Canción del litoral.” The poem by Guiche Aizenberg tells the story of Pancho Ramírez, who dies while saving his lover the Delfina from the clutches of the enemy. In this song, Guastavino imitates the sound of the guitar in the right hand of the piano and either a bass instrument or some type of drum in the left hand. The right hand is in 6
8 meter throughout, while the left is in 3
4, thus creating hemiola between them. Also characteristic of the canción del litoral is the consistent way in which the last beat of each measure in the melodic line is tied over to the first beat of the next bar. This adds another layer to the already syncopated rhythmic texture.

Example 75: “Romance de la Delfina,” mm. 1–13

Copyright 1964 by Editorial Lagos. Reprinted by permission.

Formally, this song is slightly more complicated than most of the other canciones populares, but it still follows essentially the same design. It is in strophic form, with each strophe containing an introduction, two stanzas of text and an estribillo, but instead of a simple aaB structure, it has an aabC form, in which C represents the estribillo, or refrain. The poem has two extra lines at the end, which Guastavino sets as a recitative. The complete form is as follows:

First Strophe: | Intro a a b C
Second Strophe: | Intro a a b C (+ recit)

“El sampedrino,” (“The Man from San Pedro,” Benarós, 1968) from Doce canciones populares, has similar characteristics, but a different overall affect. Like “Romance de la delfina,” the piano accompaniment is sparse and limited mostly to a single figuration, a guitar-like arpeggiation between the right and left hands, with a bass line that always plays the same rhythm (dotted quarter-eighth). There is only one measure of piano introduction, after which the form is the usual aaB [repeat].

Example 76: “El sampedrino,” mm. 1–8

Copyright 1968 by Editorial Lagos. Reprinted by permission.

What is interesting about this song is that its “a” section sounds rather bleak and unapologetically folkloric, while the refrain is sweet and sentimental. The different musical styles arise from the poetry. In the verses (“a” sections), the man from San Pedro bemoans the loss of his beloved and the total lack of affection in his life, while in the refrain he dreams of “cool fields of clover, fresh herbs, daisies that belonged to her” (“Trebolares fresquitos, gramilla tierna, margaritas silvestres que fueron de ella…”). He closes the refrain by telling the flowers not to tell her that a cattle merchant has passed by weeping for his loves, indicating that she is of a higher social position than he. Guastavino’s musical setting portrays the differing social strata and the Sampedrino’s state of mind perfectly. The first section is in D minor, with an accompaniment that imitates the guitar, a typical peasant instrument. Its sparse texture also illustrates the loneliness of the Sampedrino. The refrain section switches to D major, and the left hand of the piano continues the pattern set up in the “a” section, but also adds a doubling of the voice part at the octave and sixth above in the right hand. The right hand follows the voice in this way through the whole refrain. The style is reminiscent of the quaint parlor songs of the 19th century appropriate for young ladies to play. (It is even marked “delicadísimo, armonioso”). The accompaniment has also become “piano music” with the introduction of the right-hand thirds doubling the voice. This is important because the piano was the appropriate instrument for young women of the middle class. While the guitar pattern is still present, it sounds more stylized now, only a vague memory in the context of this simple texture idiomatic to the piano. The Sampedrino is in a nostalgic reverie, perhaps imagining his beloved accompanying him on her piano as she once accompanied him in life. The refrain begins in m. 26.

Example 77: “El sampedrino,” mm. 25–32

Copyright 1968 by Editorial Lagos. Reprinted by permission.

Guastavino gives a slightly different treatment to “La tempranera” (“The First Love,” Benarós, 1963). This is a zamba, and while it has the same strophic aaB form as the previous song, it is more sophisticated harmonically and melodically. The piano introduction is highly chromatic and improvisatory, and the voice line is also more chromatic and complex than usual for a canción popular. It is essentially a polyphonic melody, as there are two distinct threads to the line, one hovering around C, and the other descending chromatically from F to C. The two threads are defined by downward leaps at the beginnings of mm. 13–15 and 16–17. Note also that there is much more variety of figuration in the piano accompaniment than the two previous songs had. Guastavino often articulates the strong beats of measures with the right hand and the voice, while letting the left hand fall on unaccented beats in a syncopated fashion (see mm. 11–19). This is a characteristic of many of his songs from this time. The accompaniments tend to be sparse, but they have subtle rhythmic and textural features that make them interesting. Plus, by keeping bass notes on weak beats so often, the left hand stays out of the voice’s way, letting it be heard clearly. An assertive left hand would play on all of the strong beats, but Guastavino’s left hand offers gentle reinforcement and syncopation.

Example 78: “La tempranera,” mm. 1–19

Copyright 1963 by Editorial Lagos. Reprinted by permission.

“La tempranera” is one of the songs in the repertoire of folk singer and guitarist Eduardo Falú, and it was probably his version that was known to the workers in the street that Guastavino heard singing it “many times.”²²⁵ His arrangement for voice and guitar mirrors Guastavino’s original in most respects, although he changes a number of figurations to make it more idiomatic to the guitar and even adds countermelodies. (In general, Falú must have felt that Guastavino’s popular songs were too simple, as his arrangements are typically more difficult than the original scores.)

Though Guastavino often claimed not to have known anything about folklore in the scientific sense (apart from the zamba), he continually shows that he did have some knowledge of each genre’s characteristics, even those to which he only turned once or twice as a composer. For example, in “Vidala del secadal” (“Vidala of the dry places,” poem by Benarós from Doce canciones populares, 1968), he makes clear allusion to the fact that the vidala, a slow song of sadness, traditionally has the accompaniment of a drum called the caja (box), in addition to the guitar.²²⁶ In “Vidala del secadal,” the accompaniment is unusually sparse, owing to the sentiments of loneliness and despair in the poem, and Guastavino alludes to the drum by using gentle, percussive repeated notes in the left hand. The “drum” line sometimes changes registers, but it normally resides in the lower part of the bass staff, as in mm. 7–19, when it is concentrated on the pitches D (mm. 7–14), G (m. 15) and C (mm. 16–17), the most important pitches in the song’s key of G minor.

Example 79: “Vidala del secadal,” mm. 7–19

Copyright 1968 by Editorial Lagos. Reprinted by permission.

“Pampamapa” (“Map of the plains”) goes further toward the stylization of folk sources. This is another song from Doce canciones populares (1968), and is subtitled “Aire de huella.” The huella is a gaucho dance type characterized by a formulaic chord progression of i–VI–III–V7-i. Rhythmically, it relies on an alternation between 6
8 and 3
4 meters, with the guitar strumming in a rasgueado manner. The voice also alternates between these two meters, and it typically begins phrases on the second beat of the 6
8 measure. The following example is taken from a transcription by Isabel Aretz.

Example 80: Huella guitar and voice patterns.²²⁷

Argentine nationalist composer Julián Aguirre (1868–1924) composed a huella for solo piano around 1917 in which he clearly imitates the folk source. He notates it in 2
4 meter instead of 6
8, but compensates by writing triplets that alternate with straight eighth notes, a solution that gives nearly the same effect. In the first measure one can see the use of the typical voice rhythms of the huella given above, in which the voice enters after an eighth rest. He also imitates the sound of the guitar with the repeated chords, although this type of writing sounds very little like the guitar since it does not reproduce the articulation that one gets from strumming a guitar. It ‘looks’ more guitaristic than it actually is.

Example 81: Julián Aguirre, Huella, mm. 1–4

Although it is not seen in this excerpt, Aguirre also uses the characteristic huella harmonic progression, but reinvents it according to the practices found in traditional criollo melodies. Using common criollo modal inflections, he lowers the third, sixth, and seventh scale degrees so that the progression becomes I–♭VI–♭III–V7–I in the key of B♭.²²⁸

In “Pampamapa,” Guastavino stylizes the huella further. Like Aguirre, he notates the music in 2
4 meter and uses triplets to give the effect of 6
8. He establishes this metrical effect in the piano introduction, which has arpeggiated figures instead of repeated chords. This figuration is actually more guitaristic than the one Aguirre uses, as such arpeggios are much easier to play on the guitar than the rapid chords in Aguirre’s Huella. The right hand plays dissonant three-note groups while the left articulates a chord progression of i–iv–v–i (key of C♯-minor), or at least implies the progression by the succession of bass notes. Stacking the pitches up in thirds, the dissonant sonorities are revealed to be minor 9th chords, so that the progression is really i9–iv9–v9–i9.²²⁹ This progression is fairly removed from the traditional pattern of i–VI–III–V–i, so that one must assume either that Guastavino was not aware of the traditional progression—which is plausible given his professed ignorance of folk music—or that he knew about it and decided to use his own progression anyway. In any event, by using 9th chords and voicing them in such a way that there are sharp clashes between chord tones, Guastavino reaches a level of harmonic abstraction not heard in most of his second-period songs.

Example 82: “Pampamapa,” mm. 1–4

Copyright 1968 by Editorial Lagos. Reprinted by permission.

When the voice enters, the accompaniment plays a chordal texture in 2
4 meter, reverting to the arpeggiated triplet figures only at the ends of phrases or during interludes. Also, Guastavino asks for a slower tempo when the voice is present. The instrumental versus vocal sections of the song demonstrate a fluid alternation between fast and slow(er) tempos, between triple and duple subdivisions of the beat, and between arpeggiated and homophonic chords. Harmonically, Guastavino softens the chords in vocal passages, changing from 9th chords in dissonant voicings to minor 7th chords with only the gentlest dissonance. The vocal line has a fairly regular rhythmic pattern. Each phrase begins with one measure of triplets (with a rest on beat one), then continues in regular 2
4 meter.

Example 83: “Pampamapa,” mm. 10–17

Copyright 1968 by Editorial Lagos. Reprinted by permission.

The harmonic language of “Pampamapa” is more complex than that of most of the other canciones populares, but it is still clearly tonal. Like the other songs we have seen, the piano accompaniment is relatively uniform in its patterns, and its formal design largely conforms to expectations, as well: strophic with refrain. The poet Hamlet Lima Quintana makes the traditional textual reference to the genre’s name in the estribillo, saying “A la huella, mi tierra” in the first line of the refrain. Perhaps this was Guastavino’s cue to set the poem in the manner of a huella.²³⁰

The last song in the collection Doce canciones populares is one of Guastavino’s finest in the genre. “Mi viña de Chapanay” (My vineyard of Chapanay) is another of Guastavino’s Benarós settings. The poem is a joyful expression of a vineyard’s caretaker who works all day in the vineyard and never tires of its beauty. Guastavino’s musical setting is full of charm and exuberance. This is a stylized cueca, a genre with many similarities to the zamba. Like the zamba, it has a strong hemiola effect between voice and guitar accompaniment, alternation between 3
4 and 6
8 meters in the melodic line, and use of the same characteristic dotted rhythms as the zamba. The most noticeable difference between the two types is the tempo, which is faster in the cueca. As a consequence, the cueca usually has more measures than the zamba (up to 48 instead of 32), so that the songs end up having approximately the same duration.²³¹ Formally, “Mi viña de Chapanay” follows the aaB [repeat] pattern we have seen in most of the canciones populares.

The most striking feature of this song, and what differentiates is from almost all of Guastavino’s late-period songs, is the wealth and variety of activity in the accompaniment. Thus far we have seen him establish one, or perhaps two figurations in the piano part that serve for an entire song. Here, the piano figurations change frequently and it seems like more of an equal partner in the piece. A particularly nice detail is the use of groups of four 16th-notes as the anacruses in the first two vocal phrases, mm. 10 and 14 (plus the playful A♯ grace note in the right hand in m. 10). This accompaniment is also much more difficult to play than most, requiring considerable acrobatics for example in the left hand of m. 11. Not only does the pianist have to span a wide interval playing a syncopated rhythm very quickly, but he must also play the high B with the left hand between the right-hand fingers, then leap down two octaves for the lower B, all the while playing a lyrical melody in thirds in the right hand.

Example 84: “Mi viña de Chapanay,” mm. 10–17

Copyright 1968 by Editorial Lagos. Reprinted by permission.

Notice the variety of ways in which Guastavino reinforces the voice line here, avoiding the facile and sentimental-sounding method we saw in “El sampedrino,” where he followed it at the octave and sixth through the entire refrain. Here, he starts by doubling it at the octave and the sixth in the right hand in mm. 12–13. In m. 14, the bass and alto parts of the piano follow at the octave and third below, respectively for the first half of the measure, while in the second half it is doubled by the right hand at the third and octave below. There is no doubling at all in m. 15, while the piano doubles the voice in two octaves in m. 16.

One other feature worth mentioning about the melody in m. 16 is the use of a chromatic lower-neighbor tone A♯. This is something Guastavino does frequently enough that it might be called a fingerprint of his style. The piano also has a chromatic lower-neighbor tone (E♯) in m. 14. The most characteristic use of the chromatic lower neighbor is in passages where he plans to cadence on the note being altered. For example, in the first phrase of “Pueblito, mi pueblo,” when he is about to cadence on B, he approaches it with a neighbor group of C♯-B♯-C♯. Similarly, when approaching a cadence on the tonic E, he uses a neighbor group of F♯-E♯-F♯ just before landing on E♮.

Example 85: “Pueblito, mi pueblo,” voice part, mm. 4–5; 10–11

Canciones Escolares

In cultivating the canción escolar, Guastavino joined a list of Argentine composers going back to Julián Aguirre who have devoted at least some of their time to writing quality songs for school children. It was Aguirre who first began to take the task seriously, and the following generations continued in his path.²³² It is safe to say that no other major composer devoted as much time and energy to school songs as Guastavino. He wrote several early in his career, but the most concentrated work on canciones escolares came in the second song period. His collaborative partner for most of the songs was León Benarós, with whom he had developed a close professional relationship beginning in 1963, when Guastavino set a number of his verses in the series of canciones populares. Benarós and Guastavino produced three series of school songs together: 15 Canciones escolares (15 School Songs, 1965), Flores argentinas (Argentine Flowers, 1969), and Pájaros (Birds, 1973). In all, the two men wrote thirty-seven children’s songs together. The other set of children’s songs from this time is Edad del asombro (The Age of Wonder, 1969), to poems by Hamlet Lima Quintana.

It is not clear, however, whether Flores argentinas and Pájaros should be considered canciones escolares, even though Illari does so without comment or qualification. The composer says that he originally conceived both sets as school songs, but that they have been performed by concert artists enough that they are now part of the art song repertory.²³³ The word “escolar” does not appear at any time in the scores of Pájaros and Flores argentinas, and their subject matter is really of a different sort than one finds in the songs expressly labeled “canciones escolares.” The poems are beautiful tributes to the birds and flowers of Argentina. They are not so much instructive as they are poetic and interpretive. The texts of 15 Canciones escolares (also by Benarós), on the other hand, are clearly intended not only to amuse children, but in many cases to educate them. Stylistically, the songs are very similar to the whole series of canciones populares written between 1963 and 1968, with transparent textures, syllabic text-setting, tonal harmony, and strophic forms with refrains, although Guastavino’s use of nationalist musical elements is more subtle and abstract than in the canciones populares.

Apart from the composer’s original intentions and the subsequent paths the songs have taken, the songs of Flores argentinas simply do not sound like children’s songs. First of all, many of the songs are in the minor mode, and the tone is altogether more serious. Only two songs of Flores argentinas, for example, have the light-hearted textual and musical quality normally associated with children’s songs: “Campanilla, a dónde vas?” and “Aromita, flor de tusca.” The melodies have large ranges, many leaps, and sometimes difficult rhythms, and they have the wide ranges of poetic and musical expression more characteristic of art songs than of children’s songs.²³⁴ We might think of Flores argentinas and Pájaros as “stylized” children’s songs, intended for them originally but often too difficult for them to perform.²³⁵ Consequently, Flores argentinas will be considered later as a cycle of art songs rather than here as children’s songs.

The Canción Escolar as a Tool for Socialization

The song is one of the oldest tools of indoctrination, and Guastavino’s songs often have a clear purpose for socialization of children. His first three published works were the canciones escolares “Arroyito serrano,” “Gratitud,” and “Propósito,” all of which date from 1939.²³⁶ In particular, there are passages in “Propósito” that seem like parental propaganda instead of the genuine sentiments of children:

Propósito
Intention

Piedrita que lleva el agua
rodando, rodando,
Piedrita pulida y blanca
Yo quiero ser como tú. ¡Ah!
¡Ah! Quiero siempre seguir adelante
No quedarme tan solo instante
Sin tener nada que hacer, ¡Ah!
¡Ah! Quiero estar siempre
limpio y donoso
Quiero ser un niñito buen mozo,
Quiero parecerme a tí.
Plumita que lleva el viento
Volando, volando,
Plumita que va subiendo,
Yo quiero ser como tú. ¡Ah!
¡Ah! Quiero ser un niñito obediente, Ah! I want to be an obedient little child,
Buen amigo, juicioso, valiente,
Con un grande corazón, Ah!
¡Ah! Quiero siempre sentirme contento
Muy alegre y en todo momento
Quiero parecerme a tí.
La la la la…

Little stone that the water carries
rolling, rolling along,
Little stone, polished and white,
I want to be just like you. Ah!
Ah! I want always to continue forward,
Not to remain even for an instant
Without having anything to do, Ah!
Ah! I always want to be
clean and elegant
I want to be a good little child,
I want to be just like you.
Little feather that the wind carries
Flying, flying along,
Little feather that keeps going higher,
I want to be just like you. Ah!
¡Ah! Quiero ser un niñito obediente, Ah! I want to be an obedient little child,
A good friend, wise, brave,
With a big heart, Ah!
Ah! I always want to feel content,
Very happy and in every moment
I want to be just like you.
La la la la…

Obviously, this text is meant to reinforce the qualities parents value, since few children are so concerned with staying clean and being obedient, for example. One might normally blame the poet, but in this case the poet and composer are the same. Gaustavino himself wrote the texts for his first three songs. After all of the instruction in proper behavior, however, Guastavino writes a whole verse of “La la la la’s” to make sure the children have at least a little bit of carefree fun.

In the 15 Canciones escolares (1965) on poems by León Benarós, several songs are simply “fun” songs, or songs that have no apparent didactic intent. These include “En mi escuela hay un naranjo” (At my school there is an orange tree), “Está lloviendo en mi escuela” (It’s raining at my school), “El pajarito del frío” (The little bird in the cold), “Buen día señor invierno” (Good day, Mr. Winter), and “Ya llegan las vacaciones” (Vacation time is here). But there are also several songs meant to aid in the socialization of children. These deal with the geography and political history of Argentina, and they praise the virtues of various school subjects. In the latter category, two examples are particularly clever: “Química” (Chemistry) and “Me gustan las matemáticas” (I like mathematics).

“Química” is a delightful song that undoubtedly expresses Guastavino’s own sentiments about the subject of chemistry, since his early intention was to be a chemical engineer. He never lost his fascination with chemistry, and visitors to his apartment always remarked on the many glass bottles of liquids and other chemistry accessories that he kept throughout his life. Benarós gave him a poem perfect for promoting the idea that chemistry is exciting, rather than difficult and dull. Note especially the hilarious final line of the refrain, to which my translation does not begin to do justice (“pensando químicamente”):

¡Qué lindo pasear un rato,
siempre que el tiempo me sobre!
Azules están los cielos
como el sulfato de cobre.
Mirando voy mis deberes
por si se escapa algún yerro.
Verdeando se ven las plantas
como el sulfato de hierro.

Desde que química sé,
veo todo diferente.
Camino voy de la escuela
pensando químicamente.

Hidrógeno con oxígeno
terminan formando el agua.
Milagros de Doña Química,
que en todo mete su enagua.
Metales y metaloides,
por igual mi alma los ama.
Es amarillo el azufre
como la flor de retama.

How lovely to go for a little walk,
whenever I have some extra time!
The heavens are blue
Just like copper sulfate.
I check my homework carefully
in case some error escapes me.
The plants are turning green
just like iron sulfate.

Since I know chemistry,
I see everything differently.
I walk away from the school
thinking in terms of chemistry.

Hydrogen and Oxygen
end up making water.
Miracles of Mrs. Chemistry,
who sticks her petticoat into everything.
Metals and metal alloys,
my soul loves them equally.
Sulfer is yellow
like the broom flower.

Although Guastavino was known to be austere and reserved, he was not without a sense of humor. With a tempo marking of “Andante, con elegancia,” he portrays the subject of chemistry as an alluring object of desire by using the syncopated rhythms of the milonga as the basic accompanimental figure. Of course the milonga’s rhythmic pattern is the same as that of the habanera, a notoriously seductive dance made famous to opera audiences in Bizet’s Carmen. If the milonga rhythms of the piano were not enough, however, then the lazy triplets in the voice part and the subtle chromatic shadings throughout the song should suffice to make chemistry sound even more alluring. Note the use of a chromatic passing tone A♯ in m. 6; part of Carmen’s allure lay in the chromaticism of her habanera.

Example 86: “Química” mm. 1–9

Copyright 1965 by Editorial Lagos. Reprinted by permission.

