North-South, South-South, a Glance at Production, Research and Music Criticism in Latin America

North-South, South-South, a Glance at Production, Research and Music Criticism in Latin America Marita Fornaro Bordolli (Universidad de la República, Uruguay) [email protected] Mónica Vermes (Universidade Federal do Espirito Santo – UFES, Brasil) [email protected] The International Congress North-South Interchanges: Collaborations, Tensions, Hybridations, took place in September 2018. The Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini (CSOOLB) was, for the first time in Latin America, one of the organizers together with three regional public universities: the Universidade Estadual Paulista – Julio de Mesquita Filho, where in-person activities took place, Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo and Universidad de la República of Uruguay. The Fifth National Congress of Researchers in Philosophy of Music (Brazil) was also part of the event. Among the researchers who travelled from outside the continent were the legendary Ivanka Stoïanova (Université de Paris 8), and two Spanish researchers working with the CSOOLB in collaborative projects, Germán Gan Quesada (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) and Belén Vega Pichaco (Universidad de La Rioja). Among the matters discussed during the Congress, considering the international relations framework conveyed by its name, we would like to highlight both the attention devoted to Latin American contemporary music, and the role of critics as a source to generate musical knowledge. This dossier, which is published in the current issue of the Journal of Music Criticism and in the 2022 issue, introduces some of the works of this meeting that use reviews and newspaper articles at the centre of research. Journal of Music Criticism, Volume 4 (2020), pp. 81-84 © Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini. All rights reserved. Marita Fornaro Bordolli – Mónica Vermes Two of the articles submitted in this first part of the dossier converse with one another — as the authors did during their presentations — discussing groups of contemporary music composers from mid-20th century Brazil and Cuba. In ‘The Internationalization of Brazilian Contemporary Music through the Festivals of Rio de Janeiro’, Danilo Ávila discusses the relationship between Brazilian composers and performers and the specialized press based on three events: the so-called ‘dodecaphonic embassy’, led by German-Brazilian composer Hans Joachim Koellreutter to the Biennale di Venezia in 1948; the First Avant-Garde Music Week organised by conductor Eleazar de Carvalho together with pianist and composer Jocy de Oliveira in 1961; and the Guanabara festival, projected by Edino Krieger (1969-70). Based on Eurico Nogueira França’s critics in the renowned newspaper Correio da Manhã, we are able to learn how the Brazilian presence in Europe connects with the introduction of contemporary European aesthetics in the work of these composers and with the choice between two possibilities: the use of serialism, emerged as a new contemporary language, and the search in Brazilian folklore. At the same time, by considering ‘La evolución discursiva del Grupo de Renovación Musical de Cuba en las revistas Conservatorio (1943-1947) y La Música (1948): hacia la superación de neoclasicismo e hispanismo’ (‘The Discursive Evolution of the Musical Renovation Group of Cuba in the Journals Conservatorio (1943-1947) and La Música (1948): Overcoming Neoclassicism and Hispanism’), Belén Vega Pichaco turns to two Cuban magazines to analyse the evolution of the Musical Renovation Group of Habana (GRM). Between 1943 and 1947, Conservatorio became the voice of the Group and its leader was Spanish composer José Ardévol. It was later institutionalized as an official body of the Conservatory. The remaining members of the Group, undergoing its dissolution, created La Música. As Vega Pichaco states, the comparative reading of both magazines throughout this period (1943-1948) «allows the observation of both the group crisis and the discursive evolution of Ardévol and the members of the GRM — with varying degrees of proximity regarding the aesthetic orientations of their maestro — toward the overcoming of Neoclassicism and Hispanism, and a greater integration of Cuban popular music». As we can see, aesthetic tensions are present in both the Brazilian and Cuban processes, and the fruitful encounter of these two studies in the same panel during the Congress is proof there is a need for more of these events and for the outcomes to be published in places like this Journal, as they usually only reach a small group of interested parties 82 North-South, South-South, a Glance at Production, Research and Music Criticism in Latin America within the regional academic world. A lot has been discussed about the influence of the North in the South (we use ‘North’ and ‘South’ in a wider sense not just as geographical concepts) and the South-South relations of the composers, but these papers also show the tensions these new developments brought upon the creation, groups, relationships among composers and performers, and even on their craft and the relationships among public and private institutions and the media. We want to point out the methodological aspect of both studies: a rigorous analysis of press and specialized magazine articles, with a proper theoretical framework to address the issue under study to contribute valuable new knowledge to the aesthetic movements in mid-20th century Latin America. Moreover, in ‘Para una topología de la crítica: ¿qué se ha dicho sobre la ópera producida en Montevideo entre 2016 y 2018?’ (‘For a Topology of Criticism: What Has Been Said about Operas Produced in Montevideo between 2016 and 2018?’), Sergio Marcelo de los Santos also addresses, based on press articles, the problem of critics and its understanding of repertoires and particularly of mise en scène — from W. A. Mozart to Gianfranco Menotti — when they may or may not be open to the 21st century trends, and the function that a booklet may serve for a group of artists: the critics may spectacularly fail when the attempt is very distant from the tradition that for more than a century has led operatic activity to focus on the canonical repertoires of Italian Romanticism. Or it could in turn lead to enlightening reviews about the possibilities of music theatre from a contemporary perspective. The author focuses his analysis on The Magic Flute (2016) and Dido and Eneas (2017) — achieved with an independent mode of production —, and The Consul (2017) and Bluebeard’s Castle (2018), that were part of the lyrical seasons at the Teatro Solís. The analytical approach, used in other studies on Uruguayan music criticism, makes the texts of the main articles and the researcher’s analysis available to readers. While providing a theoretical framework based in notions of sociology and history of music criticism, this article focuses on the role of critics, the gaps between some critics and contemporary theory of music theatre and the big question of «who reviews the critic». In summary, these articles present a number of theoretical questions, offer methodological practices and address specific matters in contemporary Latin American music that include the connections with European aesthetic models and the relationships between the Latin American protagonists in the three countries: creators, performers and institutions in the case of Cuba, and creators, performers and critics in the case of Brazil and Uruguay. This dossier 83 Marita Fornaro Bordolli – Mónica Vermes also summarizes these relationships within the academic world: how the Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini through its annual conferences has come in contact with southern researchers such as Lía Tomás and those who have served as editors of these articles, to continue strengthening the relationship between the academic world and the different geographies. 84.

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