Carol A. Hess - Böcker

This biography offeres a fresh understanding of the life and work of Spanish composer Manuel de Falla (1876 - 1946), recognised as the greatest composer in the Spanish cultural renaissance that extended from the latter part of the nineteenth century until the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936. The biography incorporates recent research of Falla while drawing on untapped sources in the Falla archives, reevaluates Falla's work in terms of current issues in musicology, and considers Falla's accomplishments in their historical and cultural contexts.

El amor brujo (trans. "Love, the Magician") is a theater work by the Spanish classical composer Manuel de Falla. It showcases flamenco, the music of the Gitanos who traditionally form Spain's underclass. When it premiered in Spain in 1915, it proved controversial: some Spanish critics applauded Falla for celebrating the music of a marginalized culture while others attacked his mixing of classical and popular idioms. Since then, El amor brujo has intrigued arrangers and artists. It has been repeatedly reshaped, rearranged, and repackaged, either by Falla himself or by artists ranging from the concert pianist Artur Rubinstein to the super-showman Liberace or to various jazz and pop arrangers. El amor brujo has also figured in soundtracks, whether frothy movie musicals from the 1940s, somber accounts of recent Spanish history, or films on anti-Black racism, including one by Spike Lee. In Manuel de Falla's El amor brujo, author Carol A. Hess explores the ways in which music, class, and race are intertwined in this composition's unusually rich history.

El amor brujo (trans. "Love, the Magician") is a theater work by the Spanish classical composer Manuel de Falla. It showcases flamenco, the music of the Gitanos who traditionally form Spain's underclass. When it premiered in Spain in 1915, it proved controversial: some Spanish critics applauded Falla for celebrating the music of a marginalized culture while others attacked his mixing of classical and popular idioms. Since then, El amor brujo has intrigued arrangers and artists. It has been repeatedly reshaped, rearranged, and repackaged, either by Falla himself or by artists ranging from the concert pianist Artur Rubinstein to the super-showman Liberace or to various jazz and pop arrangers. El amor brujo has also figured in soundtracks, whether frothy movie musicals from the 1940s, somber accounts of recent Spanish history, or films on anti-Black racism, including one by Spike Lee. In Manuel de Falla's El amor brujo, author Carol A. Hess explores the ways in which music, class, and race are intertwined in this composition's unusually rich history.

In Representing the Good Neighbor, Carol A. Hess investigates the reception of Latin American art music in the US during the Pan American movement of the 1930s and 40s. An amalgamation of economic, political and cultural objectives, Pan Americanism was premised on the idea that the Americas were bound by geography, common interests, and a shared history, and stressed the psychological and spiritual bonds between the North and South. Threatened by European Fascism, the US government wholeheartedly embraced this movement as a way of recruiting Latin American countries as political partners. In a concerted effort to promote a sameness-embracing attitude between the US and Latin America, it established, in collaboration with entities such as the Pan American Union, exchange programs for US and Latin American composers as well as a series of contests, music education projects, and concerts dedicated to Latin American music. Through comparisons of the work of three of the most prominent Latin American composers of the period - Carlos Chávez, Heitor Villa-Lobos and Alberto Ginastera - Hess shows that the resulting explosion of Latin American music in the US during the 30s and 40s was accompanied by a widespread - though by no means universal - embracement by critics as an exemplar of cosmopolitan universalism. Aspects shared between the music of US composers and that of their neighbors to the south were often touted and applauded. Yet, by the end of the Cold War period, critics had reverted to viewing Latin American music through the lens of difference and exoticism. In comparing these radically different modes of reception, Hess uncovers how and why attitudes towards Latin American music shifted so dramatically during the middle of the twentieth century, and what this tells us about the ways in which the history of American music has been written. As the first book to examine in detail the critical reception of Latin American music in the United States, Representing the Good Neighbor promises to be a landmark in the field of American music studies, and will be essential reading for students and scholars of music in the US and Latin America during the twentieth-century. It will also appeal to historians studying US-Latin America relations, as well as general readers interested in the history of American music.

Although studies of modernism have focused largely on European nations, Spain has been conspicuously neglected. As Carol A. Hess argues in this book, such neglect is undeserved. Through the composer Manuel de Falla (1876-1946), Hess explores the advent of modernism in Spain in relation to political and cultural tensions prior to the Spanish Civil War. The result is a view of the the musical life of Spain in an evolving aesthetic climate.

Between 1941 and 1963, Aaron Copland made four government-sponsored tours of Latin America that drew extensive attention at home and abroad. Interviews with eyewitnesses, previously untapped Latin American press accounts, and Copland’s diaries inform Carol A. Hess’s in-depth examination of the composer’s approach to cultural diplomacy. As Hess shows, Copland’s tours facilitated an exchange of music and ideas with Latin American composers while capturing the tenor of United States diplomatic efforts at various points in history. In Latin America, Copland’s introduced works by U.S. composers (including himself) through lectures, radio broadcasts, live performance, and conversations. Back at home, he used his celebrity to draw attention to regional composers he admired. Hess’s focus on Latin America’s reception of Copland provides a variety of outside perspectives on the composer and his mission. She also teases out the broader meanings behind reviews of Copland and examines his critics in the context of their backgrounds, training, aesthetics, and politics.

Between 1941 and 1963, Aaron Copland made four government-sponsored tours of Latin America that drew extensive attention at home and abroad. Interviews with eyewitnesses, previously untapped Latin American press accounts, and Copland’s diaries inform Carol A. Hess’s in-depth examination of the composer’s approach to cultural diplomacy. As Hess shows, Copland’s tours facilitated an exchange of music and ideas with Latin American composers while capturing the tenor of United States diplomatic efforts at various points in history. In Latin America, Copland’s introduced works by U.S. composers (including himself) through lectures, radio broadcasts, live performance, and conversations. Back at home, he used his celebrity to draw attention to regional composers he admired. Hess’s focus on Latin America’s reception of Copland provides a variety of outside perspectives on the composer and his mission. She also teases out the broader meanings behind reviews of Copland and examines his critics in the context of their backgrounds, training, aesthetics, and politics.

Enrique Granados (1867-1916) was one of the first modern Spanish composers to achieve international recognition. During a 1916 visit to the United States his opera Goyescas was premiered by the Metropolitan Opera and his symphonic poem, Dante, by the Chicago Symphony. Granados was also especially admired in Paris, where he knew Saint-Saens, d'Indy, and Faure. He had composed a remarkable body of work and was also at the height of his career as a concert pianist at his untimely death while a passenger on a torpedoed British ship.The biographical study, the first in English, draws on primary sources in English, Spanish, French, Catalan, and other languages. This material is carefully documented in the extensive annotated bibliography along with contemporaneous and recent analytical studies and other sources. Granados's oeuvre presents cataloging problems due to his habit of reworking pieces, long-delayed publication, and arbitrary opus numbers. In the Works and Performances section, however, every effort has been made to offer publication dates, manuscript locations, and information on premieres. Representative arrangements of his works by other composers are also given. An appendix classifies the works by scoring. A selective discography is also provided, and all parts of the volume are fully cross-referenced and indexed. Granados is placed in the context of the international artistic scene at the turn of the century, and a chronology notes related events.