“Me gustan las matemáticas” is a wonderfully clever song, more for its witty text than for the type of ironic musical setting found in “Química.” Math is another notoriously dreaded subject for school children, and Benarós even acknowledges math’s bad reputation in the fourth stanza when he says, “Mrs. Mathematics, you are very nice to me, I do not have to fear you, for I can learn you.” However, both poet and composer give their best effort at making mathematics sound like fun. Particularly humorous are the third and last stanzas, where the child professes his love for prisms and parallelograms, and where he counts Euclid and Pythagoras among his best friends:

Me gustan las matemáticas
I like Mathematics

Me gustan los enteros
me gustan las fracciones
las sumas y las restas,
las multiplicaciones.
Me gustan los segmentos,
los lados y los ángulos,
los triángulos isósceles
igual que los rectángulos.
Los paralelepípedos,
los prismas y los planos,
los amo y los dibujo,
los mido y los comparo.
Señora Matemáticas:
usted me es muy simpática.
Y no la he de temer,
pues la puedo aprender.
Me gustan los quebrados
en muchas situaciones,
y más si son comunes
sus denominadores.
Me gustan las raíces,
me gustan las potencias
porque ellas sirven, útiles
las más profundas ciencias
Yo doy, seguro y rápido,
cocientes y residuos.
Euclides y Pitágoras
son muy amigos míos.

I like wholes,
I like fractions,
addition and subtraction,
multiplication.
I like segments,
sides and angles,
isosceles triangles
and rectangles too.
Parallelograms
prisms and planes,
I love them and I draw them,
I measure them and compare them.
Mrs. Mathematics:
You are very nice to me.
And I don’t have to fear you,
for I can learn you.
I like fractions
in many situations,
and even more if common
are their denominators.
I like roots,
I like exponentials
because they usefully serve
the most profound sciences.
quick and sure, I give
quotients and remainders.
Euclid and Pythagoras
are great friends of mine.

While this song does not have the alluring charm that “Química” has, it is fun to sing and full of witty turns of phrase. The melody features mostly stepwise motion and returns often to the tonic pitch F, making it easy for children to sing. Also, each phrase begins with the same rhythms on the words, “Me gustan los…” One phrase in the A section (of an ABA form) ends with a melodic gesture familiar to American children as part of the song “B-I-N-G-O,” about a dog named Bingo. It is a cadential phrase that for me should carry the words “and Bingo was his name-o.” Here, the words are “las multiplicaciones” (mm. 7–8) and “los mido y los comparo” (16–17).

Example 87: “Me gustan las matemáticas,” mm. 4–9

Copyright 1965 by Editorial Lagos. Reprinted by permission.

Besides trying to spread enthusiasm for math and chemistry, the 15 Canciones escolares also reveal an interest in educating children in Argentina’s history and geography. These sorts of instructional songs could be effective since they do not overburden the students with information, but rather associate a single idea with each political figure, one achievement by which he will be remembered. For example, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (president of Argentina from 1868–1874) was known as the schoolmaster president for his profound influence on the school system of Argentina. He founded and directed his first school in 1842, and his presidential administration not only built more than a thousand schools, but it also instituted reforms and teaching colleges on a national scale, bringing young American school teachers to Argentina to help prepare his teachers to take positions in the new schools. Additionally, he built public libraries and founded the Academy of Exact Sciences and the Astronomical Observatory.²³⁷ León Benarós summarizes these accomplishments in a single poem, the title of which is itself enough to give children a lasting memory of what Sarmiento²³⁸ did for them:

Sarmiento fundaba escuelas
Sarmiento Founded Schools

Sarmiento fundaba escuelas,
sembraba cuantas podía.
En la mitad de los campos
o en la ciudad las ponía.
Milagros de su cartilla,
en tiempos de Avellaneda.
Sus escuelas han quedado.
El tiempo, rueda que rueda…

Los niños de tus escuelas
no te echarán al olvido,
pues tú pensaste en nosotros
Sarmiento, prócer querido.

Sarmiento fundaba escuelas
cuando ya era presidente.
Semillas que él iba echando
com patriota ferviente.
Escuelas en los poblados.
También escuelas rurales.
Y a la patria dio maestros
con sus escuelas normales.

Sarmiento founded schools,
he sowed as many as he could.
In the middle of the countryside
or in the city he placed them.
Miracles of his primer,
in the days of Avellaneda.
Your schools have remained.
Time, roll, roll onward…

The children of your schools
will never forget you,
since you thought about us,
Sarmiento, beloved statesman.

Sarmiento founded schools,
when he was already president.
Seeds that he went throwing
as a fervent patriot.
Schools in populated areas.
And rural schools too.
And he gave the country teachers
with his teaching colleges.

Another song with a history lesson is “Belgrano nos dio bandera” (“Belgrano gave us a flag”), which tells the story of how in 1812 Manuel Belgrano, a patriot and intellectual inspired by the democratic ideas of Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau, made a flag that was at first rejected but later adopted by the Congress of Tucumán in 1816.²³⁹ While the main goal of the song seems to be instructive, there is also an element of patriotic propaganda in the refrain, as it establishes the idea that the flag (i.e. the country) is something for which people should be willing to pay the ultimate price:

Banderita de Belgrano,
¿dónde andarás escondida?
Si yo pudiera encontrarte
te rendiría mi vida.

Little flag of Belgrano,
where will you go hidden away?
If I were able to find you,
I would surrender my life to you.

Guastavino sets the poem in a style with obvious folkloric intent, using the same elements he did in the popular song “Romance de la delfina,” namely an overall 6
8 meter with a steady 3
4 meter in the bass, plus many melodic notes held across the barlines.

Example 88: “Belgrano nos dio bandera,” mm. 10–14

Copyright 1965 by Editorial Lagos. Reprinted by permission.

In “El viaje de papel” (“The paper journey”), Benarós captures the wonder of students leafing through their geography books and taking a virtual tour of the highlights of Argentina: lake Nahuel Huapl, the spectacular Iguazú Falls, the southern pampas (plains), and the vegetable and cotton fields. Despite my reservations about calling Flores argentinas and Pájaros “canciones escolares,” these also serve a didactic purpose, if only to familiarize students with the names of the native flowers and birds of Argentina.

The Canción Escolar as Diversion: “Arroyito serrano”

A number of Guastavino’s canciones escolares serve no higher purpose than giving children nice songs to sing. This is true of several songs from 15 Canciones escolares (“Está lloviendo en mi escuela” and “Ya llegan las vacaciones”), as well as the entire set of Edad del asombro, but we can also find an excellent example in his very first published song, “Arroyito serrano” (Little mountain stream, 1939), one of three canciones escolares with which Guastavino launched his career as a composer (the others, mentioned earlier, are “Propósito” and “Gratitud”). Mansilla notes that “Arroyito serrano” was “approved by the National Counsel on Education,”²⁴⁰ and all three of these early songs are unusual in that Guastavino wrote the texts himself.²⁴¹ In the following section I will look at “Arroyito serrano” as a typical example of his “fun” canciones escolares.

Arroyito serrano
Little mountain stream

Arroyito serrano
Que vienes bajando hacia el llano,
Agua clarita traes
Perfume de miel y de hazahares.
Corre arroyito
Canta que canta
Como un pajarito,
Sigue adelante
Limpio y fresquito
Canta y corre más.
La, la la la, etc.
Todas las mañanitas
Me llama tu canto lejano.
Vengo corriendo a verte,
Querido arroyito serrano.
Corre arroyito
Canta que canta
Como un pajarito,
Sigue adelante
Limpio y fresquito
Canta y corre más.
La la la la, etc.

Little mountain stream
Who comes flowing down to the plains
Clear water, you bring the
Perfume of honey and orange blossoms.
Run, little stream
Sing, may you sing
Like a little bird,
Keep on going
Clean and cool
Sing and run some more.
La la la la, etc.
Early every morning
Your distant song calls me.
I come running to see you,
Dear little mountain stream.
Run, little stream
Sing, may you sing
Like a little bird,
Keep on going
Clean and cool
Sing and run some more.
La la la la, etc.

This is the sort of “nature” text with which Guastavino became associated throughout his career. Curiously, he uses the same device in this poem that he criticized in the verses of other canciones escolares, the diminutive word ending. Crowder reports that when he began writing canciones escolares, Guastavino was dissatisfied with the existing repertoire of children’s songs because they were “‘tontas’ (silly), lacking textual or musical substance. They were characterized by the recurrent use of the diminutive ‘-ito(a)’ and ‘-cito(a).’”²⁴² Since Guastavino’s own poem has words like “clarita,” “arroyito,” “pajarito,” “mañanita,” and “fresquito” (not to mention all the “la, la, la’s”), he hardly had room to criticize anyone for using diminutives. Of course this was Guastavino’s first song, and in his later canciones escolares he used poems of higher quality, written by esteemed poets such as León Benarós and Hamlet Lima Quintana.

Arroyito serrano is scored for voice and piano, with an optional second voice. Both of the vocal lines are doubled in the right hand of the piano, while the left hand provides a sparse accompaniment. Several of his early canciones escolares are scored this way, including “Propósito” and the two Christmas songs, “Canción de Navidad no. 1” and “Canción de Navidad no. 2.”²⁴³ The song is cast in a modified strophic form—modified because the two-bar introduction is not included when the music repeats—and includes a refrain like most of his canciones populares would later. Within each verse there are three musical sections, A, B, and C, plus a brief return of B at the end, after which the whole thing is repeated:

Intro A B C B’ [repeat beginning with A]

The dotted rhythms of the A and C sections are characteristic of the zamba. Also typical of the zamba is the 6
8 meter with frequent hemiola effects. See measures 5 and 9 for examples of hemiola between the piano’s left hand (in 3
4) and the rest of the texture (in 6
8).

Example 89: “Arroyito serrano,” mm. 5–12

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Section C of the song (mm. 19–30), where the text is nothing but “La la la la,” is something Guastavino would only do in a children’s song. Its function apparently is to carry out the poem’s order to “run and sing like a little bird…run and sing some more.” The catchy, “sing-songy” rhythm is perfect for skipping and singing along, completely carefree since there are no words to remember. There is a rippling sort of neighbor figure in the lower part of the right hand (perhaps reminiscent of the stream), creating soft dissonances with the melodic lines. As a coda, Guastavino brings back the second phrase from the B section, this time with the “La la” text.²⁴⁴

The B section is marked by a contrasting rhythmic profile (with straight eighth notes instead of dotted rhythms) and an brief emphasis on the subdominant (see last two measures of previous example). In section C (beginning in m. 19), the dotted melodic rhythms return for the carefree “la la la’s” of the text, but the accompaniment is different than it was in the A section. The left hand and the lower voice of the right hand play an ostinato pattern with open-fifth pedal tones in the bass, presumably a nod to the pastoral nature of the poem. The last four bars of the song are a reprise of the B section, this time with the text “La la la…” instead of “Corre arroyito…”

Example 90: “Arroyito serrano,” mm. 17–30

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The degree to which Guastavino’s songs are actually sung in the schools of Argentina is difficult to determine, but anecdotal evidence suggests that at least a handful of his songs are part of the grade-school repertoire throughout the country. Nearly every person I interviewed in Buenos Aires told me this, including Dr. Ana Lucía Frega, professor of music at the National University of Rosario, who at the time was also President of the International Society for Music Education.²⁴⁵ Chief among them is “Pueblito, mi pueblo,” even though this was not originally conceived as a canción escolar. Many professional performers have delved into Guastavino’s canciones escolares, as well. Maestro Carlos Vilo always includes a few of them on the programs given by his Orfeón, for example. Plus, distinguished artists such as Marcos Fink and Kiri Te Kanawa have the quasi-children’s songs of Flores argentinas in their repertoires. At the very least, Guastavino has given Argentine school teachers a great deal more music from which to choose when teaching their children to sing, music that is not only appropriate for their abilities, but also flows from the pen of an established composer from the realm of art music.

Guastavino and the Song Cycle: Flores Argentinas

During the last few years of Guastavino’s second song period, from about 1969 to 1975, the composer focused for the first time on extended, unified collections of songs. There are three such collections: Flores argentinas (12 songs, Benarós, 1969), Los ríos de la mano (10 songs, José Pedroni, 1972), and Pájaros (10 songs, Benarós, 1973). He also wrote two shorter collections, Canciones del alba (4 songs, Benarós, 1974), and Cuatro Sonetos de Quevedo (4 songs, Francisco de Quevedo y Villegas, 1975).

There are numerous criteria for designating a group of songs as a “cycle,” but the crucial concept is that of unity. This unity can be achieved through musical or textual means, or both. The criteria laid out by Susan Youens are so broad, in fact, that the widespread tendency to call any collection of songs a “cycle” seems perfectly valid:

The coherence regarded as a necessary attribute of song cycles may derive from the text (a single poet; a story line; a central theme or topic such as love or nature; a unifying mood; poetic form or genre, as in a sonnet or ballad cycle) or from musical procedures (tonal schemes; recurring motifs, passages or entire songs; formal structures); these features may appear singly or in combination.²⁴⁶

Each of Guastavino’s collections mentioned above meets at least two of these criteria: 1) the texts of each collection are by a single poet; and 2) the texts are unified by either a central theme (flowers, birds, hand tools, dawn songs) or a common poetic genre (sonnets).²⁴⁷ Musically speaking, Guastavino’s cycles are not written with obvious conventions of cyclic form, such as recurring motives or seamless connections from one song to another (as, for example, in Schumann’s Dichterliebe Op. 48). The musical features that are common among the various songs of a Guastavino cycle are not evidence of cyclic intent, but rather of the fact that they were written by the same composer.

Another consideration in cyclic musical form is the relative importance of keeping the cycle intact for performance. One gains a more satisfying result aesthetically if the whole cycle of Flores argentinas is heard at once, for example, but it is in no way disconcerting to hear only one or two of the songs performed as excerpts. The individual songs are not dependent on the context of the cycle. This is not true with such 19th-century cycles as An die ferne Geliebte or Dichterliebe, in which the songs are performed without pause, or with Die Schöne Müllerin, which has a narrative thread in the text that would be broken if songs were removed.

Guastavino’s crowning achievement as a song composer is Flores argentinas, twelve songs written in the fall of 1969 on poems by León Benarós. He worked quickly on the cycle, finishing a song every few days from October 9th to November 18th.²⁴⁸ What had been intended as a cycle of children’s songs turned out to be a masterpiece in the genre of song that transcends categorization, belonging in different respects to all three categories: art song, popular song, and children’s song. Juan María Veniard goes even further in his estimation of this work:

[Flores argentinas is] a high point in his production of songs…there is here a pinnacle not only in Guastavino’s production, but in that of the nationalist chamber song as a whole. And to say this is to signal a culminating point in the entire production of songs with piano accompaniment composed in Argentina. There is so much beauty in one song and another that it produces a climate through the length of the series that keeps the listener expectant as to what he is going to hear. It was not for nothing that they were composed one after the other in such a short time. They form a totality. And the interest stems from the fact that nothing is predictable. They are composed with such freedom and spontaneity that they require an attentive ear.²⁴⁹

To call Flores argentinas the high point in all of the art song production of Argentina is a bold statement, considering that he had earlier observed that “the production of chamber songs with piano accompaniment in [Guastavino’s] generation is exceedingly abundant,” the continuation of a “great and long tradition of Argentine music.”²⁵⁰ It is also curious that Veniard does not mention Flores argentinas in his earlier book, citing instead the 26 Canciones populares for mixed chorus (1959–1964), as well as “Pueblito, mi pueblo” and an arrangement for cello and piano of “La rosa y el sauce.” These are the only vocal compositions he mentions. It is not as if Veniard has changed his position regarding Guastavino. He lauded the composer in 1986, too, but primarily for the fact that he was the only “personality who continued on the path fixed during the first years in which his works were presented and who has remained faithful to his aesthetic position,” calling him also “the last great figure” of Argentine musical nationalism.²⁵¹ In his more recent work, he repeats these sentiments (almost verbatim) and adds the effusive comments about Flores argentinas quoted above.

One wonders how Flores argentinas could be so much more important to Veniard in 2000 than in 1986. How is it that a song cycle that did not merit even a passing reference in 1986 could be considered by the same author to be the finest collection of songs ever produced in Argentina only fourteen years later? Flores argentinas was published in 1970, sixteen years before Veniard published La música nacional argentina, so that there should have been ample time for the songs to be evaluated and digested by the public and by historians. However, we must remember that in 1986, Guastavino was still in his period of relative neglect. It was about this time that he told Carlos Vilo that he had never heard more than 70% of the songs Vilo’s group was performing.²⁵² If the composer had never heard these songs, then it is unlikely that many other people had heard them, either.

The most plausible reason that Veniard came to appreciate Flores argentinas so much is that he heard a recording of them sometime between 1986 and 2000. This is speculation, but it is well founded. In 1996 there appeared a recording of Guastavino’s songs performed by baritone Marcos Fink. It included several songs from Doce canciones populares, the Cuatro canciones argentinas (1949), and as the featured work, the complete cycle of Flores argentinas.²⁵³ This was the first recording of Flores argentinas to be released commercially. Not only was it available on record for the first time, but it was given one of the finest performances for which a composer could ever hope. It is a performance of the highest technical and artistic quality, equal perhaps even to the classic Fischer-Dieskau recordings of Schubert’s song cycles.

Marcos Fink is unknown in the United States, as his career has been spent in Argentina, Europe, and now Slovenia, but there could hardly be a better baritone voice and a more convincing interpreter of song. When Carlos Vilo returned from Paris to Argentina in the mid-1980s to form vocal groups dedicated to performing Guastavino’s music, Marcos Fink was the first singer he recruited for his chamber group, a vocal quartet with piano. Vilo had tried to get Bernarda Fink (Marcos’ sister), but was told that she was too busy traveling and would not be able to join the group. Vilo described her as “THE mezzo! The most precious mezzo there is. Delicious…a voice of velvet.”²⁵⁴ He says, “So pretty soon I talked with a voice teacher and told her, ‘What a shame that Bernarda can not [do it].’ And she tells me, ‘If you like Bernarda, you’ll like Marcos, because he’s the same, only male.’”²⁵⁵ Fink joined the group and thus got to know Guastavino’s music. In the late 1980s he made a studio recording of Flores argentinas in Buenos Aires that was never published, but which was passed around enough through informal means that everyone with whom I spoke in Buenos Aires had heard it or knew of its existence. Then in 1996 he recorded the work again in Switzerland with Argentine pianist Luis Ascot, and the disc was released internationally on the Cascavelle label. There had been several recordings of Guastavino’s songs released through the early part of the 1990s by unknown or little-known artists, and there was even a more famous recording by Teresa Berganza of several canciones populares in 1984, but none of these singers presented Guastavino’s songs to such fine advantage as Fink. He has by far the best voice of any artist who has recorded Guastavino, and perhaps more importantly, the deepest understanding of his music and the traditions that inform it. He also sings with the distinctive porteño accent that can only come from having grown up in Buenos Aires. No other singer has presented Guastavino’s songs so convincingly. When Juan María Veniard called Flores argentinas the “pinnacle” of Argentine art song production, he undoubtedly had this recording in mind. It is hard to underestimate its importance to Guastavino’s subsequent reception history and historiography. Typically, the Performer is the least-recognized component in the historiography of art music, even though he or she is often the most critical link between a composer’s score and a historian’s perception of the score (or anyone else’s perception of the score, for that matter). Dame Kiri Te Kanawa toured with Flores argentinas on her program in 1999, and given the considerable difficulty of obtaining Guastavino’s scores outside of Buenos Aires, her decision to learn the cycle was almost certainly due to having heard Fink’s recording. The fact that a singer of her international reputation decided to sing this work either confirms Veniard’s view of its place in Argentine music history or perpetuates it (or both), depending on whether one is a fan or detractor of Guastavino. Her choice of Flores argentinas (and her decision to present the entire cycle) is significant and unusual, because historically, the really famous singers who have performed Guastavino’s music have always sung the same two or three songs: “Se equivocó la paloma,” “La rosa y el sauce,” and perhaps “Pueblito, mi pueblo.”²⁵⁶ Kiri Te Kanawa’s performances are a turning point, and probably mark the first time that non-specialist audiences in the U.S. have heard Guastavino’s late songs, or perhaps any of his music at all.

When Kiri Te Kanawa performed Flores argentinas in Los Angeles in 1999, the Los Angeles Times critic was less enthusiastic about the cycle than Veniard, saying only that the music was “lightweight but charming.”²⁵⁷ Days later, after a performance in San Francisco, a review appearing in The San Francisco Chronicle was more generous, observing that “[t]he most uniformly successful offering was the last, Carlos Guastavino’s cycle ‘Flores Argentinas,’ which combined sinuous melody, rhythmic pizzazz and some extroverted charm.”²⁵⁸ Both of these characterizations are accurate to a degree. The first is rather perfunctory, but probably expresses what most critics would say when confronted with Guastavino for the first time: the music is beautiful, but not very important.

