Today, here at the University of Kansas Latin American Art Music Festival, and as part of the “Milton Steinhardt Lectures in Music” series, I gave a talk entitled, “Musicological Disparities: The State of Affairs regarding Latin American Classical Music.”
My presentation was centered around the musicological tools, in English, related to the classical music of Latin America. These include regional studies, that is, single- or multi-volume works, such as Slonimsky’s Music of Latin America, as well as country studies, biographies, journals, etc.
My analysis revealed that there is a serious deficit of materials related to this topic. For example, fewer than a handful of Latin America’s composers have had a biography written about them; the vast majority remains completely ignored.
Furthermore, a good number of these extant materials are superannuated.
Even worse, many of the musicological resources that we take for granted, such as thematic indices, bio-bibliographies, and the like, when we look at what is or is not available about Latin American classical music or its composers, have yet to be compiled.
I also spoke about the musicological materials that have been produced in Latin America itself. Here, there have been some notable contributions; nevertheless, in some cases there is a need to revise the many publications that are twenty years old or older.
Finally, I suggested that we take a page from the 1940s Music Division of the Pan American Union, which did an initial survey to then set out to fill vital gaps in the musicological materials of that time. In my opinion, creating these foundational materials is the best way by which to then turn to more narrowly focused studies, such as an analysis of the chamber music of a given composer.