THE INVENTION OF THE NATIONAL IN VENEZUELAN ART MUSIC, 1920-1960 by Pedro Rafael ...

236 Pages·2008·1.67 MB·English

by  Pedro Aponte

THE INVENTION OF THE NATIONAL IN VENEZUELAN
ART MUSIC, 1920-1960

by
Pedro Rafael Aponte
Licenciatura en Música, Instituto Universitario de Estudios Musicales, 1995
M.M., James Madison University, 1997
M.A., University of Pittsburgh, 2004

Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of
Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy

University of Pittsburgh

2008
UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH
SCHOOL OF MUSIC

This dissertation was presented

by

Pedro Rafael Aponte

It was defended on
October 27, 2008
and approved by
Dr. Deane Root, Professor of Music
Dr. Don Franklin, Professor of Music
Dr. Mary Lewis, Professor of Music
Dr. Joshua Lund, Associate Professor of Hispanic Languages and Literature
Dissertation Advisor: Dr. Deane Root, Professor of Music

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Copyright © by Pedro Rafael Aponte
2008

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THE INVENTION OF THE NATIONAL IN VENEZUELAN ART MUSIC, 1920-1960
Pedro Rafael Aponte, Doctor of Philosophy
University of Pittsburgh, 2008

This dissertation explores the developments of art music in Venezuela during the first half of the
twentieth century as an exercise in nation building. It argues that beginning in the early 1920s a
nationalist movement in music emerged, which was not only determined by but also determinant
in the construction of a concept of nationhood. The movement took place at a crucial time when
the country had entered a process of economic transformation. The shift in Venezuela’s
economic system from agrarian to industrial in the 1910s triggered a reconfiguration of the
country’s social and cultural structures. Industrialization brought about a new type of culture in
which individual loyalties to the nation became more apparent than ever before. The
institutionalization of national culture took place not only within the government, through state
policies of national integration, but also less formally within social organizations. At both levels,
however, the process of institutionalizing national culture involved a great deal of cultural
engineering and invention.
In art music, these dynamics took the form of a nationalist movement initiated by a group
of native musicians in the city of Caracas around 1920. These musicians sought to modernize
musical life in the country, which they saw as being old-fashioned in comparison to
contemporary European music. In addition to creating a modern music infrastructure they sought
to establish a national art-music culture. To that end, they set out to articulate a national ideology
of music and to act on several nationalistic objectives: revising the narrative of the country’s
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music history, disseminating historical and ethnomusicological research, creating national
policies on music and music education, and composing a nationalist musical repertoire.
By looking at those musical developments against the backdrop of social change, this
dissertation seeks to illuminate the constructionist nature of musical nationalism in mid-
twentieth-century Venezuela. In this light, the renovation movement is to be seen as a nation-
building project made possible by constructing and solidifying new modes of cultural
communication and new identifying marks of national culture.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .......................................................................................................... XI 
1.0  INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................ 1 
1.1  MUSICAL NATIONALISM IN VENEZUELA ............................................... 4 
1.2  VENEZUELAN NATIONALISM ................................................................... 12 
1.3  THE MODERNIST PARADIGM .................................................................... 15 
2.0  THE INVENTION OF TRADITION DURING THE FIRST HALF OF THE
TWENTIETH CENTURY ......................................................................................................... 20 
2.1  VENEZUELAN MODERNITY ....................................................................... 23 
2.2  INDUSTRIALIZATION ................................................................................... 26 
2.3  NATIONAL UNIFICATION ........................................................................... 30 
2.4  POLITICAL INVENTED TRADITIONS ...................................................... 34 
2.5  SOCIAL INVENTED TRADITIONS.............................................................. 39 
2.5.1  The Nationalist Narrative in Literature ...................................................... 41 
2.5.2  Nationalist Art................................................................................................ 45 
2.5.3  Sports .............................................................................................................. 48 
2.5.4  Radio ............................................................................................................... 57 
3.0  THE RENOVATION OF ART MUSIC .................................................................. 61 
3.1  THE ARCHITECTS ......................................................................................... 62 
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3.1.1  Vicente Emilio Sojo ....................................................................................... 63 
3.1.2  Juan Bautista Plaza ....................................................................................... 66 
3.1.3  José Antonio Calcaño .................................................................................... 70 
3.2  MUSICAL RENOVATION .............................................................................. 73 
3.2.1  Motivation for Renovation ............................................................................ 75 
3.2.2  Renovation of Church-Music Practices ....................................................... 78 
3.2.3  Renovation of Music Composition ............................................................... 84 
3.3  MUSICAL INFRASTRUCTURE .................................................................... 89 
3.3.1  The Unión Filarmónica de Caracas ............................................................. 90 
3.3.2  Orquesta Sinfónica Venezuela ...................................................................... 93 
3.3.3  The Orfeón Lamas ......................................................................................... 98 
3.4  THE DEVELOPMENT OF A PUBLIC AUDIENCE .................................. 103 
4.0  THE INVENTION OF THE NATIONALIST IDEOLOGY ............................... 110 
4.1  THE EXALTATION OF COLONIAL MUSIC ........................................... 112 
4.2  CRITIQUE OF ROMANTICISM ................................................................. 124 
4.3  DEFINING VENEZUELAN MUSIC ............................................................ 133 
4.3.1  The Invention of the Musical Past ............................................................. 136 
4.3.2  The Invention of the National Folklore ..................................................... 137 
4.3.3  The Invention of a National Public Culture .............................................. 141 
4.3.4  Plaza’s Music Appreciation Radio Programs ........................................... 142 
4.3.5  The Music Education Reforms ................................................................... 146 
5.0  THE INVENTION OF NATIONAL MUSIC ........................................................ 155 
5.1  ANXIETY TO CREATE NATIONALIST MUSIC ..................................... 156 
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5.2  JOROPO AND THE NATIONAL .................................................................. 166 
5.3  THE NATIONALIST SCHOOL OF COMPOSITION ............................... 178 
5.4  THE CONSOLIDATION OF THE NATIONALIST STYLE .................... 185 
6.0  CONCLUSIONS ...................................................................................................... 207 
BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................................... 213 
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LIST OF TABLES