One more familiar with Guastavino’s music (and who is admittedly sympathetic to him) would agree with these reviews but would hasten to point out that they are overly simplistic. What Flores argentinas represents in Guastavino’s corpus of works is the perfect execution of an artistic philosophy. His approach in setting poetry to music is one of humility, wonder, and utter unselfishness, no matter what style the poetry might be. Gaustavino understands poetry. He knows when a poem is “lightweight” and when it is serious. Otherwise how could the same composer have written both “Donde habite el olvido” and “Pueblito, mi pueblo”? In setting a poem to music, he does not try to make it more profound that it is. He accepts poems as they are and does his best to be faithful to their intent and spirit.

Now, the poems of Flores argentinas are not “heavy” poems. They are simple poems that were written in a popular vein with the understanding that they would be set to music. They are by turns witty, sentimental, sad, and wonderfully exuberant. Benarós touched Guastavino deeply with this cycle of verses, and his music shows a deep respect for the poetry at every turn. His settings are not so much interpretations of the poems as efforts to bring their essences to the surface with a minimal intrusion of music. One sees in Flores argentinas a mature composer at ease with his own aesthetic impulses, indifferent to contemporary trends, wholly unconcerned with asserting himself as a composer. He is fully engrossed in setting the texts as beautifully and respectfully as he is able. The music exists solely because of the text. For example, seven of the twelve songs end precisely when the last word of the poem has been presented. Two other songs have codas of only two measures. Guastavino was never one to write long codas at the ends of songs, but it is unusual for him not to write at least a short concluding passage for the piano. A typical example of the type of closing cadence found in Flores argentinas is that of “Las achiras coloradas” (“The Red Achiras”), the seventh song of the cycle. The voice and both hands of the piano cadence at the same time, after which the left hand has a final low E and the song is finished.

Example 91: “Las achiras coloradas,” mm. 60–63

Copyright 1970 by Editorial Lagos. Reprinted by permission.

Two other characteristics of this passage reflect Guastavino’s reverence for the text. First is the completely syllabic text-setting. Of course this is only a short passage, but it is representative of the whole cycle. Only rarely does the composer set even two notes to the same syllable of text. He is exceedingly concerned with clarity of declamation and proper accentuation. Second is the obviously “accompanimental” nature of the piano part. Through most of Flores argentinas, the piano plays a supporting role, not an equal one. In this example, the piano plays a guitaristic figuration repeatedly, and its rhythms coincide with those of the voice part.

In the introduction to chapter 4, I mentioned that Guastavino’s focus on song cycles in the late 1960s and early 1970s was best viewed as a component trend within the second song period, rather than as a separate third song period, as Illari proposes. Stylistically, the songs of Flores argentinas and the other cycles are firmly rooted in the world of the canción popular discussed earlier. The harmony is tonal, the melodies tuneful, accompaniments rather uniform and unimposing, the forms mostly strophic with refrains, and the music infused with stylized folk rhythms. This should not be surprising in the case of Flores argentinas, as the poet León Benarós was also the author of many poems from the canciones populares series. What sets Flores argentinas apart from the “popular” songs is difficult to determine. They have all of the technical underpinnings of the popular songs, yet they sound more like art songs. It is perhaps a greater abstraction of folk sources, a more subtle use of syncopated rhythms, and overall a stronger sense of connection from one song to another. In other words, the very fact that the songs are part of a cycle, unified thematically by the poems, makes them seem more like art songs than popular songs. The first song of the cycle exemplifies all of these characteristics.

Cortadera, plumerito
Little Cutting, Little Feather

Cortadera, plumerito
¡Cuanto nácar en el viento!
Recuerdos de tus verdores
Me causan un sentimiento.

¡Ay, cuanto te necesito!
Trebolar donde vivía.
¿Podré volver algún día,
Cortadera, plumerito?

Por esos campos viví,
Provincia de Buenos Aires,
y, abanicando los aires,
por esos años te ví.

Little cutting, little feather,
Like mother-of-pearl in the wind!
Memories of your greenness
stir feelings in me.

Oh, how much I need you,
Clover fields where I lived.
Can I return someday,
Little cutting, little feather?

I lived among those fields,
the Province of Buenos Aires,
and, during those years,
I saw you fanning the airs.

Guastavino sets the poem as a milonga. As we saw in “Siesta,” the left hand plays the characteristic rhythms of the genre, while the right hand plays a constant 16th-note pattern. The main difference here is that the mood is altogether more serious, and the presence of the folk rhythms more subdued. Guastavino clearly wants the rhythms to come out, judging by the articulation markings in the left hand, but only in the most refined and elegant manner. The dynamic marking of piano, the tempo marking of Andante tranquillo (quarter = 60), and the key of F minor effectively thwart any temptation to treat the song with sort of exuberance that was appropriate for “Siesta.” As is typical of the canciones populares, the accompanimental pattern is established at the beginning and maintained throughout the song. Such uniformity is more evidence that the melody and the clear projection of the text take precedence over the accompaniment.

Example 92: “Cortadera, plumerito,” mm. 8–21

Copyright 1970 by Editorial Lagos. Reprinted by permission.

Note also how Guastavino allows the text to unfold at its natural pace, as if it were being recited. Each time there is a comma or a new line of the poem, Guastavino writes what amounts to a musical comma, a break in the rhythmic activity of the melody that is just long enough to mirror the structure of the poetry. This can be seen between “viento” and “Recuerdos” (m. 13), and then again between “verdores” and “me causan…” (m. 15). In mm. 18–21, Guastavino repeats the previous two lines of text (“Recuerdos de tus verdores / me causan un sentimiento”) in a new melodic setting. This is a technique he uses throughout Flores argentinas at the ends of stanzas. Each time, the first presentation of the text ends in an open cadence of some sort (in this case a half-cadence), while the second has a cadence on the tonic. Immediately after stanza is finished, Guastavino shifts seamlessly into the parallel key of F major for the estribillo. Earlier we saw him use the parallel major for the refrain in “El sampedrino,” and he does it in most of the minor-key songs of Flores argentinas as well. In this example, there is a lovely transition from the F-minor chord of m. 22 to the B♭-major chord in m. 24. First he changes the A♭ to A♮ in the voice part of m. 23, then he raises the fifth of the F-major chord in m. 23 a half-step to C♯, making it an augmented triad that slides smoothly to the B♭ chord in m. 24. He continues the subtle chromatic voice-leading as the upper voice of the right hand goes from G–G♯–A with interior voices continuing in ostinato fashion between each pitch below them. This brand of gentle chromaticism pervades Flores argentinas.

Example 93: “Cortadera, plumerito,” 22–26

Copyright 1970 by Editorial Lagos. Reprinted by permission.

Like most of Guastavino’s late songs, this song is in strophic form with refrain. This one is slightly different in that it only has one stanza to each verse, so that the form is aB [repeat]. He writes out this strophic form fully on account of rhythmic changes to passages in the voice part. These changes are made only to accommodate the text.

A lighter song is “Campanilla, ¿adónde vas?” (“Harebell, where are you going?”), the third song in the cycle. Benarós wrote this humorous poem in the form of a dialogue between the harebell flower and a nameless narrator. This is the only song where both poem and music seem appropriate for the original intention of the cycle, to be a set of canciones escolares. When asked where he is going, so blue and graceful, the harebell replies that he is going to the train station to speak to the signal man. Guastavino illustrates the dialogue musically by switching the accompaniment from 3
4 meter to 6
8 whenever the harebell is speaking, creating hemiola between the piano and voice parts. (Note also the lovely flowers that adorn the score!)

Example 94: “Campanilla, ¿adónde vas?” mm. 4–11

Copyright 1970 by Editorial Lagos. Reprinted by permission.

“Aromita, flor de Tusca” (“Acacia, Tuscan Flower”) is another lighthearted song. The text tells of a little tree that lacks only the Tuscan flower, described as the pom-poms of Tuscany, little suns that glow in the dawn. The song is brief and lively, set to the rhythms of the chacarera, a gaucho dance in which the melody is in 6
8 meter while the accompaniment is in 3
4.²⁵⁹ Here Guastavino diminishes the meter to 6/16, but the effects of syncopation and hemiola are the same.

Example 95: “Aromita, Flor de Tusca,” mm. 4–12

Copyright 1970 by Editorial Lagos. Reprinted by permission.

Interestingly, the theme of this song reappears in Guastavino’s Sonata no. 3 for solo guitar, published four years after Flores argentinas. It is the second theme of the third movement, beginning in m. 39.

Example 96: Sonata no. 3 for solo guitar (1973): III, mm. 38–46

Reprinted by kind permission of RICORDI AMERICANA S.A.E.C., Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Near the end of the cycle, Guastavino revisits his “roots” of impressionism in “Ay, aljaba, flor de chilco” (“Oh, Quiver, Fuchsia Flower”), the penultimate song in the collection. In the piano introduction, he uses a series of perfect fourths that expand to octaves to give the song an inertness and a Debussian affect of mystery. In establishing the mood of the song, Guastavino took his cue from the last line of text, “Silent little bell of mysterious virtue” (“Campanillita callada de misteriosa virtud.”). When the voice begins, he seems to imitate the guitar, with full strummed chords supporting a simple vocal line.

Example 97: “Ay, aljaba, flor de chilco,” mm. 4–10

Copyright 1970 by Editorial Lagos. Reprinted by permission.

In the last song of the cycle, “Ceibo, ceibo, zuiñandí,” Guastavino returns to the musical style of “Pueblito, mi pueblo,” his famous song from more than twenty-five years earlier. There is more than a coincidence in this. “Pueblito, mi pueblo” is a song about nostalgia for one’s country, and this is a song about the national flower of Argentina. Here is Benarós’ tribute to the Ceibo:²⁶⁰

Ay, ceibo, que vas soltando
entre las ramas tortuosas
tus flores tan coloradas
de forma de mariposa.
Te digo que son tus flores
lo mismo que el sol ardiente
si te apasionas besando,
del Paraná la corriente.
Ceibo, ceibo, zuiñandí:
Anochece para tí…
Te va la tarde pintando
Cuando se está desangrando

Oh, ceibo who sends out
among the twisted branches
your flowers so colorful
like the butterflies.
I tell you your flowers
are the same as the ardent sun
if you in passion are kissing
the current of the Paraná.
Ceibo, ceibo, zuiñandí:
For you night is falling…
The afternoon is painting you
As it is bleeding away.²⁶¹

The fact that Guastavino places this song last in the collection suggests that he was thinking about the group as a cycle, at least in terms of the poetry.²⁶² The last stanza of the poem says that the Ceibo’s night is falling, presumably meaning that it is dying. If this is the case, then the song serves as a lullaby and farewell in much the same sense that “Gute Ruh, Gute Ruh” (actually, “Des Baches Wiegenlied”) is a lullaby for the miller who drowns himself in the brook in Schubert’s Die Schöne Müllerin. The song is in through-composed form, and in the last stanza, Guastavino doubles the melody in octaves for the first time in the song. It is as if he is beginning the lullaby at this point, which is exactly where the text says, “Ceibo, your night is falling.” Note the striking similarity between the arpeggio figures here and those in “Pueblito, mi pueblo,” especially in the last few bars of the song. Also, here is another example where Gaustavino repeats the same line of text twice with a different harmonization each time. When he presents “Cuando se está desangrando” the first time, the harmony is on a tonic 6
4 chord, but he repeats it immediately and the music makes a perfect authentic cadence. Interestingly, this song also has the longest piano postlude of the cycle (2 bars!).

Example 98: “Ceibo, ceibo, zuiñandí, mm. 27–39

Copyright 1970 by Editorial Lagos. Reprinted by permission.

Even if Flores argentinas is not the ‘pinnacle of art song production in the whole history of Argentina,’ it is nevertheless one of the most charming cycles in the repertoire. Guastavino wrote many more “substantial” songs during his career, but never did he achieve a better union of poetry and music than he does in Flores argentinas. It is a monument of Argentine musical and poetic nationalist expression.

Conclusions

Perceptions of Guastavino are vastly different within Argentina and in the United States. In Argentina, he is considered by some to be the most representative composer in the nationalist tradition, and he is furthermore believed to be the Argentine composer whose works are most often performed outside of Argentina. When someone points out that Ginastera’s music is performed much more frequently than Guastavino’s, the response is always that Ginastera had the support of composers leagues and other organizations wherever he went, while Guastavino’s music has spread entirely on its own merits. There is some truth in this, but it is not wholly explanatory. The fact remains that there is hardly anyone in the United States who knows Guastavino’s music or has even heard of him, including those who might be most inclined to like his music: voice teachers and students. Even scholars who have spent most of their careers studying vocal music have never heard of Guastavino. Similarly, Guitarist Pablo Cohen acknowledges that while Guastavino’s Sonatas for guitar are important works for the repertoire, inasmuch as they are extended works of high quality by a reputable composer, they are “practically unknown to most classical guitarists.”²⁶³

The problem is that Guastavino is not the sort of composer who could gain ready recognition in the U.S.. There are numerous factors that work against him. First of all, his music is on the whole romantic and nostalgic. As such, it does not represent the type of innovation that is normally valued by critics and historiographers. Additionally, he wrote primarily in miniature genres—songs and piano pieces—which typically do not reach as large an audience as orchestral music does. Ginastera, for example, won success here through his operas, symphonic works, ballets, and lengthy chamber pieces. A third problem, and one of the most difficult to overcome, is that the American public on the whole feels little attraction to “classical” vocal music. We do not have the heritage of Italian opera here as they do in Buenos Aires, nor do we have the long tradition of composers writing art songs as one of their primary genres.²⁶⁴ In this atmosphere, a song composer will have a very difficult time getting recognition.

Guastavino is an enigmatic figure in the realm of art music. In an era when complexity is valued over simplicity, Guastavino’s songs, especially those in the late cycles like Flores argentinas, are the embodiment of musical simplicity. Guastavino always maintained that he simply wrote the music he felt and did not worry about what other people were doing. The fact that he became so successful with the public proved to him that his instincts were right. His success with “Se equivocó la paloma,” for instance, is one of the most remarkable stories in twentieth-century art music. In a very real way, his music has become folklore in Argentina. His songs are sung in the streets by people who do not know his name and by millions of Argentine children in their school curricula.

Guastavino’s enormous success with the public was perhaps a deterrent to his ever really being accepted in the academy. When one views his second song period as pertaining even in a peripheral way to the same broader artistic and intellectual movements that sparked the Chilean New Song, it is easy to see why those steeped in the academic world, such as composer and critic Roberto García Morillo, felt that Gaustavino was essentially a superior composer of popular music, rather than a serious composer of art music. Whether one views his works as art music or popular music depends in large part on the style and context of performance. As written, his songs belong firmly to the art song tradition; they are settings of pre-existing poetry scored for voice and piano, intended to be performed as notated, and (with the possible exception of the children’s songs) are intended to be performed by trained singers. Guastavino’s songs from the second period share a number of characteristics with folk or popular music, especially with respect to form, but their conception as notated “works” is at odds with the primarily oral tradition of popular and folk music, where a song is a fluid entity open to varying interpretations. Indeed, when Guastavino’s songs are interpreted freely by artists such as Eduardo Falú or Joan Manuel Serrat, without strict adherence to the notated score (and in less formal contexts), they resemble popular music closely. Guastavino did not fit smoothly into the folk-music movement, though, since his involvement was limited to the composition of songs, whereas actual folk and pop artists were known at least as much for their performances as for their compositions. As such, Gaustavino was something of an outsider in both art music and popular music. If one were forced to choose one realm or the other, however, Guastavino would have to be considered a composer of art music. His intrusion into popular music was incidental, a phenomenon outside of his control. All of his compositions were conceived as works whose initial existence was as a score, rather than a performance. Even when bidden to contribute to the series of “canciones populares,” Guastavino did so in the only way he knew how, by producing scores for voice and piano with precise notation, suitable for performance by classically-trained artists. Notation is not the sole property of art music, as popular music was routinely distributed in score format in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Since the availability of affordable sound reproduction, however, recordings have been the primary vehicle for the dissemination of popular music. Currently, when popular-music scores are published, they are gross approximations of the initial recorded versions of the works. The fact that Guastavino always thought of his works in terms of notation from the outset shows that he belongs to the art music tradition. Nevertheless, the ease with which his songs are adapted for performance as “pop” songs makes it difficult to say categorically that he is not a composer of popular music.

In gauging Guastavino’s relative importance in the history of Argentine music, one must of course weigh the varying interests of the parties making claims for or against him, as well as the different measures of importance that one might take. This is a fundamental issue in the historiography of music, whether to value those composers who were the most successful or those who were innovators who exercised influence on subsequent generations. Depending on which view one takes, Guastavino is either one of the great Argentine composers of the century, or a composer whose work is completely irrelevant.²⁶⁵ García Morillo says that Guastavino falls somewhere in between these two extremes.

By nature I try to be objective, because that’s the way it is, [but] nowhere is there absolute truth, right? That is to say, sure, for some people Guastavino does not exist. And for others, he’s the one and only. In other words, the general public, yes, they like Guastavino. Ah, but for the public more accustomed to vanguard manifestations, they reject him completely. Now, the truth is in the middle…For example, I have heard it said of Piazzolla that he is the greatest musician of all time. This is nonsense!…You all, and by this I refer to the United States, gave the [similar] example, a terrific example with Gershwin. Gershwin was a composer of popular music, but a fellow gifted with genius, and if he had not died young, there’s no telling how far he would have gone, because he really was a great creator.²⁶⁶

In making this comparison between Guastavino and Gershwin, García Morillo again shows that for him, Guastavino is primarily a composer of popular music, but one with extraordinary gifts in that realm.

In his later years Guastavino felt that he had finally lived long enough to see the time when everyone was coming back to their senses. Indeed, his resurgence in popularity in the 1990s might be seen as part of a larger trend in recent art music back towards an emphasis on (or at least a greater acceptance of ) melody and tonality. This is a long quotation, but one worth using in full:

Guastavino: And now all over the world there is a change back to rationality. All over the world! In Spain the students asked the rector of the conservatory to teach them romantic music, they don’t want any more dodecaphony. Eh? Everywhere it’s…it was being seen. And I have a theory that I apply to this. Communism, which began alongside the decadence of our music, did everything it could to destroy everything, everything western. All the art, everything. That was the function of the Schoenbergs and all of them…They destroyed the architecture, painting. They put beer bottles, human excrement and all of that on a painting! Do you believe that’s painting?

Villadangos: I think that there are some artistic manifestations that are straying a bit from what the common denominator of people can appreciate, and whether in music or…

Guastavino: You enjoy looking at excrement? …The goal of communism was to destroy the west. It was going to be the social organization of the millenia, no? It lasted 70 years. Eh? Schoenberg, the inventor of all these things, the inventor of all of this, also thought that modern music—he says so in his writings—the music of the future is always going to be this music. It’s already collapsing, gracias a Dios. Gracias a Dios! It’s already collapsing, but I have the example in my own music! If I had been a…

Villadangos: A modernist?

Guastavino: Not a modernist, an…an improviser of ugly things!…Could I have had a list like this?…I don’t know these people! I don’t know John Williams, I don’t know Berganza! They recorded my things and I don’t know them! And this is what I want to say to the kids that are learning. Don’t let yourself be tricked by the bad professors. The bad professors who are not musicians. They say you can’t write melodies. Lies! You can write melodies, that’s what I say! That you can’t write harmony. Lies! That’s what I say. That you can’t…it’s all lies! The professors who are absolute imbeciles incapable of feeling music for having so much musical erudition without having one bit of music in them. They’re hard like this bench [knocking on the piano bench with his knuckles]. They don’t know music!²⁶⁷

Guastavino did not fit easily into any place in the Argentine music scene. His personality was such that he preferred isolation in his life, and his music likewise did not belong entirely to the worlds of art music or popular music. It lay somewhere in between. In this sense, his success in both worlds (albeit a bit later in that of academic music) is unique in the history of Argentine music. Perhaps Guastavino’s early success in art music circles might have endured through the 1970s and early 1980s if not for his behavior toward his contemporaries and his negative attitude toward anything having to do with modern music. One author notes that his intolerance was comparable to that displayed by Juan Carlos Paz (previously quoted) when expressing his opposing views: “Perhaps Guastavino’s mistake might have been to express what he thought with such vehemence, which ended up copying an intellectual intolerance almost as hard as those who attacked him a priori.”²⁶⁸

Nevertheless, when Guastavino died in October of 2000, his popularity had never been higher. Unfortunately, he was not able to enjoy it fully on account of the Alzheimer’s disease from which he suffered for the last few years of his life.

We close with one of the most curious of all published commentaries on Guastavino’s position in contemporary music. It appears on the back page of several of his canciones populares published by Editorial Lagos in the mid-1960s. It is curious because the author of the note is Guastavino himself, writing under the name “Carlos Vincent,” the same rather transparent pseudonym he used when he wrote poetry for some of his own songs, such as the “Canción de Navidad no. 2” (Christmas Song no. 2). Writing under a false name, he perhaps felt he had a chance finally to put the right spin on his music and set forth an image by which he would be remembered—the lone voice of reason in a musical generation gone mad.

