Francisco Curt Lange (1903-1997) was a German-born Uruguayan musicologist. He earned a degree in architecture, and also, pursued studies in music at universities in Leipzig, Berlin, and Munich. At the university in Bonn, in 1929 he received a Ph.D. after writing a dissertation on the polyphonic nature of Dutch motets. The following year, the Uruguayan government invited him to help organize various musical projects, such as founding the country’s broadcasting system (SODRE) and its archive of phonograph records.
In 1934, he published a booklet titled, Americanismo musical: la sección de investigaciones musicales, su creación, propósitos y finalidades (Musical Americanism: The Section of Musical Investigation, Its Creation, Proposals and Purposes), in which he introduces his ideas regarding “musical Americanism.” From 1934 to 1939, he published articles in numerous cities in the Americas in which he argues that music would provide for a cultural integration throughout the hemisphere.[1] He also visited several nearby Latin American countries to deliver lectures about this same topic. In addition, at a 1939 meeting of the American Musicology Society held in New York, he said,
I hope to awaken in all of you an understanding of our musical activities and of our musical psyche, an appreciation of the limitless possibilities offered by a continent in the process of formation. In this way I hope to achieve the interpretation of musical interests and sympathies, and thus to set in motion a powerful current of intellectual and spiritual intercourse. What exists today is good will among a few persons and total incomprehension or ignorance on the part of others.[2]
Lange’s message was well-received in the US, not only by those who were by that time already advancing similar initiatives here in this country, but also, by those who could perhaps be characterized as being more peripheral to the movement. In the case of the former, William Berrien, a member of the American Council of Learned Societies, and also the Conference on Inter-American Relations in the Field of Music, proclaimed that “[i]t is significant that this great program of americanismo musical is no mere diplomatic rhetoric…”[3] He went to say that Lange’s success “has led apathetic governments to realize the value of the movement americanismo musical, and of late some financial support from Latin American governments has helped to expand the scope of activities of those composers and musicologists who had the faith to start unaided.”
On a more granular level, however, Dolores Andújar de Umbach, a high school teacher in Washington, DC, clearly spells out the practical implications inherent in Lange’s movement:
[T]he pupil must be exposed more to some of the Americanismo musical and be brought into contact with composers of the genius of Heitor Villa-Lobos of Brazil and Carlos Chávez of Mexico. There should be an effort to popularize Carlos Gomes’ opera, much better known in Europe than in our country. The public should be made to realize that Latin American music as expression of artistic life does not boil down to rumbas, congas, and tangos.[4]
In addition to Lange’s previously mentioned activities, he was also involved in the improvement or establishment of music departments in a number of Latin American countries. From 1936 to 1946, he published the Boletín Latino-Americano de Música, which was the first scholarly journal of its type to be focused on the music of Latin America. In Montevideo, he founded a musicological institute that published dozens of works by Latin American composers, as well as other important publications. His scholarly work includes a number of books and journal articles about the colonial music of Argentina and Brazil; and for many years, he continued to give many lectures and was the driving force behind hundreds of performances of Latin American and North American music at venues throughout the Americas. For example, in 1960, as a visiting professor at the University of Texas at Austin he organized that university’s chorus and orchestra in a concert of 18th century sacred music of Brazil.
—John L. Walker
Selected Writings
“La evolución de las artes en el Perú,” Ensayos 3 (September 1936), 161-183.
“La música eclesiástica argentina en el período de la dominación hispánica (una investigación), Revista de estudios musicales 3/7 (1954), 15-171.
“La música en Minas Gerais durante el siglo XVIII,” Revista del S.O.D.R.E. 5 (1957), 47-74.
“Os primeiros subministros musicais do Brasil para o rio da Prata: a reciprocidade musical entre o Brasil e o Prata,” Revista de história 112 (1977), 381-417.
“Algumas novidades em torno a atividade musical erudita no período colonial de Minas Gerais (Brasil),” Latin American Music Review 4 (1983), 247-68.
“La música en la provincia de Salta,” Revista musical de Venezuela 19 (1986), 51-161.
“Villa-Lobos y el americanismo musical,” Revista musical de Venezuela 25 (1988), 11-45.
[1] Fernando Nunes Moya, “Francisco Curt Lange e o Americanismo Musical nas décadas de 1930 e 1940,” Faces da História vol 2 no. 1 (Jan-June 2015), 18.
[2] Francisco Curt Lange, “Americanismo musical,” Papers Read by Members of the American Musicological Society at the Annual Meeting, September 11th to 16th, 1939, (University of California Press), 274.
[3] William Berrien, “Some Considerations Regarding Contemporary Latin American Music,” Concerning Latin American Culture, Papers Read at Byrdcliffe, Woodstock, New York, August, 1939, ed. Charles C. Griffin. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1940),172.
[4] Dolores Andújar de Umbach, “Correlating Spanish with other Highschool Subjects,” The Journal of the National Education Association of the United States Vol. 31, Issue 1 (January 1942), 20. It is also important to recognize the extent to which this statement parallels that of Berrien.