Sala alberto ginastera biography

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Biography

Ginastera was born in Buenos Aires to a Catalan father and an Italian mother. The author of the original work did not supervise this translation.

Biography

Alberto Ginastera is one of the most influential composers in Latin America. During the period when he was actively expanding his international career, Ginastera gradually distanced himself from folk music elements, as he himself stated that “the period of regional music has passed.” However, in his later works, composed after his move to Switzerland and fueled by a growing nostalgia for his homeland, where various freedoms were being suppressed under a harsh military regime, South American musical elements re-emerge in an abstracted form.

Educator and Personality

What is important when discussing Ginastera is not only his achievements as a composer but also his character.

In 1967 his second opera Bomarzo was premiered in Washington, DC but the subsequent Buenos Aires production was banned for political reasons and not staged in his native Argentina until 1972. The author of the original work did not supervise this translation.

Biography

Alberto Ginastera is one of the most influential composers in Latin America.

In the 1950s he began experimenting with the idea of juxtaposing folkloric elements with serial techniques. Especially in his early works, various regional musical elements are used, either directly or indirectly, alongside depictions of the vast Pampas plains and the imagery of the gauchos, the cowboys said to roam freely there on horseback.

In 1963, Ginastera resigned from all positions except that of director of the center and devoted himself to nurturing the next generation. We should not build our own walls.”

　　　　　　　　　Mitsuko Kawabata

Note: This article is automatically translated from the original Japanese text.

From around 1981, he was repeatedly hospitalized due to health issues, but he did not recover and passed away on June 25, 1983. This was accomplished not by merely integrating existing folk melodies into his music, but was far more elemental, in that he would construct original thematic material, rhythmic patterns and harmonic progressions that were predicated on the intervalic, rhythmic and harmonic properties of actual Latin folk music.

Known as a young national composer while still in school, Ginastera was awarded a Guggenheim scholarship to study in the United States at the age of 29 (after a three-year postponement because of World War II). After this experience, Ginastera gradually expanded his international activities. 47, an example of his nationalistic period, he featured folk guitar traditions and syncopated folk dance rhythms with a development of the musical themes through the "vidala," "baguala," and "andino cantos de caja."

He later used his three pianosonatas to bring in a sense of historical nationalism in which he featured Iberian musical traditions in the first sonata, introduced the American Indian stylism in the second sonata, and united the two ethnic groups into a beautiful blending of scalar musical symmetry.

Already known as a leading composer in both Americas by the 1950s, Ginastera dedicated himself to the establishment of the Latin American Center for Advanced Musical Studies at Torcuato di Tella University, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, in 1961. Ginastera, who received a music education centered on piano from the age of seven, entered the Williams Conservatory at age 12, where he studied music theory, solfège, harmony, and composition.

At the age of 19, after graduating from the conservatory with a gold medal in composition, he continued to study harmony, composition, and counterpoint at the National Conservatory of Music in Buenos Aires. Ginastera's musical education began at the age of 7 with the study of piano. Known as a young national composer even during his studies, Ginastera traveled to the United States at the age of 29 on a Guggenheim Fellowship (after an approximately three-year postponement due to World War II).

Subsequently, Ginastera gradually expanded his activities internationally, moving to Geneva, Switzerland, in the 1970s following his second marriage. Ginastera had long felt the need to teach talented young Latin American composers the latest compositional techniques and to provide them with diverse cultural and creative perspectives.

Among other distinguishing features, these periods vary in their use of traditional Argentine musical elements. His Objective Nationalistic works often integrate Argentine folk themes in a straightforward fashion, while works in the later periods incorporated traditional elements in increasingly abstracted forms.

In the late 1950s and 1960s his music was presented in premiere performances by the top orchestras in the United States, including his first Piano Concerto (in Washington, DC), his Violin Concerto under with the New York Philharmonic under Leonard Bernstein, his Harp Concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Eugene Ormandy conducting, and his opera, Don Rodrigo at the New York City Opera.