In an environment of disorientation and lost paths, of desperate searching, among so much simulated talent, among so much improvised innovation, amid such aspiration to understand, one hears in the musical environment of Argentina a serene and imperturbable voice and a purest song: it is the inspiration of Carlos Guastavino, who remains faithful to Music in his emotivity and lyricism and who does not need spectacular displays or pathological deformations to show his emotion, but rather a simple and clear melody, always immovable and present in the tempo.

This is the miracle of the sincere musician whose authenticity has given a future to his smallest works. It has already been twenty-five years since we first heard “Pueblito, mi pueblo…,” “Se equivocó la paloma,” “La rosa y el sauce,” “Bailecito,” and many more works that did not go along with the style of the moment, but in carrying within them the voice of this musician who is sensitive to his environment and capable of expressing it, they have remained permanent and will form part of the good things that the spirit of our country produces.

A man from Santa Fe, a professor, a polyglot, traveler, good pianist, his more than two hundred published works —and so many of them reprinted— where there are sonatas, chamber works, choral pieces, instrumental pieces, speak of a prolific labor and a life fulfilled.

CARLOS VINCENT²⁶⁹

Appendix A: Lists of Songs

List 1: Chronological Order

TITLE

COLLECTION

POET

DATE

Arroyito Serrano

Guastavino
1939

Gratitud

Guastavino
1939

Propósito

Guastavino
1939

Campanas

Silva
1941

Piececitos

Mistral
1941

Se equivocó la Paloma

Alberti
1941

Anhelo

Zerpa
1942

El vaso

Mistral
1942

La Rosa y el Sauce

Silva
1942

Por los campos verdes

Ibarbourou
1942

Cita

Varela
1943

Paisaje

Silva
1943

Riqueza

Mistral
1943

Jardín antiguo
Las Nubes 1
Cernuda
1944

Deseo
Las Nubes 2
Cernuda
1944

Alegría de la soledad
Las Nubes 3
Cernuda
1944

La novia
Siete canciones 1
Alberti
1944

Geografía física
Siete canciones 2
Alberti
1944

Elegía
Siete canciones 3
Alberti
1944

Nana del niño malo
Siete canciones 4
Alberti
1944

Al puente de la golondrina
Siete canciones 5
Alberti
1944

¡A volar!
Siete canciones 6
Alberti
1944

Jardín de amores
Siete canciones 7
Alberti
1944

Déjame esta voz

Cernuda
1944

Las Nubes

Cernuda
1944

Violetas
Tres canciones… 1
Cernuda
1945

Pájaro muerto
Tres canciones… 2
Cernuda
1945

Donde habite el olvido
Tres canciones… 3
Cernuda
1945

Tres Canciones

Cernuda
1945

Canción de navidad

Silva
1947

El prisionero

Anonymous
1947

Esta iglesia no tiene

Neruda
1948

Desde que te conocí
Cuatro canciones argentinas 1
Anonymous
1949

Viniendo de Chilecito
Cuatro canciones argentinas 2
Anonymous
1949

En los surcos del amor
Cuatro canciones argentinas 3
Anonymous
1949

Mi garganta
Cuatro canciones argentinas 4
Anonymous
1949

Cuatro canciones argentinas

Anonymous
1949

La Palomita
Tres canciones 1
Iglesias de la Casa
1950

Cantilena
Tres canciones 2
Iglesias de la Casa
1950

Dones Sencillos
Tres canciones 3
Iglesias de la Casa
1950

Tres Canciones

Iglesias de la Casa
1950

Los días perdidas

Aguirre
1951

Siesta

Silva
1953

El labrador y el pobre

Anonymous
1954

Canción de navidad (no. 2)

Vincent
1955

La primera pregunta

Cortese
1956

Mi canto

Mileo
1956

Ombú

Mileo
1956

Soneto a la armonía

Aguirre
1962

Adiós, quebrachito blanco

Yupanqui
1963

La tempranera

Benarós
1963

Milonga de dos hermanos

Borges
1963

El único camino

Quintana
1964

Noches de Santa Fe

Eizenberg
1964

Ojos de tiempo

Garcia
1964

Romance de la Delfina

Eizenberg
1964

Severa Villafañe

Benarós
1964

Zamba del quiero

Malinov
1964

Cuando acaba de llover
Cuatro canciones coloniales 1
Benarós
1965

Prestame tu pañuelito
Cuatro canciones coloniales 2
Benarós
1965

Ya me voy a retirar
Cuatro canciones coloniales 3
Benarós
1965

Las puertas de la mañana
Cuatro canciones coloniales 4
Benarós
1965

En mi escuela hay un naranjo
Quince canciones escolares 1
Benarós
1965

La última día
Quince canciones escolares 10
Benarós
1965

Quién fuera granaderito
Quince canciones escolares 11
Benarós
1965

Me gusta la mitología
Quince canciones escolares 12
Benarós
1965

Doña Paula Albarracín
Quince canciones escolares 13
Benarós
1965

Sarmiento fundaba escuelas
Quince canciones escolares 14
Benarós
1965

Ya llegan las vacaciones
Quince canciones escolares 15
Benarós
1965

Está lloviendo en mi escuela
Quince canciones escolares 2
Benarós
1965

El pajarito del frío
Quince canciones escolares 3
Benarós
1965

Belgrano nos dio bandera
Quince canciones escolares 4
Benarós
1965

Química
Quince canciones escolares 5
Benarós
1965

El viaje de papel
Quince canciones escolares 6
Benarós
1965

Me gustan las matemáticas
Quince canciones escolares 7
Benarós
1965

Buen día, señor invierno
Quince canciones escolares 8
Benarós
1965

La música
Quince canciones escolares 9
Benarós
1965

Cuatro canciones coloniales

Benarós
1965

Elegía para un gorrión

Garcia
1965

En el pimpollo mas alto

Benarós
1965

En la mañana rubia

Yupanqui
1965

Quince canciones escolares

Benarós
1965

Romance de José Cubas

Benarós
1965

Yo, maestra

Garcia
1965

A un árbol

Furlain
1966

Bonita rama de sauce
Doce canciones populares 1
Benarós
1968

La siempre viva
Doce canciones populares 10
Benarós
1968

Hermano
Doce canciones populares 11
Benarós
1968

Mi viña de Chapanay
Doce canciones populares 12
Benarós
1968

El Sampedrino
Doce canciones populares 2
Benarós
1968

Los desencuentros
Doce canciones populares 3
Benarós
1968

Quisiera ser por un rato
Doce canciones populares 4
Benarós
1968

Vidala del secadal
Doce canciones populares 5
Benarós
1968

Pampamapa
Doce canciones populares 6
Benarós
1968

Abismo de sed
Doce canciones populares 7
Benarós
1968

Pampa sola
Doce canciones populares 8
Benarós
1968

El forastero
Doce canciones populares 9
Benarós
1968

Doce canciones populares

Benarós
1968

El día
Edad del asombro 1
Quintana
1968

La noche
Edad del asombro 2
Quintana
1968

El sueño
Edad del asombro 3
Quintana
1968

El árbol
Edad del asombro 4
Quintana
1968

Los Pájaros
Edad del asombro 5
Quintana
1968

El amigo
Edad del asombro 6
Quintana
1968

Era un día de lluvia
Edad del asombro 7
Quintana
1968

En el sueño de la calle
Edad del asombro 8
Quintana
1968

Detrás de la pared
Edad del asombro 9
Quintana
1968

Cortadera, plumerito…
Flores argentinas 1
Benarós
1969

La flor del aguapé
Flores argentinas 10
Benarós
1969

Ay, aljaba, flor de chilco…
Flores argentinas 11
Benarós
1969

Ceibo, ceibo, zuiñandí
Flores argentinas 12
Benarós
1969

El clavel del aire blanco
Flores argentinas 2
Benarós
1969

¿Campanilla, a dónde vas?
Flores argentinas 3
Benarós
1969

El vinagrillo morado
Flores argentinas 4
Benarós
1969

Qué linda la madreselva
Flores argentinas 5
Benarós
1969

Las flores del macachín
Flores argentinas 6
Benarós
1969

Las achiras coloradas
Flores argentinas 7
Benarós
1969

Jazmín del pais, qué lindo
Flores argentinas 8
Benarós
1969

Aromito, flor de tusca…
Flores argentinas 9
Benarós
1969

Edad del asombro

Quintana
1969

Flores argentinas

Benarós
1969

Plancha
Los ríos de la mano 1
Pedroni
1973

Carretilla de madera
Los ríos de la mano 10
Pedroni
1973

Dedal
Los ríos de la mano 2
Pedroni
1973

Acerico
Los ríos de la mano 3
Pedroni
1973

Escuadra
Los ríos de la mano 4
Pedroni
1973

Horquilla
Los ríos de la mano 5
Pedroni
1973

Garlopín
Los ríos de la mano 6
Pedroni
1973

Plomada
Los ríos de la mano 7
Pedroni
1973

Tijera
Los ríos de la mano 8
Pedroni
1973

Destornillador
Los ríos de la mano 9
Pedroni
1973

Los ríos de la mano

Pedroni
1973

El albeador
Canciones del alba
Benarós
1974

El cerro estaba plateado
Canciones del alba
Benarós
1974

El paso de las estrellas
Canciones del alba
Benarós
1974

Los llantos del alba
Canciones del alba
Benarós
1974

Benteveo
Pájaros 1
Benarós
1974

Leñatero
Pájaros 10
Benarós
1974

Torcacita
Pájaros 2
Benarós
1974

Hornero
Pájaros 3
Benarós
1974

Tacuarita
Pájaros 4
Benarós
1974

Alférez
Pájaros 5
Benarós
1974

Pirincho
Pájaros 6
Benarós
1974

Chingolo
Pájaros 7
Benarós
1974

Gorrión
Pájaros 8
Benarós
1974

Teru-teru
Pájaros 9
Benarós
1974

Canciones del alba

Benarós
1974

Pájaros

Benarós
1974

Cuatro sonetos de Quevedo

Quevedo
1975

List 2: Alphabetical Order

TITLE

COLLECTION

POET

DATE

A un árbol

Furlain
1966

A volar!
Siete canciones 6
Alberti
1944

Abismo de sed
Doce canciones populares 7
Benarós
1968

Acerico
Los ríos de la mano 3
Pedroni
1973

Adiós, quebrachito blanco

Yupanqui
1963

Al puente de la golondrina
Siete canciones 5
Alberti
1944

Alegría de la soledad
Las Nubes 3
Cernuda
1944

Alférez
Pájaros 5
Benarós
1974

Anhelo

Zerpa
1942

Aromito, flor de tusca…
Flores argentinas 9
Benarós
1969

Arroyito Serrano

Guastavino
1939

Ay, aljaba, flor de chilco…
Flores argentinas 11
Benarós
1969

Belgrano nos dio bandera
Quince canciones escolares 4
Benarós
1965

Benteveo
Pájaros 1
Benarós
1974

Bonita rama de sauce
Doce canciones populares 1
Benarós
1968

Buen día, señor invierno
Quince canciones escolares 8
Benarós
1965

Campanas

Silva
1941

¿Campanilla, a dónde vas?
Flores argentinas 3
Benarós
1969

Canción de navidad

Silva
1947

Canción de navidad (no. 2)

Vincent
1955

Canciones del alba

Benarós
1974

Cantilena
Tres canciones 2
Iglesias de la Casa
1950

Carretilla de madera
Los ríos de la mano 10
Pedroni
1973

Ceibo, ceibo, zuiñandi
Flores argentinas 12
Benarós
1969

Chingolo
Pájaros 7
Benarós
1974

Cita

Varela
1943

Cortadera, plumerito…
Flores argentinas 1
Benarós
1969

Cuando acaba de llover
Cuatro canciones coloniales 1
Benarós
1965

Cuatro canciones argentinas

Anonymous
1949

Cuatro canciones coloniales

Benarós
1965

Cuatro sonetos de Quevedo

Quevedo
1975

Dedal
Los ríos de la mano 2
Pedroni
1973

Déjame esta voz

Cernuda
1944

Desde que te conocí
Cuatro canciones argentinas 1
Anonymous
1949

Deseo
Las Nubes 2
Cernuda
1944

Destornillador
Los ríos de la mano 9
Pedroni
1973

Detrás de la pared
Edad del asombro 9
Quintana
1968

Doce canciones populares

Benarós
1968

Doña Paula Albarracín
Quince canciones escolares 13
Benarós
1965

Donde habite el olvido
Tres canciones… 3
Cernuda
1945

Dones Sencillos
Tres canciones 3
Iglesias de la Casa
1950

Edad del asombro

Quintana
1969

El albeador
Canciones del alba
Benarós
1974

El amigo
Edad del asombro 6
Quintana
1968

El árbol
Edad del asombro 4
Quintana
1968

El cerro estaba plateado
Canciones del alba
Benarós
1974

El clavel del aire blanco
Flores argentinas 2
Benarós
1969

El día
Edad del asombro 1
Quintana
1968

El forastero
Doce canciones populares 9
Benarós
1968

El labrador y el pobre

Anonymous
1954

El pajarito del frío
Quince canciones escolares 3
Benarós
1965

El paso de las estrellas
Canciones del alba
Benarós
1974

El prisionero

Anonymous
1947

El Sampedrino
Doce canciones populares 2
Benarós
1968

El sueño
Edad del asombro 3
Quintana
1968

El único camino

Quintana
1964

El vaso

Mistral
1942

El viaje de papel
Quince canciones escolares 6
Benarós
1965

El vinagrillo morado
Flores argentinas 4
Benarós
1969

Elegía
Siete canciones 3
Alberti
1944

Elegía para un gorrión

Garcia
1965

En el pimpollo mas alto

Benarós
1965

En el sueño de la calle
Edad del asombro 8
Quintana
1968

En la mañana rubia

Yupanqui
1965

En los surcos del amor
Cuatro canciones argentinas 3
Anonymous
1949

En mi escuela hay un naranjo
Quince canciones escolares 1
Benarós
1965

Era un día de lluvia
Edad del asombro 7
Quintana
1968

Escuadra
Los ríos de la mano 4
Pedroni
1973

Esta iglesia no tiene

Neruda
1948

Está lloviendo en mi escuela
Quince canciones escolares 2
Benarós
1965

Flores argentinas

Benarós
1969

Garlopín
Los ríos de la mano 6
Pedroni
1973

Geografia fisica
Siete canciones 2
Alberti
1944

Gorrión
Pájaros 8
Benarós
1974

Gratitud

Guastavino
1939

Hermano
Doce canciones populares 11
Benarós
1968

Hornero
Pájaros 3
Benarós
1974

Horquilla
Los ríos de la mano 5
Pedroni
1973

Jardín antiguo
Las Nubes 1
Cernuda
1944

Jardín de amores
Siete canciones 7
Alberti
1944

Jazmín del pais, qué lindo
Flores argentinas 8
Benarós
1969

La flor del aguapé
Flores argentinas 10
Benarós
1969

La música
Quince canciones escolares 9
Benarós
1965

La noche
Edad del asombro 2
Quintana
1968

La novia
Siete canciones 1
Alberti
1944

La Palomita
Tres canciones 1
Iglesias de la Casa
1950

La primera pregunta

Cortese
1956

La Rosa y el Sauce

Silva
1942

La siempre viva
Doce canciones populares 10
Benarós
1968

La tempranera

Benarós
1963

La última día
Quince canciones escolares 10
Benarós
1965

Las achiras coloradas
Flores argentinas 7
Benarós
1969

Las flores del macachín
Flores argentinas 6
Benarós
1969

Las Nubes

Cernuda
1944

Las puertas de la mañana
Cuatro canciones coloniales 4
Benarós
1965

Leñatero
Pájaros 10
Benarós
1974

Los desencuentros
Doce canciones populares 3
Benarós
1968

Los días perdidas

Aguirre
1951

Los llantos del alba
Canciones del alba
Benarós
1974

Los Pájaros
Edad del asombro 5
Quintana
1968

Los ríos de la mano

Pedroni
1973

Me gusta la mitología
Quince canciones escolares 12
Benarós
1965

Me gustan las matemáticas
Quince canciones escolares 7
Benarós
1965

Mi canto

Mileo
1956

Mi garganta
Cuatro canciones argentinas 4
Anonymous
1949

Mi viña de Chapanay
Doce canciones populares 12
Benarós
1968

Milonga de dos hermanos

Borges
1963

Nana del niño malo
Siete canciones 4
Alberti
1944

Noches de Santa Fe

Eizenberg
1964

Ojos de tiempo

Garcia
1964

Ombú

Mileo
1956

Paisaje

Silva
1943

Pájaro muerto
Tres canciones… 2
Cernuda
1945

Pájaros

Benarós
1974

Pampa sola
Doce canciones populares 8
Benarós
1968

Pampamapa
Doce canciones populares 6
Benarós
1968

Piececitos

Mistral
1941

Pirincho
Pájaros 6
Benarós
1974

Plancha
Los ríos de la mano 1
Pedroni
1973

Plomada
Los ríos de la mano 7
Pedroni
1973

Por los campos verdes

Ibarbourou
1942

Préstame tu pañuelito
Cuatro canciones coloniales 2
Benarós
1965

Propósito

Guastavino
1939

Qué linda la madreselva
Flores argentinas 5
Benarós
1969

Quién fuera granaderito
Quince canciones escolares 11
Benarós
1965

Química
Quince canciones escolares 5
Benarós
1965

Quince canciones escolares

Benarós
1965

Quisiera ser por un rato
Doce canciones populares 4
Benarós
1968

Riqueza

Mistral
1943

Romance de Jose Cubas

Benarós
1965

Romance de la Delfina

Eizenberg
1964

Sarmiento fundaba escuelas
Quince canciones escolares 14
Benarós
1965

Se equivocó la Paloma

Alberti
1941

Severa Villafañe

Benarós
1964

Siesta

Silva
1953

Soneto a la armonía

Aguirre
1962

Tacuarita
Pájaros 4
Benarós
1974

Teru-teru
Pájaros 9
Benarós
1974

Tijera
Los ríos de la mano 8
Pedroni
1973

Torcacita
Pájaros 2
Benarós
1974

Tres Canciones

Cernuda
1945

Tres Canciones

Iglesias de la Casa
1950

Vidala el secadal
Doce canciones populares 5
Benarós
1968

Viniendo de Chilecito
Cuatro canciones argentinas 2
Anonymous
1949

Violetas
Tres canciones… 1
Cernuda
1945

Ya llegan las vacaciones
Quince canciones escolares 15
Benarós
1965

Ya me voy a retirar
Cuatro canciones coloniales 3
Benarós
1965

Yo, maestra

Garcia
1965

Zamba del quiero

Malinov
1964

Appendix B: Discography

Guastavino, Carlos. Homage to Carlos Guastavino. Washington, D.C.: Inter-American Musical Editions, 1988. LP: OAS-0033 [Recorded live at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Also released on CD: OAS-001, 1992]. CONTENTS:

Chorus: Desde que te conocí; Severa Villafañe; Se equivocó la paloma; Romance de José Cubas; Mirala como se va; La torre en guardía; Ay, que el alma

Piano: Tierra linda; Cantilena no. 8: Santa Fe antiguo; Cantilena no. 10: La Casa; Sonatina in g

Songs with piano: Soneto IV (Quevedo); Bonita rama de sauce; Nana del niño malo; A volar; El sampedrino; Milonga de dos hermanos; La rosa y el sauce; Mi viña de Chapanay

Songs with guitar: Chañarcito; Romance de la Delfina; La tempranera

Guitar: Canto popular no. 4; Bailecito

PIANO MUSIC

Guastavino, Carlos. Diez Cantilenas Argentinas. Serie DM—Difusión Musical. [Buenos Aires]: Repertorio Carave, [year?]. DM 70.155 [10 Cantilenas, Carlos Guastavino, pianist]

Guastavino, Carlos and Haydée Giordano. Music for two pianos. RCA Victor—Argentina, [year?]. AVL 3058 [Tres Romances; Se equivocó la paloma; Bailecito; Gato; Llanura]

Citera, Ivan. Ivan Citera: winner in the Fifth International Piano Competition ‘Teresa Carreño’, Venezuela. Washington, DC: Inter-American Musical Editions, 1986. LP: OAS-028 [La siesta: Three Preludes]

Balzi, Beatriz. Compositores Latino-Americanos 2. Sao Joao del-Rei, Brasil: Tacape, 1986. LP: T-017 Tacape. [Sonata]

Castro, Luíz de Moura. Milonga del ángel: aires y danzas de la Argentina. Barcelona: Discos Ensayo, 1991. CD: ENY CD 9902 [Canto popular no. 1, 4; Bailecito; Cantilena no. 1]

Ascot, Luis. Musique Argentine. Cointrin, Suisse: Cascavelle, 1993. CD: VEL 1031 [Luis Ascot, piano; Bailecito; Gato; Sonatina; Cantos populares I–IV]

Duo Moreno-Capelli. Carlos Guastavino: Piano Music. Denmark: Marco Polo, 1993. [music for two pianos]

Lester/Roldán Duo. Music of the Americas. [Baton Rouge, LA]: Centaur, 1993. CD: CRC 2171 [Tres romances, 2pf; Gato; Bailecito]

Franzetti, Allison Brewster. South American Landscapes. American piano, v. 5. New York: Premier Recordings, 1994. CD: PRCD 1036 [Tres Sonatinas]

Olevsky, Estela. Piano Solos of Latin America. [United States]: Centaur, 1994. CD: CRC 2202 [Preludios sobre canciones populares]

Sainz, Liliana and Jorge Bergaglio. Deux Pianos. New York: Gallo, 1994. Gallo CD 800. [Tres Romances Argentinas, no. 1 and 3]

Goimard, Magali. Argentine Piano Music. Brussels, Belgium: Pavane Records, 1995. CD: ADW 7353 Pavane Records. [Cantilenas Argentinas no. 2, 10]

Pillado, Cecilia. Argentine Piano Music. [S.l.]: Gema, 1995. CD: LC 8058. [Romance de Cuyo]

Guastavino, Carlos. Obra integral para piano solo. 3 vol.; Various artists. Buenos Aires: Cosentino, 1997. 3 cd: IRCO 234-236.

