Contact! 10.2

Spring 1997

Latin-American Update
by Martin Alejandro Fumarola

"Composiciones Electroacusticas de Coriun Aharonian"

Composer, musicologist and organizer, Coriun Aharonian* is one of the most important personalities in the contemporary music scene in Latin-America. He has composed for both electroacoustic and instrumental music, with aesthetic concerns tied to the political, social and economic paradigm of the Latin-American region. He himself has characterized his music with terms such as "poor" and "austere" and in doing so has created his own trend, "minimalismo espectorante", influencing composers in the Latin-American countries.

As a musicologist, he has written many papers, essays and articles referring to popular and contemporary music in Latin-America, most of which are considered mandatory reading to people seriously interested in studying Latin-American music. Never one for reactionary musicology, he has been published in Nutida Musik (Sweden), Derives (Canada), Pauta (Mexico), Lulu (Argentina) and Musik Texte (Germany).

Formerly Professor of musicology at the Uruguayan Universidad de la Republica, he was co-organizer, together with Conrado Silva, Graciela Paraskevaidis, Jose Maria Neves and Cergio Prudencio, of the famous "Cursos Latinoamericanos de Musica Contemporanea". Working with Ariel Martinez, Daniel Viglietti and Conrado Silva, he founded the Uruguayan "Nucleo de Musica Nueva", which played a vital role in the contemporary music scene in Uruguay, organizing concerts, festivals and meetings centered around international contemporary music.

The CD "Composiciones Electroacusticas de Coriun Aharonian" contains the following predominantly electroacoustic pieces (featuring solo tape and tape and instrument): Homenaje a la flecha clavada en el pecho de Don Juan Diaz de Soli's and Gran tiempo which were both realized in 1974 at the GMEB studios, France; !Salvad los nin~os!, (1976) and Esos silencios (1978, revised 1981), both produced at the small studio Elac in Montevideo; Apruebo el sol, composed in 1984 at the EMS, Stockholm, Sweden; El progreso from Musica para aluminios (1967) for three instrumentalists and tape, realized at SODRE, Montevideo; and Que, realized in 1969 at the Centro Latinoamericano de Altos Estudios Musicales of the Instituto Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

This CD has been released by Ediciones Tacuabe** from Montevideo, Uruguay.

"Composiciones de Graciela Paraskevaidis"

Ediciones Tacuabe** has also recently released a CD with works by the Uruguayan-Argentinean composer Graciela Paraskevaidis*. Co-produced by the INA and Deutschlandfunk, Composiciones de Graciela Paraskevaidis contains her electroacoustic piece Huauqui, composed in 1975 at the small studio Elac in Montevideo.

Composing for both instrumental and electroacoustics, the aesthetics of Graciela Paraskevaidis are informed by the political, social and cultural situation in Latin-America.

Active on the Board of Editors of New Music Magazine, the newsletter of the ISCM, she has been published in Interface (now Journal of New Music Research) on the subject of Latin-American contemporary music.

Her piece Entera Revisacion was performed on April 23, 1996, in the Open Air Electroacoustic Music Concerts held at the Universidade de Brasilia.

In Memory of Eduardo Bertola (1939-1996)

On February 20, 1996, Argentinean composer Eduardo Bertola passed away in the city of Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

He was born in the province of Cordoba (Argentina) in 1939, and pursued composition studies at the Universidad Nacional de Cordoba. In 1970 he attended the International Summer Courses in Darmstadt and later worked in the GRM (Groupe de Recherches Musicales) in Paris under the direction of Pierre Schaeffer and Francois Bayle.

In 1979 he established himself in Brazil, first in Belo Horizonte, where he became Professor of analysis and contemporary music techniques at the Music School of the Federal University of Minas Gerais; then later in Brasilia, where several of his instrumental pieces were published by MusiMed. He was the Director of an electroacoustic music studio at the Music School of the Federal University of Minas Gerais.

He composed fourteen electroacoustic works, of which Dynamus, Pexoa, Procne, Penetraciones I and Penetraciones II are of historical significance. He hardly ever used computers for his compositions and was very fond of early tape techniques for the manipulation of sound. Some of his compositions have very strong political connotations while possessing a very picturesque Latin-American milieu. Before he died, the Municipality of Belo Horizonte had commissioned him to compose a work.

Eduardo Bertola also composed several instrumental pieces. One of the most salient characteristics in Bertola's instrumental music is the way in that he treated acoustic instruments as if they were tape music.

His electroacoustic work Dynamus, included in the LP series Musica Nueva Latinoamericana can be ordered from Ediciones Tacuabe**.

- Martin Alejandro Fumarola
maralefu@goedel.filosofia.uncor.edu

Martin Alejandro Fumarola presented a paper at the ICMC '96 in Hong Kong on "pure Latin-American contemporary music". He spoke about the work of Eduardo Bertola, Graciela Paraskevaidis, Coriun Aharonian, Joaquin Orellana (Guatemala), Gilberto Mendes, Jose Maria Neves (Brazil), Mariano Etkin, Oscar Bazan (Argentina), Cergio Prudencio (Bolivia). He is an Associate Composer and Computer Consultant with the Universidad Nacional de Cordoba, in Argentina

* More information about Coriun Aharonian and Graciela Paraskevaidis can be found at http://crca-www.ucsd.edu/bobw/uruguay.html.

** Ediciones Tacuabe: Casilla de Correo 1342 U-11000 Montevideo Uruguay T+598 2 925552 F+598 2 922794.

A detailed list of electroacoustic works from Latin-American composers will appear in an upcoming issue of the Computer Music Journal under the title An Incomplete Discography of Latin-American Computer Music.

© CEC 1997