Last week, we lost one of our hemisphere’s most important composers, Mario Lavista. Born in Mexico City in 1943, he studied with Carlos Chávez, Héctor Quintanar and Rodolfo Halffter. Later, he received a scholarship to study in Europe. In addition to having composed a vast catalog of works for nearly every genre, as an educator he helped form several generations of Mexico’s most promising young composers. I never met Mario Lavista, personally, but in 1995 I submitted an article of mine about Mexican chamber music for wind instruments to Pauta, which is a music journal that he founded in 1982 ..read more

Background and Analysis. Composed in Florence, Italy, in July 1901, Henrique Oswald’s Ofelia is a five-song setting of poetry in Italian by Solone Monti.1)The titles of the songs are (in order), *******, “Ofelia,” “Il Genio della Foresta,” “L’Angelo del Cimitero,” and “La Morta.” Except for his association with biographer and writer Dame Iris Margaret Origo—Monti home schooled her for three years—little is known about this Italian writer and poet. In 1906, he published an influential article on women’s suffrage, and was described the following year in a French journal as “un jeune critique it ..read more

Fifty-nine years ago today, on Sunday, April 23, 1961, at 8:30 p.m., the Philadelphia Woodwind Quintet presented a program at the Coolidge Auditorium of the Library of Congress that consisted of four works that had been written by Latin American composers. All of the works performed were world premieres, and of the four, two had been commissioned by the festival committee and another by the festival’s chairman, Guillermo Espinosa. The event was part of the second Inter-American Music Festival, which had been organized by the Inter-American Music Council under the auspices of the Pan-American ..read more

In 1929, opposed to the rise of folkloristic nationalism in Argentinean music (which would later become exemplified in the works of Alberto Ginastera), five composers founded the Grupo Renovación (Renovation Group) in Buenos Aires. Through its concertizing and publishing activities, the group advocated a deep association of that country’s composers with contemporaneous European trends, such as modernism, neoclassicism and expressionism. Honorio Siccardi (1897-1963), who studied composition in Italy with Gian Francesco Malipiero, joined the Renovation Group in 1932. Beginning in October 1929 ..read more

Although Mackenna’s first work dates from 1909, it is her fourth composition, Lieder (1929), that is particularly significant. This is the first work to ensue from her relationship with German musicologist Hans Mersmann (1891-1971), with whom she had begun to study music composition three years earlier. Second, it also marks the beginning of a period of increasing compositional productivity that lasted until 1936. Although her relationship with Mersmann may explain why she designated the first movement of this work as opus no. 1, the numeration of the remaining movements is rather mystifying ..read more

Approximately two to three years after composing Chants (1988, for unaccompanied flute), Alfredo del Mónaco met with oboist Jaime Martínez, who provided the composer with specific suggestions about rendering extended techniques, special fingerings and other effects on the oboe.1)Martínez, email to the author, 3 August, 2018. Martínez, who is currently the principal oboist of the Philharmonic Orchestra of Medellín and professor of oboe at the EAFIT University in Colombia, premiered Lyrika during the “Lido Guarnieri” First International Festival of Oboists on June 15, 1993, in Venezuela. He has ..read more

“Latin American & Spanish Masterpieces for Flute & Piano,” Stephanie Jutt, flute; Elena Abend and Pablo Zinger, piano. Albany Records. Latin American & Spanish Masterpieces Stephanie Jutt is a free-lance flutist who lives in New York. Formerly on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, her creative output also includes arrangements that she has published with International Music Company, as well as six compact disks in which she has either played a principal or collaborative role. Her most recent recording, “Latin American & Spanish Masterpieces for Flute & Pia ..read more

Teresa Carreño finished the composition of her Serenade for String Orchestra on September 13, 1895 during a summer stay in Pertisau, a small village located on the Archensee Lake of the Austrian Tyrol. She visited Pertisau for the purpose of resting from her busy concert touring engagements while meeting with a group of piano students who had traveled from Europe and the Americas to attend her master classes. On a personal level, the last months had been particularly difficult for Carreño. She was in the midst of a contested divorce from Eugène d’Albert, the renowned English-German pianist wh ..read more