Pillado, Cecilia. Tango Malambo. Berlin Classics, 1998. Berlin Classics CD1180 [Romance de Cuyo]

Pillado, Cecilia. Cuantas Estrellas: Argentine Piano Music. Germany: Berlin Classics, 1998. Berlin Classics CD 1185. [10 Preludios on Argentine Popular Songs]

Castro, Luis de Moura. Argentina Piano. Barcelona: Ensayo, 1997. ENY 9714. [Cantos Populares no. 1 and 4; Bailecito; Cantilena no. 1]

Songs

Nostalgia and Fantasy: Latin American art songs. [various performers]. [Washington, D.C.]: Organization of American States, 1977. LP: OAS 001. [Cuando acaba de llover; Préstame tu pañuelito; Ya me voy a retirar; Las puertas de la mañana]

Gallo, Carmina. Canciones de cámara de America latina. [Washington, DC]: Ediciones interamericanas de música, 1977. LP: OEA 001 [with Jaime León, piano; Cuando acaba de llover, Préstame tu pañuelito; Ya me voy a retirar; Las puertas de la mañana]

Ameling, Elly. Think on me. New York: CBS Masterworks, 1981. LP: M 36682 [with Dalton Baldwin, piano; La rosa y el sauce]

Nafe, Alicia. Alicia Nafe singt Lieder. [Germany]: Bellaphon, 1982. LP: 680-01-010 [with Carmen Piazzini, piano; Pampa sola; Pampamapa; Encantamiento; Viniendo de Chilecito; La rosa y el sauce]

Berganza, Teresa. Teresa Berganza, mezzo-soprano. Thun, Switzerland: Claves, Sanyo, 1984. CD: 50-8401 [with Juan Antonio Alvarez Parejo, piano; Milonga de dos hermanos; Hermano; Mi viña de Chapanay; La rosa y el sauce; Pampamapa; Se equivocó la paloma; Abismo de sed; Bonita rama de sauce; El Sampedrino]

Carreras, José. Canciones españolas. Digital Classics. [Holland]: Philips, 1985. CD: Philips 411 478-2 [with Martin Katz, piano; La rosa y el sauce; Se equivocó la paloma]

Casares, Bertha. Lieder. Saarbrucken, West Germany: TGF Records, 1985. LP: TGF 20-8504 [with Wolfgang Lendle, guitar; La rosa y el sauce; Viniendo de chilecito; En los surcos del amor—arrangements Lendle]

Carreras, José. Zu gast in Berlin. Japan: Nec Avenue, 1987. Videodisc (89 min.): A78L-3003 [La rosa y el sauce]

Giménez, Raúl. Argentinian Songs. London: Nimbus Records, 1988. CD: NI 5107. [With Nina Walker, piano; Desde que te conocí; Viniendo de Chilecito; En los surcos del amor; Mi garganta; Cita; Se equivocó la paloma; La rosa y el sauce; Pueblito, mi pueblo]

Balthrop, Carmen. Con amores: Spanish and Portuguese songs. [England?]: Elan, 1988. CD: 2208 Elan [With Robert McCoy, piano: Canciones populares: hermano; La rosa y el sauce; Abismo de sed; Se equivocó la paloma; Pampamapa]

Carreras, José. José Carreras in Recital. Springville, CA: Legato Classics, 1989. CD: LCD-156-1 [with Lorenzo Bavaj, piano; La rosa y el sauce]

Trakas, Christopher. Naumberg Presents Christopher Trakas. Ocean, NJ: Musicmasters, 1989. CD: MMD 60170 ; Musicmasters 7009-2-C [“1985 Naumberg Vocal Award Winner”; C. Trakas, baritone; Steven Blier, piano; La rosa y el sauce]

Pares-Reyna, Margot. Carlos Guastavino: Songs. Classics of the Americas, vol. 2. Paris: Opus 111, 1990. CD: OPS 30-9002 [33 songs, with Georges Rabol, piano]

Letelier, Carmen Luisa. Cantos del amor Mistraliano. Colección Músical chilena. Serie Música y poesía. [Chile]: Facultad de Artes de la Universidad de Chile, 1992. Cassette: CMCH-03. [Settings of the poetry of Gabriela Mistral. Carmen Luisa Letelier, contralto; Elvira Savi, piano; Meciendo; Rocío; Encantamiento]

Espaillat, Ulises. Las Puertas de la Mañana: Canciones Argentinas de Carlos Guastavino. San Francisco: New Albion, 1993. CD: NAO58CD [20 selected songs; with Pablo Zinger, piano]

Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires—Orquesta de cámara. Interpretes Argentinos en vivo. [Argentina]: Piscitelli Producciones, 1994. CD: P-004 [songs with chamber orchestra; Monica Philibert, soprano, Alberto Devoto, dir.; Se equivocó la paloma; La rosa y el sauce; Pueblito mi pueblo; orch. Roberto García Morillo]

Fink, Marcos. Flores Argentinas: canciones de Carlos Guastavino. Geneva: Cascavelle, 1996. CD: VEL 1059 [Flores Argentinas, misc. songs; with Luis Ascot, piano]

Vázquez, Encarnación (mezzo) and Jaime Márquez (guitar). Cuando Dos. Mexico: Urtext, 1997. CD: Urtext: JBCC 013 [arrangements for mezzo-soprano and guitar: La siempre viva; Ay, que el alma; Se equivocó la paloma; Severa Villafañe; El sampedrino]

Sartova, Maria and Joël Jegard. Chant et Guitare. France: Quantum, 1997. Quantum: dQM 6970. [arrangements for voice and guitar: La siempre viva; Severa Villafañe; Pueblito, mi pueblo; El sampedrino]

Cura, José. Anhelo: Argentinian Songs. Paris: Erato, 1998. CD: Erato: 3984-23138-2. [José Cura, tenor; Eduardo Delgado, piano; Ernesto Bitetti, guitar; La rosa y el sauce; Se equivocó la paloma; El único camino; Elegía para un gorrión; Campanilla, ¿adónde vas?; Riqueza; Soneto IV; Anhelo]

Quink Vocal Ensemble. Carols Around the World. Cleveland, OH: Telarc, 1989. Telarc CD 80202 [Canción de navidad]

Montiel, María José. Recital of Spanish Songs. Spain: RTVE Classics, 1999. CD 65115. [La rosa y el sauce; El sampedrino; with Miguel Zanetti, piano]

Badía, Conchita. Homenaje a Conchita Badía. Buenos Aires: Piscitelli Productions, [year?]. P-009. [Se equivocó la paloma; Viniendo de Chilecito; also works by Aguirre, Williams, García Morillo, and others, from a concert dedicated to argentinean composers, Madrid, May 27, 1964.]

Chamber Music

Szeryng, Henryk. Music from Spain, Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico. Recital by Henryk Szeryng and Claude Maillols. [Holland?]: Philips, 1973. LP: Philips 6500 016. Title from spine of slipcase. [arrangements of various works, including Llanura by Guastavino]

Francesconi, Cecilia. Virtuose Programm-Musik. Munster: [United States]: Ars Produktion Schumacher; Distributed by Allegro Imports, 1988. CD: FCD 368 306. [Cecilia Francesconi, flute; Friedemann Rieger, piano; Introducción y Allegro for flute and piano]

Rossi, Luis. Fantasia sul America: clarinet masterworks from South America. München: AREPO, 1992. CD: NR-1104 [Luis Rossi, cl; Diana Schneider, pno; Sonata for Clarinet and Piano; Tonada y Cueca for clarinet and piano]

Grupo Encuentros. Raíces americanas. Argentina: Cosentino, 1993. CD: IRCO 206 [Sonetos del ruiseñor]

Santa Fe Guitar Quartet. Argentina’s Santa Fe Guitar Quartet. San Juan Capistrano, CA: Klavier Records, 1993. CD: KCD 11045 [arrangement: Bailecito]

Camerata Bariloche [Chamber Orchestra of Argentina]. Impresiones. Series: Music of Latin American Masters. Troy, NY: Dorian, 1995. CD: DOR-90202 [Arrangements for chamber orchestra. Jeromita Linares; Tres cantilenas argentinas y final—No. 10 La Casa; No. 6 Juanita; No. 4 El Ceibo; Final: Romance en Colastine]

Pacitti, Daniel. Works for Clarinet. [Italy?]: Agora música, 1995. CD: AG 026 [Sonata for clarinet and piano]

The Boston Conservatory of Music Presents The New Music Ensemble. Boston: Boston Conservatory, 1997. Videocassette [recorded April 30, 1997; Yoichi Udagawa, director and conductor; Las presencias]

San Francisco Camerata Americana. San Francisco Camerata Americana. San Juan Capestrano, California: Klavier Records, 1998. KCD 11093. [Jeromita Linares, with Sergio Puccini, guitar]

Signorello, Antonio (clarinet) and Veronique Garnier (piano). Rare Contemporary Sonatas for Clarinet and Piano. Milan, Italy: Kicco, 1998. CD 030. [Sonata for Clarinet and Piano]

Young, Alison (flute), and Vicki Seldon (piano). A Little Tango in her Blood. Albany, NY: Albany Records, 2000. TROY 423. [Milonga de dos hermanos; Introducción y Allegro for flute and piano]

Guitar

Siewers, María Isabel. María Isabel Siewers plays the music of Argentina. [England]: Guitar Masters Records, 1984. LP: GMR 1003 [Bailecito; Sonata no. 2]

Siewers, María Isabel. Guastavino: Guitar and Chamber Music. England: ASV Ltd, 1995. CD: DCA 933 [Santa Fe Antiguo; Bailecito; Cantilena ‘Santa Fe para llorar’; Sonata No. 1; Sonata No. 2; Sonata No. 3; Tres Cantos Populares for violin and guitar; Jeromita Linares. with the Stamic Quartet]

Villadangos, Victor. Victor Villadangos—Guitarra—Ganador del 1o Premio del Concurso C.G.A. año 1990. Buenos Aires: Círculo Guitarrística Argentina (C.G.A.), 1990. Cassette Tape: no number [Sonata No. 3]

Villadangos, Victor. Music of Guastavino and Pujol. Buenos Aires: private pressing, 1995. CD [Jeromita Linares, including excerpt of interview with CG about the title]

Rubio, Ricardo and Marlsa Rostom. Guitarra Latinoamerica. Switzerland: Gallo, 2000. CD 982. [Bailecito]

Recital Tapes

Diggory, Edith Anne. “Student recital.” Bloomington: IU School of Music, 1981. 2 sound tape reels (52 min.): 7 ½ in., 2 track, stereo [rec. Feb. 13, 1981; with Alejandro Caceres, piano; Se equivocó la paloma; El sampedrino; Los desencuentros; Severa Villafañe]

Ameling, Elly. “Guest Recital.” Bloomington: Indiana University School of Music, 1981. 2 sound tape reels (68 min.): 7 ½ in., 2 track, stereo [with Dalton Baldwin, piano; recorded July 6, 1981; La rosa y el sauce]

Friesema, Gail. “Music for voice: a thesis presented to the faculty of the Department of Music.” Northeastern Illinois University, 1992. 1 sound cassette. [La rosa y el sauce]

Graves, Jody C. “Jody C. Graves, piano.” Rochester: Eastman School of Music DMA recital, 1992. Digital tape reel, 12 in. [Sonatina in g (1945)]

Klug, Howard. “Faculty Recital.” Bloomington: Indiana University, 1995. DAT: recorded July 23, 1995 [Howard Klug, Clarinet; Andrew DeGrado, piano—Tonada y Cueca]

Rossi, Luis. “Guest Recital.” Bloomington: Indiana University, 1996. DAT: recorded April 13, 1996. [Luis Rossi, clarinet; Read Gainsford, piano—Tonada y Cueca]

Boston Conservatory of Music. New Music Ensemble. The Boston Conservatory of Music presents The New Music Ensemble. Boston: BCM, 1997. 1 video cassette (VHS). [Las Presencias—doesn’t say which ones]

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________. “La música del ballet Fue una vez… de Carlos Guastavino: Una reconstrucción a partir de fuentes biblio-hemerográficas.” Unpublished paper, July 1999. [copy sent to me by author]. 10 pp. with bibliography and “hemerografía” [bibliography of newspaper articles].

________. “‘Se equivocó la paloma’ de Carlos Guastavino: Curioso caso de hibridación cultural.” Unpublished paper delivered at XIII Conferencia Anual de la Asociación Argentina de Musicología (5–8 Aug 1999) en la sede de la S.A.D.E. (Sociedad Argentina de Escritores), la casa “José Hernández.”

________. “Tres Ciclos Pianísticos de Carlos Guastavino. Reflexiones sobre su aplicación didáctica.” 2nda. Conferencia Iberoamericana de Investigacón Musical: Trabajos Presentados; Buenos Aires, Argentina, 7–10 May 1998. edited by Silvia Malbrán, 114–118. Buenos Aires: Universidad de Lanús, 1998.

Mansilla, Silvina Luz, Bernardo Illari, and Melanie Plesch. “Guastavino, Carlos Vicente.” In Diccionario de la Música Española e Hispanoamericana. Ed. by Emilio Casares Rodicio. [Madrid]: Sociedad General de Autores y Editores, 1999.

Merriam, Alan P. The Anthropology of Music. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1964.

Morgan, Robert P. Twentieth-Century Music: A History of Musical Style in Modern Europe and America. A Norton Introduction to Music History. New York: W.W. Norton and Co., Inc., 1991.

Nettl, Bruno. Folk and Traditional Music of the Western Continents, Third Edition. With chapters on Latin America by Gerard Béhague. Prentice-Hall History of Music Series. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1990.

Nichols, Madaline Wallis. The Gaucho: Cattle Hunter, Cavalryman, Ideal of Romance. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1942; Reprint: New York: Gordian Press, 1968.

Plesch, Melanie. “La obra para guitarra de Carlos Guastavino y el folklore musical argentino: problemas de interpretación.” La Guitarra en la Historia 7 (1996):13–38. [Córdoba, Spain: Centro de Documentación Musical de Andalucía]

Plesch, Melanie and Bernardo Illari. “Las sonatas para guitarra de Carlos Guastavino.” VII Jornadas Argentinas de Musicología y VI Conferencia Anual de la Asociación Argentina de Musicología (1 al 4 de octubre 1992). [unpublished paper delivered at the conference]

Roel, Ricardo. “An analysis of selected piano works by Carlos Guastavino: a doctoral essay.” DMA diss., University of Miami, 1995.

Roldan, Nancy. “An Analysis of Ten Cantilenas.” DMA diss., Peabody Conservatory of Music, 1989.

Salgado, Susana. “Aguirre, Julián.” In The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan Publishers, 1980).

________. “Ugarte, Floro M(anuel).” In The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan Publishers, 1980).

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Schulz, Charles M. “Compositores argentinos: Carlos Guastavino.” La Prensa, 19 Mar 1968, 23–24.

Schwartz-Kates, Deborah. “Gianneo, Luis.” In The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Second Edition. Ed. by Stanley Sadie. New York: Grove’s Dictionaries, Inc., 2001.

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________. “The Gauchesco Tradition as a Source of National Identity in Argentine Art Music (ca. 1890–1955).” Ph.D. diss., University of Texas at Austin, 1997.

Simms, Bryan R. Music of the Twentieth Century: Style and Structure. New York: Schirmer Books, 1995

Slonimsky, Nicholas. Music of Latin America. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1945.

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Vita

Jonathan Kulp began his musical studies at age eight, taking up the classical guitar in high school and earning a bachelor’s degree in guitar performance in 1992 from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, where he studied guitar under Mario Abril. In 1993 he was a Junior Fellow at the Library of Congress, where he helped to process the archives of Aaron Copland. He was awarded the Master of Music Theory degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 1994, after which he enrolled in the doctoral program in musicology. His onsite research in Buenos Aires was supported by a grant from the Institute of Latin-American Studies at the University of Texas. He is the author of “Guastavino, Carlos Vicente” in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd edition.

An active composer, Kulp was a winner in G. Schirmer’s 1995 Young Americans Art Song Competition, and his winning song “Canción tonta” (Lorca) was subsequently published in The Art Song Collection (1996), part of Schirmer’s “New American Voices” series. His Danza Dominicana and Danza Cubana were recorded on the Naxos label by guitarist Steve Kostelnik, and his chamber piece rosetree follies (e.e. cummings) was commissioned and premiered by La Follia Austin Baroque in April 2000. Kulp has also worked as a classical radio announcer and as co-producer and host of The Basics, an educational program on radio station 89.5 KMFA in Austin.

This dissertation was typed by the author.

Notes

“la última gran figura del movimiento.” Juan María Veniard, La música nacional argentina (Buenos Aires: Instituto Nacional de Musicología ‘Carlos Vega,’ 1986), 127.

Silvina Luz Mansilla, “Carlos Guastavino,” Revista del Instituto de Investigación Musicológica Carlos Vega 1/10 (1989): 229–258.

Mansilla, “Carlos Guastavino,” El Mundo de la Guitarra 5 (Setiembre-Octubre 1988): 2–4

ibid. p.2 “…a la amplísima difusión que sus obras han adquirido en los cinco continentes.” “…sus creaciones han traspuesto las fronteras más remotas y han sido y son muy frecuentadas por músicos de todo nivel.”

Mansilla, “Tres Ciclos Pianísticos de Carlos Guastavino. Reflexiones sobre su aplicación didáctica,” In 2nda Conferencia Iberoamericana de Investigación Musical: Trabajos Presentados; Buenos Aires, Argentina, 7–10 Mayo 1998, Ed. by Silvia Malbrán. Buenos Aires: Universidad de Lanús, 1998, 114–118.

Mansilla, “‘Se equivocó la paloma’ de Carlos Guastavino: Curioso caso de hibridación cultural.” Paper delivered at XIII Conferencia Anual de la Asociación Argentina de Musicología (5–8 Aug 1999). [unpublished].

Many Argentine authors in the past have simply summarized what a composer has written, rather than doing any actual analysis of his/her music. A typical example might be, “And now we come to Maestro Carlos Guastavino (b. 1912), a composer of many beautiful songs, including ‘Se equivocó la paloma,’ ‘La rosa y el sauce,’ ‘Viniendo de Chilecito,’ ‘Bonita rama de sauce,’ and many others.”

Silvina Luz Mansilla, “La música del ballet Fue una vez… de Carlos Guastavino: Una reconstrucción a partir de fuentes biblio-hemerográficas,” ([unpublished] July, 1999). 10 pp. with bibliography and hemerography.

Emilio Casares Rodicio, ed. Diccionario de la Música Española e Hispanoamericana. 10v. ([Madrid]: Sociedad General de Autores y Editores, 1999), s.v. “Carlos Vicente Guastavino,” by Silvina Luz Mansilla, Bernardo Illari, and Melanie Plesch.

Melanie Plesch, “La obra para guitarra de Carlos Guastavino y el folklore musical argentino: problemas de interpretación,” La Guitarra en la Historia 7 (1996): 13–38. She and Bernardo Illari also presented many of the same ideas in a paper entitled “Las sonatas para guitarra de Carlos Guastavino,” delivered at the VII Jornadas Argentinas de Musicología y VI Conferencia Anual de la Asociación Argentina de Musicología, 1 al 4 octubre 1992.

Roland Barthes, Investigaciones retóricas I. La antigua retórica, (Barcelona: Ediciones Buenos Aires, 1982), and Kofi Agawu, Playing with Signs: A Semiotic Interpretation of Classic Music (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1991).

Fernando Fuenzalida, “Vida, personalidad y obra de Carlos Guastavino,” Música e Investigación 2 (1998): 21–77.

Nancy Roldán, email to the author, 15 January 2001.

Silvina Luz Mansilla, “Carta de Lectores,” Boletín de la Asociación Argentina de Musicología, Año 13/3, no. 40 (Dec. 1998): 11–13.

Nancy Roldan, “An Analysis of ‘Ten Cantilenas’,” (DMA Thesis, Peabody Conservatory, 1989).

Ricardo Roel, “An analysis of selected piano works by Carlos Guastavino: a doctoral essay” (DMA Thesis, University of Miami, 1995).

