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The Film Music of Alberto Ginastera: An Introduction to the Sources and Their Significance

2006; University of Texas Press; Volume: 27; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/lat.2007.0008

1536-0199

Deborah Schwartz-Kates,

Diverse Musicological Studies

The Film Music of Alberto Ginastera: An Introduction to the Sources and Their Significance Deborah Schwartz-Kates Alberto Ginastera is recognized as one of the leading musical spokesmen of the Americas. Born in 1916, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, he first came to public attention in 1937, with the auspicious premiere of his ballet suite, Panambí. During his formative creative years, Ginastera pursued a course of folkloric nationalism. He modeled his earliest compositions on the works of previous generations of Argentine composers as well as on the international styles of Bartók, Stravinsky, Debussy, Copland, and Honegger. During the early 1960s Ginastera changed aesthetic directions and emerged as the leader of the new music movement in Argentina. In 1963, he founded the Centro Latinoamericano de Altos Estudios Musicales at the Instituto Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires. This institute trained a generation of young Latin American composers by offering them two-year scholarships to study with a distinguished international faculty whose roster included Copland, Messiaen, Xenakis, Dallapiccola, and Nono. In 1971 the composer's creative trajectory changed again when he married the renowned concert cellist, Aurora Nátola. The couple made their home in Geneva, Switzerland, where they resided together until the composer's death in 1983. Today, Ginastera is remembered for his fifty-four officially numbered works, particularly his piano pieces, ballets, orchestral music, string quartets, operas, and cello repertoire. In 1981, he received the UNESCO Prize from the International Music Council in honor of his lifetime of creative achievement. Although Ginastera attained a distinguished international reputation, many aspects of his creative contribution remain unknown. One unfamiliar subject involves the composer's eleven unnumbered film scores, which have received scant critical attention in the scholarly literature.1 In her classic studies of the composer, Pola Suárez Urtubey refers [End Page 171] to Ginastera's film music as a commercial venture the composer was forced to undertake, when, in 1952–55, the Perón government dismissed him from his directorship at the Conservatorio de Música de la Plata. David Wallace expresses a similar perspective when he states: "As a result of the constant and unrelenting persecution of the regime…[Ginastera] began composing background music for films, an income supplement which he was forced to continue until 1955, when the Peronists were ousted."2 A critical examination of the circumstances surrounding Ginastera's film music reveals fallacies that underlie conventional scholarly assessments. Upon careful scrutiny of the composer's cinematic output (table 1), one finds that several of Ginastera's film scores, beginning with Malambo (1942), predated his conflicts with Argentine authorities, while others, such as Primavera de la vida (1958), succeeded them by a number of years. We also know that Ginastera was an avid film buff, whose works in the genre received numerous awards, and who accorded music a fundamental role in conveying the significance of the cinematic event. We can best appreciate the aesthetic import that the composer conferred upon film music when we read his own words: "The music defines and accentuates the personality of the characters. It can modify a scene by producing effects of terror, greatness, happiness, or mystery. It can accentuate the poetry of the dialogue or the irony of a phrase. In short, it is the part of the work that is alive."3 Despite the emphasis that Ginastera attributed to motion picture music, logistical difficulties have impeded the investigation of his cinematic works. Visual film footage is dispersed throughout a variety of national archives and private collections in Buenos Aires,4 while music manuscripts are deposited at the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel, Switzerland, where Ginastera bequeathed his collection. The situation remained untenable until recently, when, through a series of persistent on-site investigations and long-term collaborative relationships with Argentine cultural and academic institutions, I obtained research copies of all eleven films under investigation.5 Upon receipt of these materials, I then contacted the Paul Sacher Foundation and...