Table 1. Graduates of Sojo’s Composition Class, 1944-1950 .................................................... 181 
Table 2. Orchestral Repertoire by Sojo’s Students, 1940s-1950s ............................................. 188 
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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1. Vicente Emilio Sojo, Meditación (mm.1-8) .................................................................. 86 
Figure 2. Vicente Emilio Sojo, “Kyrie” from Misa cromática (mm. 1-7) ................................... 88 
Figure 3. Orquesta Sinfónica Venezuela ...................................................................................... 95 
Figure 4. Common rhythmic patterns in joropo music .............................................................. 167 
Figure 5. Juan Bautista Plaza, Fuga criolla (first page) ............................................................. 170 
Figure 6. Juan Bautista Plaza, Sonatina venezolana (first page) ................................................ 175 
Figure 7. Antonio Estévez’s Cantata criolla (“La Porfía” mm. 107-112) ................................ 190 
Figure 8. Evencio Castellanos, Santa Cruz de Pacairigua (mm. 29-33) .................................... 191 
Figure 9. Gonzalo Castellano, Suite caraqueña (Mov. 1 “Mañana de Domingo” mm.1-3) ...... 192 
Figure 10. Folksong “Margarita es una lágrima” ....................................................................... 195 
Figure 11. Antelación e imitación fugaz (“Allegro deciso” rehearsal no. 10) ............................ 198 
Figure 12. Cantata criolla (“La Porfía” mm. 231-235) .............................................................. 201 
Figure 13. Cantata criolla (“La Porfía” mm. 1-6) Dies Irae theme. .......................................... 202 
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