Douglas Crowder, “Carlos Guastavino: Ten Selected Songs,” (DMA diss., Peabody Conservatory, 1992)

Deborah Wagner, “Carlos Guastavino: An Annotated Bibliography of his Solo Vocal Works” (DMA diss., Arizona State University, 1997).

Camerata Bariloche, Impresiones (New York: Dorian Recordings, 1995). CD: Dorian 90202.

Pablo Marcelo Cohen, “Sonata No. 1 for guitar by Carlos Guastavino: An analytical study of its structure, style, and Argentinian folk influences” (Ph.D. diss: Temple University, 1999).

Carlos Augusto Capra, “Clarinet Music by Argentinian Composers” (DMA treatise: University of Texas at Austin, 1999).

Stanley Sadie, ed., The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 20 v. (London: MacMillan, 1980).

Gerard Béhague, Music in Latin America: An Introduction, Prentice-Hall History of Music Series (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1979).

Gerard Béhague, AArgentinien,@ In Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. by Ludwig Finscher (Kassel; New York; Barenreiter, 1994–1998); and “Argentina,” In The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd edition, ed. by Stanley Sadie (New York: Grove Dictionaries, Inc., 2001).

Jonathan Kulp, “Guastavino, Carlos Vicente,” In The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd edition, ed. by Stanley Sadie (New York: Grove Dictionaries, Inc., 2001).

Nicholas Slonimsky, Music of Latin America (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1945), 92–93. Slonimsky is not alone in perpetuating the incorrect year of Guastavino’s birth. Nearly all sources do so until the late 1990s, and even now only about half of the articles and books that appear have the correct date. Juan María Veniard’s newest book, Aproximación a la Música Académica Argentina (Buenos Aires: EDUCA, 2000), still gives 1914. Béhague’s paragraph about Guastavino in the new MGG is based on Veniard’s earlier writings about Guastavino (La música nacional argentina, 1986), and as such it also gives 1914. Guastavino’s obituary in La Nación (30 October 2000) even said 1911. Since so many sources have the year 1914, it is unlikely that there will ever be clarity on the issue. If anyone were to doubt Guastavino’s assurance that he was born in 1912, the place to look for confirmation would be Fernando Fuenzalida’s article, wherein there are copies of official government documents saying 1912.

Rodolfo Arizaga, Enciclopedia de la música argentina (Buenos Aires: Fondo Nacional de las artes, 1971), 175–176.

Lázaro Flury, Historia de la música argentina (Santa Fe, Argentina: Colmegna, 1967), 78, 90.

Mario García Acevedo, La música argentina contemporánea (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Culturales Argentinas, Ministerio de educación y justicia, 1963).

Ibid., 42.

Ibid., 44.

Roberto García Morillo, Estudios sobre música argentina (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Culturales Argentinas, 1984).

Juan María Veniard, La música nacional argentina (Buenos Aires: Instituto Nacional de Musicología ACarlos Vega@: 1986).

Ibid., 127.

Juan María Veniard, Aproximación a la música académica argentina (Buenos Aires: Ediciones de la Universidad Católica Argentina [EDUCA], 2000).

Fuenzalida, 37.

“La ejecución, grabación, y estudio de su obra en todo el mundo colocan su nombre como referente a nivel internacional de la música académica argentina; ocupando el sitial antes exclusivo de Ginastera.” Fuenzalida, 52.

Carlos Suffern quoted from an unpublished interview in Veniard, Aproximación a la música académica argentina, 318.

Robert Morgan, Twentieth-Century Music: A History of Musical Style in Modern Europe and America (New York: W. W. Norton Co., 1991); Bryan Simms, Music of the Twentieth Century: Style and Structure (New York: Schirmer Books, 1995); Eric Salzman, Twentieth-Century Music: An Introduction, 2nd edition, Prentice-Hall History of Music Series (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1974).

“Los ambientes poéticos condicionan a la melodía y la armonía.” Fuenzalida, “Vida, personalidad y obra de Carlos Guastavino,” 51.

“Mi padre era una modesta persona. Pintor de paredes. Pintor de paredes, pero era un hombre muy inteligente, poco…poco instruido porque a las tres…al tercer año tuvo que abandonar para ganar su dinero. Pero tenía la visión de la educación. ¿Sabe?” Carlos Guastavino, interview with Victor Villadangos, 4 July 1992, videotape. Villadangos is one of the leading classical guitarists of Argentina. He gave the premiere of Guastavino’s third guitar sonata in 1989.

Mansilla says that his studies with Dominga Iaffei Guastavino were not decisive in his career. Fuenzalida reports that Guastavino studied with Dominga at the Santa Fe Conservatory at age 12, which would make the year around 1924 instead of 1920. See Mansilla et al. “Carlos Guastavino,” in Diccionario de la Música Española e Hispanoamericana, v. 5, 945; and Fuenzalida, 25.

Ricardo Roel, “An Analysis of Selected Piano Works by Carlos Guastavino,” (DMA diss., Univerisity of Miami, 1995), p. 23. From Roel’s interview with Guastavino on 20 June 1995.

Guastavino recorded his works for 2 pianos with Haydee Giordano on the RCA Victor (Argentina) label. Silvina Mansilla reports that he also recorded an album of songs with the Uruguayan tenor Juan Carlos Taborda.

Guastavino recorded Diez Cantilenas on the Repertorio Carave label (Argentine branch of Deutsche Grammaphon) in Buenos Aires. See Discography.

The number of songs Guastavino has written is unclear. Several sources report that he wrote over 500, some say more than 600. Silvina Mansilla’s catalog of his works only lists 162 songs for voice and piano, including some of the unpublished songs, plus many arrangements of these songs for various choral configurations and other types of ensembles. Carlos Vilo said in our interview that it would take 18 to 20 compact discs to record Guastavino’s complete songs, which suggests that it is indeed a formidable number of works.

R.V.V., “Tesoros musicales de Guastavino,” La Nación, 2 October 2000. Also, interview with Ana Lucía Frega, 26 May 1999; Email from Estela Olevsky, 14 January 2001.

“Los nombres de Julián Aguirre y, poco más tarde, de Carlos López Buchardo se consolidan como los más representativos en la canción de cámara argentina.” Mario García Acevedo, La música argentina contemporánea, Ediciones Culturales Argentinas (Ministerio de educación y justicia, 1963), 42.

Silvina Mansilla gave a detailed account of the history of this song and its mass success in her paper “‘Se equivocó la paloma’ de Carlos Guastavino: Curioso Caso de Hibridación Cultural.” Presented at the XIII Conferencia Anual de la Asociación Argentina de Musicología, 5–8 August 1999.

Malena Kuss, Liner notes to Argentinian Songs, Raul Giménez, tenor and Nina Walker, piano (Compact disc Nimbus 5107, Nimbus Records, 1987). Juan María Veniard quotes the eminent Argentine musicologist and composer Carlos Suffern as saying that Guastavino’s Pueblito, mi pueblo is “on its way to folklorization”: “La canción Pueblito, mi pueblo, sobre letra de Francisco Silva, posee tan acentuado carácter popular que, sugún opinión del Mtro. Carlos Suffern, está en vías de folklorización.” Veniard, La música nacional argentina, 126. While doing my research in Argentina I was able to confirm this countless times in informal studies. For example, when the cleaning lady at the hostel where I stayed in Buenos Aires asked me what I was doing there, I told her I was studying an Argentine composer named Carlos Guastavino. She had never heard of him, but when I sang her the first line of “Se equivocó la paloma,” she immediately sang the second line and said, “Oh yes, of course everyone knows that song, but I’ve never heard of Guastavino.”

Carlos Guastavino, 26 Canciones populares argentinas: for mixed chorus (Buenos Aires: Ricordi, 1960– ).

Illari, Plesch, Mansilla. “Carlos Guastavino.” Diccionario…

“Bailecito” is also included in Guastavino’s RCA recording of music for two pianos with Haydee Giordano.

Carlos Guastavino, interview with Victor Villadangos, July 4, 1992.

Silvina Mansilla, “Tres Ciclos Pianísticos de Carlos Guastavino. Reflexiones sobre su aplicación didáctica,” In 2nda Conferencia Iberoamericana de Investigación Musical: Trabajos Presentados Lanús, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 7 al 10 de Mayo de 1998, ed. Silvia Malbrán (Lanús, Buenos Aires: Fundación para la Educación Musical, 1998), 114.

Mansilla has written a fine, albeit brief unpublished article about Fue una vez. She uses newspaper reviews of the time and documents from the archives of the Teatro Colón (among other sources) to present as complete a picture as possible (given that the score is lost) of the ballet and the events surrounding it. See Mansilla, “La música del ballet Fue una vez… de Carlos Guastavino: Una reconstrucción a partir de fuentes biblio-hemerográficas” ([unpublished], July 1999), 10 pp.

Mansilla, “Carlos Guastavino,” Revista del Instituto de Investigación Musicológica “Carlos Vega” 10 (1989): 257.

such as Roberto García Morillo, interview with the author; Veniard, La música nacional argentina, 126.

“…la expansión creativa y artística, signada por encargos, composiciones y giras de concierto que cimentaron su prestigio en el país y en el extranjero.” Fuenzalida, 27.

“…obras maestras de la madurez.” Fuenzalida, 34.

“Yo ando bien, trabajando. Acabé una sonata para piano a 4 manos que titulé “Romance del Plata” y ahora estoy en estado febril, haciendo versiones para coro masculino de muchos de mis canciones. Ha surgido un coro de esa especie—no hay otro en toda la Argentina que yo sepa—y estoy enloquecido con el placer del sonido que se obtiene. El director, Carlos Vilo es muy sensible, y está—me da vergüenza—a difundir únicamente obras mías. Tiene un cuarteto de madrigalistas que esta teniendo mucho éxito y todo esto me llena de gusto musical y de asombro también.” Carlos Guastavino, letter to Nancy Roldán, 9 November 1987.

Illari, “Guastavino, Carlos Vicente” in Diccionario de la música española e hispanoamericana.

“El canon guastaviniano fue establecido por la música de este período, principalmente a través de las obras para piano de 1951–1960.” Ibid.

“un momento de elaboración, donde las piezas ‘dentro del canon’ coexisten con estilos más abstractos o intelectuales.” Ibid.

Schulz, C. La Prensa, 19 March 1968, 23–24.

Interview with Victor Villadangos, July 4, 1992.

“…me encantó la idea de sentir alguna obra mía cantada por todo el público sin saber nada del autor…‘La tempranera’ se hizo realmente popular y la cantaba todo el mundo. Muchas veces he oído esa canción en boca de obreros trabajando o en radio o TV cantada por gente anónimo, lo que es verdaderamente un placer.” Letter to Douglas Crowder, 7 September 1990.

Ana Lucía Frega, interview with the author, 26 May 1999, minidisc recording. Dr. Frega is [or was at the time of the interview] the president of the International Society for Music Education and a professor of music at the National University Rosario-Argentina.

“su audición siempre deja al espíritu bien dispuesto tras pasar por ese remanso de serenidad provinciana y auténtica.” Pablo Bardín, program notes for concert by guitarist María Isabel Siewers at the Teatro del Globo, May 29, 1999, Buenos Aires.

Interview with Carlos Vilo.

Ibid. He was particularly critical of a recording by soprano Margot Peres-Reyna, Classics of the Americas, vol. 2 (Paris: Opus 111 Records, 1990). This is a collection of 33 songs by Guastavino, one of only a handful of recordings devoted entirely to his songs. After hearing the compact disc, he wrote to a friend who was involved with the project (André Bornhauser), “Esteemed Sr. Bornhauser, do not be angry at what I am going to tell you. If you want to make a recording of my works, it is fine with me, but in any case look for a singer and a pianist who are professionals. I don’t want them to insert notes I didn’t write. I don’t want them to raise all of the songs to the soprano tessitura, because the soprano wins, but I lose.” “Estimado Sr. Bornhauser, no se enoje por lo que le voy a decir. Si Ud. tiene deseo de hacer la grabación de mis obras, me parece bien, pero en todo caso busque a una cantante y un pianista profesionales. No quiero que pongan notas que yo no puse. No quiero que suban todas las obras para la tesitura de soprano, porque la soprano gana pero yo pierdo.” Interview with Carlos Vilo.

“Di conciertos…yo no lo invité eso…Fui a Rosario con Conchita Badía, y al poco tiempo recibo una carta de una asociación pro música de Rosario, proponiéndome que yo diera un concierto en base a mis obras de piano, mis obras de piano. Yo escribí que no, que era muy arriesgado, qué sé yo? Pero insistieron. Y yo fui y toqué, y tuve mucho éxito. Y entonces, allí empecé, allí empecé y después hacía solamente mis obras…pero en todas…en todo el mundo!” Interview with Victor Villadangos.

“Un día vamos y dice, ‘No, Maestro Guastavino no viene más.’ Pero nunca una despedida…” Oscar Olmello, interview with the author, 3 June 1999. Oscar Olmello is an “Investigador Contratado” at the Instituto Nacional de Musicología “Carlos Vega,” Professor of guitar at the Conservatorio de Morón “Alberto Ginastera” and “Jefe de trabajos prácticos, departamento de artes, facultad de filosofía y letras de la Universidad de Buenos Aires.”

“Ahora, lo que me llamó mucha la atención—siendo que Guastavino aquí en Argentina es una persona tan reconocida, un músico tan importante—la modestia y la pobreza en que él vivía. No pobreza en el mal sentido, no le faltaba nada, pero era una modestia así de recursos absoluta. Un día…abrió la heladera y tenía unas latas de…de 7-Up, y un poquito de jamón, nada más. Casi como que no comía. Yo no…bueno, ¿qué sé yo? Era increíble, la cocina era muy chiquita era, un cuartito, no? No es que le faltaba nada, pero una piensa siempre que una persona, un compositor tan importante debe tener…bueno de haber ganado dinero en su vida a sobrar. Yo creo que él era humilde porque quería y no le interesa el dinero tampoco.” Victor Villadangos, interview with the author.

Fuenzalida, 39.

Charles M. Schulz, “Compositores argentinos: Carlos Guastavino,” La Prensa, 19 March 1968, 23–24.

Dr. Ana Lucía Frega, Fernando Fuenzalida, Silvina Mansilla, and Carlos Vilo, in interviews with the author.

“Siempre dice lo que piensa. Y entonces es una grave problema.” Emphasis his. Carlos Vilo, interview with the author.

“Guastavino: …Directamente cuando entramos en la dodecafonía, la detesto. Creo que es la negación de la música…¿qué quiere? ¿Que haga dodecafonía? ¡En ningún momento! Si naciera 20 veces, 20 veces haría “La rosa y el sauce”; 20 veces haría “Pueblito, mi pueblo”. Schulz: ¿Y no le preocupa que dentro de 50 años no se toque Guastavino y se toque Schoenberg y Berg y Juan Carlos Paz, por ejemplo?

Guastavino: ¡No! Absolutamente no. Porque no se va a tocar. Solamente se los tendrá como un fenómeno de desintegración del medio. ¿Ud. cree que la gente puede alimentarse con esa destrucción? ¿Con la destrucción que significa la antimúsica, que se está tratando de imponer como música, y que sólo se mantiene a través de la fuerza del número? Ninguno de nuestros compositores vanguardistas tienen valor de por si. Tocan sus obras en el Colón porque están agremiados.” Schulz, 23–24.

Juan Carlos Paz, Introducción a la música de nuestro tiempo , 2nd edition (Buenos Aires: Editoral Sudamericana, 1971). [the first edition appeared in 1955]

“En el enfoque general de este libro se considera al dodecafonismo como el plano de realidad musical efectiva del medio siglo, por entender que ninguna de las tendencias que se desenvuelven paralelamente a la corriente dodecafónica ha demostrado no ya la potencialidad renovadora y el incesante desplazamiento y proyección que ella mantuvo desde hace más de veinticinco años, sino simples cualidades de renovación y de supervivencia fuera de sus propios límites…Por último, resta agregar que los valores que esta introducción a la música novecentista apoya y prestigia—ya que no aspira a convertirse en reflejo fríamente objetivo o prescindente, no participante, en la evolución de las corrientes renovadoras del siglo—son aquellos que actúan bajo el signo del riesgo y de la posibilidad, desconfiando, en consecuencia, de toda tendencia y de todo compromiso de cualquier especie que conduzcan a una claudicación, un retroceso, un arrepentimiento o componendas de tipo académico, pasatista y reaccionario.” Ibid. [no page number printed] From the “Aclaración Preliminar” of the first edition of 1955.

Gilbert Chase, “Alberto Ginastera: Argentine Composer,” The Musical Quarterly 43, no. 4 (October 1957), 443.

Alberto Ginastera, “Eight from the Argentine,” Modern Music 23 (Fall 1946), 270.

Ana Lucía Frega, interview with the author.

“Pobre. Este hombre no tiene suerte. No hay ninguna melodía que le salga bien.” Carlos Vilo, interview with the author, p. 12.

Roberto García Morillo, interview with the author, 8 June 1999, Buenos Aires.

Schwartz-Kates, 894.

Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires—Orquesta de cámera, Interpretes Argentinos en vivo, (Argentina: Piscitelli Producciones, 1994). [CD: P-004. Monica Philibert, soprano; Alberto Devoto, cond.]

“…yo me encontré también en un festival musical con García Morillo, a que no conocía, sentado—era un cóctel primero y después había música—yo no sabía quien era él, pero parece que me reconoció, y me dijo, “Ud. es Carlos Vilo.” “Sí.” “Que hace la música de Guastavino.” Dice, “Lo felicito, es excelente.” Y empezó a nombrarme las obras de Guastavino. Entonces me di cuenta que empezó a valorar la obra de Guastavino… Y ayer escuché en radio nacional tres de las obras de Guastavino—“Pueblito, mi pueblo”; “La rosa y el sauce”; “Se equivocó la paloma”—que son para voz y piano—orquestada, hecha en orquesta por García-Morillo.” Carlos Vilo, interview with the author.

“…escribo sin época. Yo escribí y escribo la música que me gusta a mí. Y creo que el tiempo y la difusión que ha tenido mi obra han dado razón a lo que estaba haciendo.” Schulz, 23–24.

” ¿Qué le parece?…¡Viva el atonalismo! ¡Viva la dodecafonía! ¡Viva la música concreta! Eso es una porquería, lo digo, lo grito a todo el mundo, y en todo lo que me hacen, lo digo, están equivocados! Es…son bodrios, son mentiras, son falsedades, son… Quiero y no puedo. Basta? La música, la música auténtica es armonía, melodía, y ritmo, perfectamente to-na-les. Es la única forma de hacer música. Lo demás son camelos, son mentiras, y qué lo que pasó con Ginastera, si lo acabo de leer. Se le vació el teatro en cuanto pudo salir la gente antes de que terminara la obra. No. En la primera cosa fueron todos. Qué le parece. Linda música, linda música.” Carlos Guastavino, interview with Victor Villadangos.

“El estilo del compositor, tan identificado con esa poesía idílica de las cosas simples y el encanto de lo cotidiano, rescata en estas inspiradas canciones giros y ritmos que conmueven el alma y conservan el sabor y la pureza del canto ancestral de la raza.” Silvano Picchi, “Excelente Piano y Coro en el Ciclo de Lra [sic],” La Prensa (Buenos Aires), 20 Dec. 1989.

For a detailed account of the events leading up to the premiere, see Villadangos’ interview with the author.

Fuenzalida, 38. Victor Villadangos and María Isabel Siewers both attested to the importance of Guastavino’s sonatas, even though they are difficult and not often performed outside of Argentina. For example, I am a classical guitarist myself, have attended countless guitar recitals, and have never heard a single performance of any work by Guastavino in the United States.

Meanwhile the Guitar Sonata (1976) of Alberto Ginastera caught on immediately and has enjoyed uninterrupted popularity with guitarists around the world ever since.

For example, there are entries on Alberto Ginastera, Roberto García Morillo, Juan Carlos Paz, Julián Aguirre, Alberto Williams, Carlos López Buchardo, and the three Castro brothers.

Mansilla, “Tres ciclos pianísticos de Carlos Guastavino: reflexiones sobre su aplicación didáctica,” 115.

“Me pedían música del Argentina, pero yo no quería porque pensaba que no conocía mucho. Y como yo estudié acá en el Instituto de Arte del Teatro Colón, en el Conservatorio Nacional, en general, no se habla de música argentina. No se sabe que hay música argentina.” [emphasis his]. Carlos Vilo, interview with the author.

“No es que no la interesa. No la conocen, y hay gente interesada en que no la conozcan.” Interview with the author, 8 June 1999.

“Les interesa que haya un público que pague, pero no les interesa que intervenga el elemento local.” Ibid.

“ellos no dicen que es desconocida, ellos dicen que es mala. Entonces no se puede hacer porque es mala y el público se va, claro…sabemos muy bien que no es cierto. Hay música argentina mala, música argentina regular, y bueno también.” Ibid.

The Lester / Roldán Duo, Music of the Americas (Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Centaur Records, 1993). [CRC 2171]

Email to the author, 12 January 2001.

