For all intents and purposes, today’s undergraduate music majors in the United States are exposed to little or no information about the classical music of Latin America. For instance, in my copy of the eighth edition of the Burkholder History of Western Music, under the heading, “The Americas,” a grand total of two and a half pages is devoted to a discussion of both the classical music of Canada as well as that of Latin America.[1] Regarding the latter, Burkholder mentions only two countries, Brazil and Mexico. (There are thirty-one other countries in Latin America).
Although this topic alone is worthy of further criticism, because Burkholder references only four Latin American composers, all of whom died many decades ago, to me it is particularly troubling that this author uses the words “modernist” and “primitivist” to describe the music of Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos as well as that of the Mexican composers Carlos Chávez and Silvestre Revueltas.
In Brazil and Mexico, as well as throughout the rest of Latin America, classical music developed on a distinctively different path than in Europe or the United States. From nearly the very beginning of the colonial period in Latin America, by replacing Latin texts with their translations into native languages, such as Nahuatl, Quechua or Aymara, sacred vocal music was used as a tool to evangelize the indigenous populations of that region. Later, touring opera companies from Italy, and occasionally, from France, provided entertainment to the elite members of society in every major city and even in many minor population centers in Latin America.
Although these large touring companies would generally bring a sufficient number of vocalists and the requisite number of instrumentalists, most of these operated with fewer resources; indeed, they oftentimes had to augment their instrumental forces with whatever musicians happened to be available. Furthermore, there are many documented cases in which substitutions were made, say, by using a trombone instead of a cello, or, in many more cases the prima donnas and other singers would simply have been accompanied at the piano.
Meanwhile, in the home, Latin American families would entertain themselves with a type of music known as música de salón (salon music), which consisted of popular melodies, whether folkloric or taken from contemporary opera, that were accompanied at the piano.
By about the mid 19th century, at least one music conservatory had been established in many Latin American countries; however, the professorate would be limited to one person per instrument. In other words, even though a composer might have wanted to compose a string quartet, there would normally not have been enough players to perform it. In addition, although many of Latin America’s composers had begun to try their hand at opera, composed in an Italianate style, it would be at least another fifty years or more until a resident orchestra could have been able to perform a local composer’s symphonic composition.
These few paragraphs summarize the ways in which classical music was presented and enjoyed in Latin America. Notably, however, with the exception of but a few isolated instances, there was virtually no instrumental concert music—the driving force behind European classicism and romanticism—until nearly the end of the 19th century.
Given these antecedents, how can one talk about modernist or primitivist music in countries in which there was no classicism or romanticism? In the continuum which is the stylistic development of classical music, it seems to me that modernism, primitivism and other early 20th century styles, including impressionism, flowed naturally from, or, in response to, antecedent styles. Rather, a Latin American composer’s interest in a particular musical style may be motivated not necessarily by an adherence to that style, as in the case of the French impressionists, who were fiercely so, or those who zealously advanced the ideals of musical romanticism in Germany and elsewhere.
In Latin American composition, there is no better example of this than Villa-Lobos, whose stylistic choices seem to have been motivated mostly by interest, rather than by some tenet or conviction.
By the beginning of the 20th century, Villa-Lobos had begun to compose his first compositions, largely solo works for guitar or piano, or songs for voice and piano, some of which can be characterized as sharing some similarities with French impressionism. Nevertheless, it would be incorrect to label these pieces as impressionistic. An autodidact, “it was the popular music of the period that captivated the young Villa-Lobos and exerted a lasting influence on him and his music.”[2] Indeed, it was this search for influences, such as his excursions into the interior of Brazil and his trips to Europe and the US, that make clear that this composer’s music was not tied to any particular style, much less one that would require the application of a European-derived label. Or, to put it another way, although in 1920 he participated in modern art week (Semana de Arte Moderna) in São Paulo, this is no reason to claim, as does Burkholder, that Villa-Lobos used modernist techniques in his music.
Clearly, we need a more nuanced approach to the labeling of Latin American classical music. Or, at the very least, an acknowledgment of the fact that this music may have only a tenuous relationship, stylistically speaking, to a contemporary European or US compositional style.
—John L. Walker
[1] J. Peter Burkholder, A History of Western Music, 8th ed. (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2010), 892-894. This is a commonly used textbook in music history classes across the US.
[2] Gerard Béhague, Heitor Villa-Lobos: The Search for Brazil’s Music Soul (Austin, TX: Institute of Latin American Studies, 1994), 4-5.