CG: “…Yo escribo para todos…Tal vez hay un núcleo de personas a las que sí no llego; son los compositores nuevos, esos chicos jóvenes que están en otra tendencia. Y no sé si habrá autenticidad con respecto a su gusto musical cuando opinan sobre mi obra. En realidad esto tampoco me interesa mucho, le digo la verdad…

CS: Estaría usted igualmente contento si su música no se tocara?

CG: No, no. Estaría muy triste, porque sería un compositor muerto.” Schulz, 23.

“En cuanto a la distribución, en otros países, de mis obras, es un problema muy complicado. Tanto Ricordi como Lagos están enterados de mi preocupación. Creo que en la casa Central de Ricordi, en Milano, no están mis obras, sino un par de ellas, únicamente. Lagos está buscando un distribuidor en París. No sé nada acerca de los Estados Unidos. Lo mejor será pedir directamente a los Editores aquí, en Buenos Aires…” Letter to Douglas Crowder, 29 November 1991.

Fuenzalida, 40.

See discography.

Bryan R. Simms, Music of the Twentieth Century: Style and Structure (New York: Schirmer Books, 1995), 232.

“…el transportar conciente e intencionadamente las configuraciones rítmicas, melódicas, armónico-cadenciales, y tímbrico-colorísticas, asociadas con las expresiones del canto étnico y tradicional que caracterizan de modo más adecuado a un pueblo.” Mario García Acevedo, La música argentina contemporánea, Ediciones Culturales Argentinas (Buenos Aires: Ministerio de educación y justicia, 1963), 40.

Gerard Béhague, Music in Latin America: an Introduction (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1979), 224.

“Sólo cuando la música mexicana alcanza calidad artística, se convierte en verdadero arte nacional.” Roberto García Morillo, Carlos Chávez: vida y obra (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1960), 212.

Although even here, one could argue that the composers of the Second Viennese School have less in common with one another stylistically than they do ideologically, as their applications of the 12-tone technique vary considerably.

Carl Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music, trans. by J. Bradford Robinson (Berkley, California: University of California Press, 1989), 37.

Gerard Béhague, Music in Latin America: An Introduction (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1979), 98.

Ibid.

Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music, 304.

Ibid., 302.

Béhague, Music in Latin America, 129.

Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music, 306.

Tangazo: Music of Latin America. The New World Symphony, dir. by Michael Tilson Thomas. London: The Decca Record Company, Ltd., 1993. Argo D 101439 [works by Copland, Ginastera, Piazzolla, Roldán, García Caturla, and Chávez]

Susana Salgado, “Julián Aguirre,” in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan Publishers, 1980) 1:170.

Deborah Schwartz-Kates, “The Gauchesco Tradition as a Source of National Identity in Argentine Art Music (ca. 1890–1955)” (Ph.D. diss: The University of Texas at Austin, 1997): 467–470.

Pola Suárez Urtubey, La creación musical (Buenos Aires: Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes, n.d.): 158–159. Schwartz-Kates also does a fine analysis of “Canción del carretero” on pp. 504–513 of her dissertation.

Susana Salgado, “Floro M(anuel) Ugarte,” in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan Publishers, 1980) 19:319. Schwartz-Kates, 521–524.

For an extensive analysis of La sangre de las guitarras, see Schwartz-Kates, 631–670.

Madaline Wallis Nichols, The Gaucho: Cattle Hunter, Cavalryman, Ideal of Romance (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1942; Reprint: New York: Gordian Press, 1968), 58.

The most exhaustive account of the gauchesco tradition in Argentine art music is that by Deborah Schwartz-Kates previously cited.

Schwartz-Kates, 173; and Encarta Encyclopedia, s.v. “Argentina,” Microsoft, 1997 (cd rom).

George I. Blanksten, Perón’s Argentina (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), 23.

Gerard Béhague, Music in Latin America: An Introduction (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1979): 107.

Gilbert Chase, The Music of Spain, revised second edition (New York: Dover Publications, 1959), 266.

Carlos Vega, Panorama de la música popular argentina (Buenos Aires: Editorial Losada, 1944), 188–189. Vega says that the basis of the criollo tonal system is the use of major and minor scales, instead of scales with the augmented fourth: “Desaparecida la cuarta aumentada típica del mayor colonial, la base tonal del sistema Criollo occidental queda reducida a elementos de una escala mayor y una escala menor como las europeas, puesto que era el tritono la única diferencia en la relación de los grados.” He says also, “In general, the whole cancionero remains faithful to parallel thirds.” “En general, el cancionero todo permanece fiel a las terceras paralelas.”

Juan María Veniard, La Música Nacional Argentina (Buenos Aires: Ministerio de Educación y Justicia, Secretaría de Cultura, Instituto Nacional de Musicología “Carlos Vega,” 1986), 115.

Ibid. 116.

Blanksten, Perón’s Argentina, 161. Blanksten tells an amusing story that illustrates the lack of freedom suffered by the people of Argentina: “If the café is sufficiently secluded and the vino is good, and if no stranger or other politically unreliable person is within earshot, Argentines may tell a story about two dogs, one Chilean and the other Argentine. The Chilean dog was disease-ridden and underfed, and left his native land to journey to Argentina. The Argentine dog was in good health and well fed, but nevertheless traveled to Chile. The two animals met near Mount Aconcagua, along the rugged Andean frontier between Chile and Argentina. Like other travelers, they greeted each other and discussed their journeys. The Chilean dog said that he had heard that food was plentiful and of high quality in Argentina and that he was therefore traveling there in search of a good meal. Noting the excellent physical condition of the Argentine dog, the Chilean beast asked him why he was going to Chile. ‘Oh,’ said the Argentine dog, ‘I want to bark.’” Ibid.

Veniard, La música nacional argentina, 126. “Sin embargo hay una personalidad que continúa en su rumbo fijado durante los primeros años en que dio a conocer sus obras y que se ha mantenido fiel a su posición estética: Carlos Guastavino.”

Schwartz-Kates, “The Gauchesco Tradition,” 894.

Gilbert Chase, “Alberto Ginastera: Argentine Composer,” The Musical Quarterly 43, no. 4 (October 1957), 451.

“Yo siento la música argentina, desde chico siento la música argentina. Entonces toda mi producción salió Argentina y sale a propósito argentina. Entiende? De verdad le digo, yo no tengo vergüenza de escribir cosas a la manera popular, y esas cosas a la manera popular se han…se han…por todo el mundo se han difundido, sabe?” Carlos Guastavino interviewed by Victor Villadangos, July 4, 1992, Buenos Aires.

Melanie Plesch, “La obra para guitarra de Carlos Guastavino y el folklore musical argentino: problemas de interpretación,” La Guitarra en la Historia 7 (1996), 20.

“…yo me impongo, pero no es un trabajo que me fuerzo para hacer, porque viene solo espontáneamente. Yo pienso en la forma. Acá…no sé nada de folklore nacional. No conozco. Aprendí lo que es una zamba, porque pregunté a mi amigo Falú, que me dijo que era en 32 compases, que tenía tener tal cosas…Yo no sabía. Si Ud. me dice, ¿que es un…? Yo no sé lo que es un canto popular…la estructura de un canto popular, no la conozco. Pero el aroma de la música popular, la tengo en las venas. ¿Sabe por qué le digo? Yo era un chico de cinco o seis años y venía un tío mío desde Blaquiera, que es en la provincia de Buenos Aires. Él era un Chacarero, era, tenía campos de trigo, ¿sabe? Venía a Santa Fe donde yo vivía…y este tío era un hombre muy, muy simpático. Se afeitaba, y cantaba…cantaba cosas de la Provincia de Buenos Aires, ¿sabe? Tan bellas, tan hermosas, tan lindas que ahora los toco en el piano recordándolas y me emociona a mi. Y eso se me metió. Eso se me metió en la sangre a mi.” Guastavino interviewed by Victor Villadangos.

“De manera que en toda la obra se respira un aire ‘nacional’, imposible de definir y precisar en rasgos indelebles por el escucha —si exceptuamos el tiempo lento donde es clara la alusión a la vidala—, mientras no se detenga en el análisis temático, por cuanto en ningún momento alcanza la cita textual de ninguna especie definida.” Veniard, La música nacional argentina, 127; “La obra se caracteriza por una decidida ‘atmósfera’ argentina que es a simple vista indefinible.” Melanie Plesch, “La obra para guitarra de Carlos Guastavino y el folklore musical argentino: problemas de interpretación,” La guitarra en la historia 7 (1996): 28.

The score indicates that she dictated the first, third, and fourth songs to him on August 16, 1941 in the city of Jujuy. The second was sung by a group of young people in March of 1940 in Anillaco, province of La Rioja.

From 26 Canciones populares argentinas (Buenos Aires: Ricordi Americana, 1960 and following). Most of these are original songs, but some of them are folk song arrangements.

“…pues sobre esa materia no sé absolutamente nada. Tuve que pedir ayuda al Sr. Eduardo Falú, para que me indicara cómo está hecha una zamba, que fue el único género que hice conociendo su estructura. Todas mis otras canciones ‘populares’ son fantasías e imitaciones libres de los esquemas ortodoxos de la forma popular.” Letter to Douglas Crowder, 29 November 1991.

“Cuando leo una poesía que me llega, me conmociono mucho, vibro totalmente, aparecen lágrimas en mis ojos…¡es muy fuerte! Entonces tomo un papel pentagramado y escribo las notas. La melodía surge fácilmente, cifro los bajos. Todo es muy rápido, no puedo parar…es como si estuviera poseído. De pronto, cuando me doy cuenta de que encontré lo que quería, me pongo de pie, hago gestos, camino, doy vueltas, río o lloro, y doy gracias a Dios. La música sale sola, yo no soy responsable: una parte de mi cerebro tiene música.” Daniel Varacalli Costas, “Carlos Guastavino: ‘Yo escribo sin época’,” Clásica 116 (Marzo 1998): 12. This quotation also appears in numerous other places, including Carlos Vilo’s liner notes for Flores Argentinas, a compact disc by Marcos Fink (see discography), and in the note Vilo wrote for the catalog of Guastavino’s works put out by Editorial Lagos.

Alan P. Merriam, The Anthropology of Music (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 166.

Ibid., 167–168.

Guastavino got very agitated when people changed notes, rhythms, tempi, or dynamics in his music. Carlos Vilo told of Guastavino’s reaction to hearing a new compact disc of his songs by Margot Pares-Reyna and Georges Rabol (see discography): “He didn’t like anything [about their performances]. So one song came up where the pianist had done an ornament that he hadn’t written. I said, ‘But, the thing is that, seen from Europe or the United States, perhaps people or the performers listen to popular music and they think they can’—I was going to say—‘that they can do an ornament here and there,’ but I didn’t finish telling him, because he was arranging his books like this, and I was going to say, ‘because they might suppose that…’ ‘They might suppose I don’t know how to compose, you mean to tell me!!’ He was enraged!” “No le gustaba nada. Entonces llegó una en que el pianista había hecho un adorno que no había puesto. Dije, ‘Pero, lo que pasa es que, visto de Europa o de los Estado Unidos, tal vez la gente o los interpretes escuchan músicas populares y piensan que pueden poner’—yo le iba a decir—‘que pueden poner un adorno demás.’ Pero no terminé de decirlo porque él estaba ordenando los libros así acá, y yo le iba a decir, ‘porque pueden suponer que es…’ ‘Pueden suponer que yo no sé componer! Me quiere decir!’ [laughter] Entonces, estaba enojado.” Carlos Vilo, Interview with the author.

“Esto era a las ocho, cuando Elsa Piaggio tocaba el tercer bis, creo que Julián Aguirre o Carlos Guastavino, algo con pasto y pajaritos.” Julio Cortázar, “Lejana,” in Los relatos, v. 3, Pasajes (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1983), 31.

Veniard. 121.

I can give one anecdote about my first impression of the general public’s admiration for Guastavino. While in Buenos Aires I went to a free lunchtime choral concert at a large theater downtown. There were well over 2,000 people in attendance—business people on their lunch breaks, school children, and many senior citizens. The program was mostly 20th-century music, but there was nothing by Guastavino. On the third encore, however, the conductor announced that they would sing two songs by Carlos Guastavino, and one could hear nearly the entire audience sigh with satisfaction. The songs were met with thunderous applause.

The Orfeón ‘Carlos Vilo’ and the Ensamble Coral ‘Carlos Guastavino.’

“…las piezas ‘no-nacionalistas’ de Guastavino no son necesariamente marginales dentro de su obra…” Bernardo Illari, “Carlos Guastavino,” in Diccionario de la Música española e Hispanoamericana.

For example, many of his piano pieces from the same era are overtly nationalistic—La siesta (1942), Sonata in C♯-minor (1947, fugue finale based on Argentine folk melody), Diez Preludios (1952), Pampeano (1952), Romance de Cuyo (1953), Dos romances nuevos (1955), Diez cantilenas argentinas (1956–1958).

Bernardo Illari, “Guastavino, Carlos,” in Diccionario de la música española e hispanoamericana. Ordinarily a dictionary entry would not be the first source for a critical study, but since this is the most substantial work to date on Guastavino’s music, it merits discussion here.

Douglas Crowder, “Carlos Guastavino: Ten Selected Songs” (DMA treatise, Peabody Conservatory of Music, 1992), 46 pp. [with bibliography, discography, translations of song texts, and scores of songs]

Daniel Varacalli Costas, “Carlos Guastavino: ‘Yo escribo sin época’,” Clásica 116 (March 1998), 11. “Yo no tengo vergüenza de escribir cosas a la manera popular.” “I am not ashamed to write things in the popular style.”

“Ya lo ve, no se puede ser tan absoluto o específico diciendo ‘ésta es una canción de cámara’, ésta es una canción de cabaret.’” Letter from Guastavino to Douglas Crowder, 3 January, 1992.

Douglas Crowder, “Carlos Guastavino: Ten Selected Songs,” 23. Illari also classifies Flores argentinas as a cycle of canciones escolares. See Bernardo Illari, “Guastavino, Carlos,” in Diccionario de la música española e hispanoamericana.

There are only five newly-composed songs for voice and piano from what Fuenzalida calls the third creative period of 1987–1992 (and these five songs are unpublished), so that this last period does not seem to warrant individual consideration, at least not in a study of his works for voice and piano. Most of Gaustavino’s work for those five years was in writing choral and chamber arrangements of pre-existing songs for Carlos Vilo, activity that would be more relevant in a study of Guastavino’s music for vocal ensembles.

Illari also tries to dismiss this view of Guastavino’s music, but given his limited space he is only able to assert that the view is misleading without exploring examples to support his point. Illari et al, “Guastavino, Carlos Vicente,” In Diccionario de la música española e hispanoamericana, 1999.

“Viva atonality! Viva 12-tone music! Viva musique concrete! What a bunch of nonsense…those are garbage, they’re lies, they’re falsehoods, they’re…Music, authentic music is harmony, melody, and rhythm, perfectly to-nal. It’s the only way to make music.” [emphasis his] Interview with Victor Villadangos, 4 July 1992.

“Durante toda su trayectoria compositiva, Carlos Guastavino se movió dentro de los límites de la tonalidad, lenguaje que en sus más de trescientos años de vigencia sufrió, pese a sus renovaciones, las consecuencias lógicas del desgaste y el agotamiento. Carlos Guastavino, sin embargo, transitó sus caminos con un acento personal, sin siquiera echar mano de algunos recursos neotonales del siglo XX aportados por Stravinsky, Hindemith y Bartok, entre otros muchos.” Jorge Edgard Molina, “Cultor de una refinada dignidad,” El Litoral (Santa Fe), 12 Nov 2000. Section: Opinión.

In a letter to Douglas Crowder, Guastavino explains that in two of Siete canciones sobre poesías de Rafael Alberti (1944), he intentionally used key signatures that reflected the modes he sought to employ: “La canción está en Re mayor mixolidio, y armé la clave con solamente un sostenido para quitar el semitono entre el VII y I y transformarlo en tono que el modo exige.” “The song is in D major mixolydian, and I put only one sharp in the key signature to remove the half-step between VII and I and to transform it into the [whole] tone that the mode requires.” Letter to Douglas Crowder, 7 September 1990.

“Ir de nuevo al jardín cerrado, / Que tras los arcos de la tapia, / Entre magnolios, limoneros, / Guarda el encanto de las aguas. / Oir de nuevo en el silencio, / Vivo de trinos y de hojas, El susurro tibio del aire / Donde las almas viejas flotan…”

“Leves, mojadas, melodiosas, / Su obscura luz morada insinuándose / Tal perla vegetal tras verdes valvas, / Son un grito de marzo, un sortilegio / De alas nacientes por el aire tibio.”

“Donde habite el olvido” is actually the title of the collection in which the present poem is simply called “IX,” or poem number nine. The collection Donde habite el olvido was written in 1932–33.

Douglas Crowder, “Carlos Guastavino: Ten Selected Songs,” 19.

Melanie Plesch and Bernardo Illari also point to early music as an influence on Guastavino’s songs, especially in the Tres canciones sobre poemas de José Iglesias de la Casa. Illari and Plesch, “Carlos Guastavino,” In Diccionario de la música española e hispanoamericana.

“Los modos producen unas especies de atmósfera especial, a veces arcaicas, a veces misteriosas que a mi me encantan y emocionan.” Letter to Douglas Crowder, 7 September 1990.

All three songs are in the collection 26 Canciones populares argentinas, for mixed chorus a cappella (Buenos Aires: Ricordi, 1960).

Silvina Mansilla, “Carlos Guastavino,” Revista del Instituto de Investigación Musicológica ‘Carlos Vega’ 1/10 (1989): 229–258.

This sort of polyphony is described in the treatise Musica enchiriadis, dating from about 900A.D. Jeremy Yudkin, Music in Medieval Europe, Prentice-Hall History of Music Series (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1992), 338–339.

John Caldwell, “Canzona,” In The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd edition. Ed. by Stanley Sadie (New York: Grove Dictionaries, Inc., 2001).

Margot Pares-Reyna (soprano) and Georges Rabol (piano), Carlos Guastavino: Songs. Classics of the Americas, vol. 2. (Paris: Opus 111, 1990). CD: OPS 30-9002

“Desgraciadamente, este disco, en sentido musical, no vale nada. Los intérpretes dicen ser profesionales, pero en la realidad no lo demuestran: No respetan lo que está escrito, alteran caprichosamente los ritmos, aún dentro de una misma canción, todas las canciones están tomadas en movimiento rápido y el pianista acompañante altera escandalosamente la parte escrita. Dada la aparente limitación de la extensión de la voz de la soprano, han transportado muchas canciones para adaptarla a su medio, y así todos los clímaxes están sobre las mismas notas, lo que hace cansador y monótono el escucharlo. Realmente una grabación deplorable. Creo que estas alteraciones han sido hechas tratando de dar un pintoresquismo latinoamericano popular a las canciones. En fin es una pena…Sabía que se haría, pues me lo había comunicado un amigo francés, don André Bornhauser, y al recibirlo fue la frustración y desilusión más grande de mi vida. Bueno, me consuelo pensando que ya llegan otros compactos hechos por gente de buen gusto.” Letter to Douglas Crowder, 6 April 1991.

Bruno Nettl, Folk and Traditional Music of the Western Continents, Second Edition. Prentice-Hall History of Music Series (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1973), 105. Additionally, one of the basic tenets of Carlos Vega’s work is that Argentine folk music is a survival of ancient European “música superior.” See Carlos Vega, Panorama de la música popular argentina (Buenos Aires: Editorial Losada, 1944), 76–77.

“Con cierta libertad, a manera de recitativo.”

Crowder, “Carlos Guastavino: Ten Selected Songs,” 10; Firkusny told Crowder this in a phone interview on 14 December 1991.

“Entre los poetas españoles que, como consecuencia de la guerra civil, o por otras razones residen en el extranjero, principalmente en América, hay que hacer mención, entre los jóvenes…Lorenzo Varela (Elegías españolas)…” Germán Bleiberg and Julián Marías, Diccionario de la Literatura Española, third edition, s.v. “Poetas españoles actuales” (Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1964), 630.

The use of open fifths to represent nature goes back at least as far as Beethoven, who set the mood for his Symphony no. 6 (“Pastoral”) with open fifths between the violas and celli at the opening of the first movement, subtitled, “Cheerful impressions received on arriving in the country.” He also used open fifths in the violas at the beginning of the fifth movement, subtitled “The Shepherds’ Hymn of thanksgiving after the storm.”

In two instances he changes the pattern to six-note groups, but this only adds to the sense of uncertainty set up by the five-note groups.

“I feel Argentine music, since I was a little boy I have felt the music of Argentina. So my entire output came out Argentine and comes out with Argentine intent.” Carlos Guastavino, interview with Victor Villadangos, 4 July 1992.

Schwartz-Kates, “The Gauchesco Tradition,” 199.

“Pueblito, mi pueblo” is one of the songs Guastavino mentioned as having earned him the most royalties through the years. This from an interview with Victor Villadangos, 4 July 1992, Buenos Aires.

Information on Francisco Silva is released here for the first time. It comes from a biographical note written by Carlos Vilo. Since the note has never been published, I will include the entire note here, copied from an email dated 11 Jan 2001:

Francisco “Paco” Silva.

Nació el 14 de diciembre de 1915 en Martínez, provincia de Buenos Aires. Sus padres, Francisco Silva e Ignacia Rodeles, eran inmigrantes españoles que se instalaron en el mencionado lugar a principios del siglo XX. Tuvieron tres hijos. Francisco, el padre, era criador de animales de raza, y solía hacer exposiciones en el “Predio Rural de Buenos Aires”.

Apasionado, inquieto, brillante, Paco Silva dedicó gran parte de su vida a la dirección teatral. Una relación muy intensa con el compositor Carlos Guastavino despertó en él la inclinación a crear poesías para ser cantadas. Nacieron así, “La rosa y el sauce” y “Pueblito, mi pueblo” -ambas para canto y piano- que son como la clave inicial para los cantantes de renombre internacional como José Carreras, Gérard Souzay, Teresa Berganza, entre otros, que quieran interpretar obras argentinas.

De igual belleza, aunque menos difundidas, existen otras obras suyas como “Siesta”, “Campanas”, “Paisaje” y “Canción de Navidad”, igualmente para canto y piano. (En cuanto a “Canción de Navidad”, Guastavino también la armonizó para coro mixto “a cappella”).

Paco Silva tuvo, asimismo, formación musical. Inéditas aún, dejó las partes de acompañamiento para piano, sobre poesías de Luis Cernuda y Federico García Lorca.

Murió el 7 de agosto de 1992.”

Email to the author, 12 January 2001.

“En los conciertos que yo daba con mi conjunto vocal en la década del ’80, siempre estaba en programa “Pueblito, mi pueblo,” porque es un “clásico.” Algunas veces incluía la segunda letra. Pero incluirla o no, era para mí un conflicto. Sucedía que Guastavino y casi todos los poetas co-autores venían a los conciertos. Cuando Guastavino estaba presente y Paco no, no la hacía. Cuando venía Paco y Guastavino no, sí la hacía. Pero un día, vinieron los dos (era una gran sala y ellos se sentaron en lugares muy distantes). Para mí, era más importante la figura de Guastavino, y entonces no incluí la segunda letra. Pero, al día siguiente Paco me llamó para decirme por qué no había hecho cantar la segunda estrofa… le contesté que había sido un olvido de mi parte porque durante muchos años no lo había hecho.” Email to the author, 12 January 2001.

“…que quienes conocen el repertorio folclórico reconocen como saturada de asociaciones, pero cuya ‘folcloreidad’ resulta difícilmente definible por medio del análisis musical. Gran parte de la producción de Guastavino se encuadra en esta variante, que encuentra un claro ejemplo en Pueblito, mi pueblo.”

Illari, 949.

This may be only incidental, but it is also written in one of the guitar’s most flattering keys (E-major), and it is one of only a handful of Guastavino’s songs that exist in a published guitar transcription. There is also a transcription for solo piano.

Malena Kuss, in liner notes for Argentinian Songs, Raúl Giménez, tenor (London: Nimbus Records, 1988).

Isabel Aretz, El folklore nacional argentino (Buenos Aires: Ricordi, 1952), 178.

Guastavino mentions all of these artists in a letter to Douglas Crowder (6 April 1991), but I have not found bibliographic records or any other references to the recordings by Alfredo Kraus and Gerard Souzay. See discography for details on the other recordings.

Joshua Kosman, “Celebrating Kiri Te Kanawa: uneven Davies Recital has a Valedictory Air,” San Francisco Chronicle, 9 November 1999; Daniel Cariaga, “Te Kanawa Turns Up the Charm,” The Los Angeles Times, 5 November 1999.

Alan Bullock and R. B. Woodings, eds. 20th-Century Culture: A Biographical Companion (New York: Harper and Row, 1983), s.v. “Alberti, Rafael,” by Robert Pring-Mill.; Silvina Mansilla, “‘Se equivocó la paloma’ de Carlos Guastavino: Curioso Caso de Hibridación Culural,” unpublished paper delivered at the XIII Conferencia Anual de la Asociación Argentina de Musicología (5–8 Aug 1999) en la sede de la S.A.D.E. (Sociedad Argentina de Escritores), la casa “José Hernández.”; Deborah Wagner, “Carlos Guastavino: an annotated bibliography of his solo vocal works” (DMA diss., Arizona State University, 1997), 22–23.

Mansilla, “Se equivocó la paloma,” 4.

“…de un lado, un seco olor a sangre pisoteada; de otro, un aroma a jardines, a amanecer diario, a vida fresca, fuerte, inexpugnable.” Rafael Alberti, Poemas del destierro y de la espera (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1976), 11.

Mansilla, “Se equivocó la paloma…,” 4–5.

Ibid., 5. In 1940 Guastavino won first prize in the “Concurso Anual de la Municipalidad de Buenos” Aires for seven of his early songs. The song’s date of completion is indicated on the manuscript preserved at Editorial Ricordi in Buenos Aires. Mansilla reports that the early title “Canción” had clearly been erased and replaced with “Se equivocó la paloma,” so that the “Canción” performed on Oct. 13, 1941 was certainly “Se equivocó la paloma.” Mansilla, 5 (footnote).

Ibid.

Ibid., 6.

The New York Times, 1 February 1944, 22:2.

See discography for details.

“El es quien pone ‘en acto’ la partitura y actúa, en estos casos, como ‘instancia de consagración.’ Si la edición por parte de la editorial Ricordi y la inclusión de la canción en el repertorio de cantantes de cámara internacionales decidieron su consagración en un determinado ambiente cultural—el de la música académica—, ante el público intelectual, universitario, que había vivenciado el mayo francés del 68, la versión consagratoria fue la de Serrat.” Ibid, 7.

Ibid., 8.

“Bueno. Lo que pasa es que aquí somos un poco compositores, a veces francamente críticos o sino gente que opina. Pero, por razones profesionales, todos los compositores argentinos han sido o profesores o sea particulares o sea en institutos o están en la crítica, en actividades así. El hecho de que se pueden vivir de su creación, eso no existe. Bueno. No existe…yo creo que en muy pocos casos, muy pocas oportunidades. En cambio con la música popular, sí. Y Guastavino tiene esa posición, ventajosa porque él no la buscó, se encontró con que su música despertaba un eco, y ese eco se traducía en entrada de ingresos. Entonces, él estaba en la posición más independiente y más respetada, proporcionalmente, con los músicos populares.” Interview with the author, 8 June 1999, Buenos Aires.

Ibid.

In my translation the dove is male, even though other translations make it female. In Spanish, “paloma” is always a feminine word, even if the bird is male, so that the penultimate line must begin with “Ella” (“she”), referring to the [male] dove. I insist on making the dove male because of line 9 of the poem, where Alberti introduces a woman’s skirt, which the dove has mistaken for her blouse.

Crowder, “Carlos Guastavino: Ten Selected Songs,” 13.

“…que yo empleaba aún antes de conocerlos. Los modos producen una especies de atmósfera especial, a veces arcaicas, a veces misteriosas que a mi me encantan y emocionan…‘se equivocó la paloma’ también empleo el dórico, pero no en forma pura.” Carlos Guastavino, letter to Douglas Crowder, 7 September 1990.

Douglas Crowder, “Carlos Guastavino: Ten Selected Songs,” 26.

Irma Ruíz, “Argentina (III. Popular Music)”; Jan Fairley, “Nueva Canción”; Pablo Vila, “Yupanqui, Atahualpa” in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd Edition, ed. by Stanley Sadie (New York: Grove Dictionaries, Inc., 2001).

“[M]e encantó la idea de sentir alguna obra mía cantada por todo el público sin saber nada del autor.” Letter to Douglas Crowder, 7 September 1990.

Jeremy Yudkin, Music in Medieval Europe (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1992), 314–315.

Schwartz-Kates, “The Gauchesco Tradition,” 204–205.

Susana Friedmann, “Romance,” In The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd edition, Ed. by Stanley Sadie (New York: Grove Dictionaries, Inc., 2001).

León Benarós, preface to Romances argentinos, Campanario-Biblioteca Adolescente-Juvenil (Buenos Aires: Editorial Plus Ultra, 1981).

Eduardo Gutiérrez, El Chacho, con estudio preliminar de León Benarós (Buenos Aires: Librería Hachette S.A., 1960).

León Benarós, El desván de Clio: Personajes, hechos, anécdotas y curiosidades de la historia argentina (Buenos Aires: Editorial Fraterna, 1990).

Ibid., 19–20.

“God keep you safe for many years.” Ibid., 169–170.

León Benarós, Quilmes ayer y hoy (Buenos Aires: Fundación Banco de Boston, 1987).

Letter to Douglas Crowder, 7 September 1990.

Aretz, El folklore musical argentino, 124–126.

Ibid., 213.

Schwartz-Kates, “The Gauchesco Tradition,” 425–427.

Each three-note group in the right hand goes with the preceding two (or three) pitches in the left hand.

“A la huella” is the signature phrase for the refrain of a huella. Aretz, El folklore musical argentino, 213.

Ibid., 188.

Lázaro Flury, Historia de la música argentina (Santa Fe [Argentina]: Colmegna, 1967), 87–90; Roberto García Morillo, Estudios sobre música argentina, 131.

Letter to Douglas Crowder, 3 January 1992.

While in Buenos Aires doing research, I heard a 9-year-old boy sing the final song of Flores argentinas (it was a private performance arranged for me by the boy’s singing teacher), and the impression I got was that while he had learned the song very well, the music was simply too difficult for someone that young, and that his voice could not possibly be big enough to hold its own with the piano accompaniment.

On a similar note, I have written a series of nine Canciones para niños (Songs for children) on poems by Federico García Lorca, but these songs would not be suitable at all for children to perform. They are rather songs with thoughts of childhood for adults to perform, and for people of all ages to enjoy as listeners. In my view, this is also the result of Flores argentinas and Pájaros.

Chronologically, the few canciones escolares from the early period do not belong in a chapter on the second song period, but given their unique social function, it is more convenient to discuss them all at once rather than in separate chapters.

John W. White, Argentina: The Life Story of a Nation (New York: Viking Press, 1942), 118; Enciclopedia Universal Ilustrada, s.v. “Sarmiento, Domingo Faustino” (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, S.A., 1964).

Incidentally, the collection also contains a song about Sarmiento’s mother, a weaver named “Doña Paula Albarracín.”

John W. White, Argentina: The Life Story of a Nation, 74–76.

“Canción escolar aprobada por el Consejo Nacional de Educación.” Silvina Mansilla, “Carlos Guastavino,” Revista del Instituto de Investigación Musicológica ‘Carlos Vega’ 10 (1989): [no page number given]. She explained that this designation means that the song is officially appropriate to be taught to children in the primary and secondary schools of Argentina, and furthermore that such a song is often sung at official school events and choral concerts. (Email to the author, 11/4/2000)

Guastavino later set some of his own poetry in the Canción de Navidad no. 2, where he signed the poem “Carlos Vincent,” a thinly veiled pseudonym since his full name is Carlos Vicente Guastavino.

Douglas Crowder, “Carlos Guastavino: Ten Selected Songs,” 21. This information is from a phone interview Crowder conducted with Guastavino on April 3, 1991.

It is not clear that he intended “Pueblito, mi pueblo” to be a canción escolar, but he did score it like these others, with two vocal lines and an accompaniment, and the song has been sung by nearly all of the school children of Argentina, as mentioned in my discussion of the song earlier.

The choral director Carlos Vilo chose to use the text originally assigned to this music (mm. 15–18, “Sigue adelante…”) instead of doing any more “la la la’s.“I recorded a performance at the Teatro Colón May 26, 1999, where Carlos Vilo’s Orfeón did Arroyito serrano as an encore. Vilo says Guastavino approved of the change.

Interview with the author, 26 May 1999.

Susan Youens, “Song Cycle,” In The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd edition, ed. by Stanley Sadie (New York: Grove’s Dictionaries, Inc., 2001).

This of course applies equally to the Quince canciones escolares and Edad del asombro, each of which has a single poet and the common target audience of children. I have reservations about calling the Doce canciones populares a cycle, even though it could qualify under Youens’ criteria. The collection is unified in the sense that each song is some sort of “canción popular,” but it is not unified textually the way these other collections are.

The date of completion is given in the score at the end of each song.

“…una cumbre en su producción de canciones…hay aquí una cima no sólo en la producción de Guastavino sino en la de la canción de cámara del nacionalismo. Y decir esto es señalar un punto culminante en toda la producción de las canciones con acompañamiento de piano compuestas en la Argentina. Hay tanta belleza en una y otra, que se va produciendo un clima a lo largo de la serie, que mantiene al oyente expectante de aquello que habrá de oírse. No por nada fueron compuestas una tras otra en breve tiempo. Conforman una totalidad. Y el interés radica en que nada es previsible. Están compuestas con tanta libertad y espontaneidad que se requiere el oído atento.” Veniard, Aproximación a la música académica argentina (Buenos Aires: Ediciones de la Universidad Católica Argentina, 2000), 297.

“La producción de canciones de cámara con acompañamiento de piano, de estas promociones, es abundantísima. Continúa con ellos una grande y larga tradición de la música argentina…” Veniard, La música nacional argentina (Buenos Aires: Instituto Nacional de Musicología ‘Carlos Vega,’ 1986), 121.

“…que continúa a su rumbo fijado durante los primeros años en que dio a conocer sus obras y que se ha mantenido fiel a su posición estética…” “…su autor es la última gran figura del movimiento.” Veniard, La música nacional argentina, 126–127.

Interview with the author, 1 June 1999. Whether the songs of Flores argentinas were among those Guastavino had never heard is unknown, but it is almost certainly the late song cycles to which Guastavino was referring, since there is ample evidence that he had heard most of the canciones populares series in performances or recordings.

Marcos Fink, Carlos Guastavino: Canciones (Geneva: Cascavelle, 1996). [VEL 1059]

“LA mezzo! Es una voz preciosísima de mezzo-soprano. Deliciosa…De terciopelo.” Interview with the author, 1 June 1999.

“Bueno entonces de pronto hablé con una profesora de canto y le dije, ‘Qué lástima que Bernarda no puede…’ Y me dice, ‘Si Bernarda te gusta, Marcos te va a gustar porque es lo mismo, pero varón.’” Ibid.

The one recent exception is José Cura, an Argentine tenor having tremendous success in opera houses around the world. On his 1998 recording Anhelo: Argentinian Songs (Erato) he recorded nine songs by Guastavino, including the usual songs mentioned above, but also a selection from Flores argentinas and the exquisite “Soneto IV” from Cuatro sonetos de Quevedo.

Daniel Cariaga, “Te Kanawa Turns Up the Charm,” The Los Angeles Times, 5 November 1999.

Joshua Kosman, “Celebrating Kiri Te Kanawa: Uneven Davies recital has a valedictory air,” The San Francisco Chronicle, 9 November 1999.

Aretz, El folklore musical argentino, 205.

The ceibo is really a tree with red flowers. There is a photograph of the Ceibo taken by Marcos Fink that appears on the cover of his compact disc.

Translation by Deborah Wagner, “Carlos Guastavino: An Annotated Bibliography of His Solo Vocal Music” (DMA diss., Arizona St. University, 1997), 218.

The order in which the songs appear is not critical here in terms of key relations, as the songs show no clear and logical progression from one to the other. In fact he shows a relative lack of creativity where keys are concerned, as four of the songs have a tonic of E and three have F. The key of each song in order is as follows: F minor, B minor, F major, E minor, D major, E major, E minor, C major, E major, F minor, C♯ minor, and A major.

Pablo Cohen, “Sonata no. 1 for Guitar by Carlos Guastavino,” preface.

A year working as a classical radio announcer taught me that playing an opera aria, art song, or choral work on the air during any waking hour on a business day is tantamount to provoking an angry mob.

Veniard calls Guastavino the last great figure of Argentine musical nationalism, while Juan Carlos Paz does not mention him at all. Veniard, La música nacional argentina, 127; Paz, Introducción a la música de nuestro tiempo, second edition (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1971).

“Por naturaleza yo trato de ser objetivo porque sí, es así. Decir la verdad absoluta no está en ninguna parte, ¿no?… Es decir, claro para unos Guastavino no existe. Y para otros es…es el único. Es decir el público en general, sí, le gusta Guastavino. Ah, pero el público que está más acostumbrado a manifestaciones de vanguardia, lo rechaza totalmente. Ahora, la verdad está en medio… Es decir, por ejemplo, se ha llegado, yo lo he oído, de Piazzolla, que es el músico más grande de todos los tiempos…es un…es un disparate…Uds., y así me refiere a los E.E. U.U., dio el ejemplo, un ejemplo estupendo con Gershwin. Gershwin era un compositor de música popular, pero un tipo genialmente dotado, y si no hubiérase muerto joven, no sabemos donde hubiera llegado, porque realmente era un gran creador.” Interview with the author, 8 June 1999.

“Sí. Y están tirando esta…vuelta al…a la…a la racionalidad en todo el mundo. En todo el mundo. En España los alumnos pidieron al rector del conservatorio, al director del conservatorio que le enseñaran a hacer música romántica, no quieren más dodecafonía. ¿Eh? En todas partes está…se estaba viendo. Y yo la tengo una teoría que la…la…la aplico a esta. El comunismo, que empezó junto con la decadencia de la música nuestra, hizo todo lo posible por destruir todo el todo el todo el occidente. Todo el arte, todo. Esa fue la función de los Schoenbergs y todos de ellos, no? …Destruyeron la arquitectura, la pintura. Ponen tarros de cerveza, excremento humano y todo eso en la pintura. ¿Ud. cree que eso es pintura? ¿Ud. cree que eso es pintura?

VV: Yo creo que por ahí hay algunas manifestaciones artísticas que se están alejando un poco de lo que el común denominador de la gente puede apreciar, y o en música o…

CG: Ud. se…¿Ud. goza viendo un excremento?…El comunismo tenía como meta destruir occidente. Iba a ser la organización social de los milenios por venir, comunismo, ¿no? Duró 70 años. ¿Eh? Schoenberg, el inventor de todas estas cosas, el inventor de todo esto, también pensó que la música moderno—él lo dice en sus escritos—la música para el futuro siempre va a ser esta música. Ya se está derrumbando. Gracias a Dios. Gracias a Dios ya se está derrumbando y volvemos a la cordura, pero el ejemplo lo tengo con mi obra! Si yo había sido un…

VV: Modernista..

CG: No modernista…un…un improvisador de cosas feas! Hubiera…¿Hubiera podido tener una lista como esta? Como se…¡yo no conozco a la gente! ¡Yo no lo conozco a John Williams, yo no la conozco a Berganza! ¡Ellos grabaron cosas mías y no los conozco! ¿Qué le parece, qué? Y esto es lo que quiero decir a los chicos que aprenden. Que no se dejen engañar por los malos profesores. Los malos profesores que no son músicos. Dicen que esa es la música que…que no se puede escribir melodía, ¡mentiras! Se puede escribir melodías, lo digo yo. Que no se puede escribir armonía, ¡mentiras! Lo digo yo. Que no se…es todo mentiras los profesores que son absolutamente imbéciles, incapaces de…de…de sentir la música. Por tan tener mucha erudición musical, pero no tienen nada, nada de música. Son duros [knocking on the piano bench] como este banco. No conocen la música.” Carlos Guastavino, interview with Victor Villadangos, July 4, 1992.

“Quizás el error de Guastavino haya sido expresar con tanta vehemencia lo que pensaba, que terminó trasuntando una intolerancia intelectual casi tan dura como la de aquellos que lo atacaron a priori.” Daniel Varacalli Costas, “Carlos Guastavino: ‘Yo escribo sin época’,” Clásica 116 (March 1998), 12.

“En un medio de desorientación y rumbos perdidos, de búsquedas desesperadas, entre tanto talento simulado, entre tanto improvisado innovador, entre tanta pretendida incomprensión, se oye en el ambiente musical argentino una voz serena e imperturbable y un canto purísimo: es la inspiración de Carlos Guastavino que permanece fiel a la Música en su emotividad y lirismo y que para emocionar no se necesita despliegues espectaculares o deformaciones patológicas sino una simple y clara melodía siempre inconmovible y presente en el tiempo.

Este es el milagro del músico sincero cuya autenticidad ha hecho que sus más pequeas obras tengan futuro. Hace ya veinticinco aos se oyeron por primera vez “Pueblito, mi pueblo… “, “Se equivocó la paloma,” “La rosa y el sauce,” “Bailecito” y tantas, tantas otras obras más que no pasaron con la moda del momento sino, al llevar en si la voz interior de este músico sensible a su medio y capaz de expresarlo, han quedado permanentes y formarán parte de las buenas cosas que produce el espíritu de nuestro país.

Santafesino, catedrático, políglota, viajero, buen pianista, sus más de doscientas obras publicadas - y tantas de ellas reimpresas - donde hay sonatas, obras de cámara, corales, piezas instrumentales, hablan de una labor fecunda y una vida realizada.”

Carlos Vincent, “Carlos Guastavino,” program note for Yo, Maestra, for voice and piano (Buenos Aires: Editorial Lagos, 1965).