Latin American Music: A Journey of Discovery and Exploration
By Reginald Bowens, Marketing Assistant for Summer@Eastman
Hello, Friends! I had the esteemed privilege of speaking with Sibley Music Library Director and musicologist Dr. Jonathan Sauceda about his upcoming Summer@Eastman course! Here’s what he had to say:
Dr. Jonathan Sauceda
What do you look forward to mostly in your course: Latin American Musical Modernism?
I really like exploring composers and musical pieces with students discovering and seeing the compositions and the music through their eyes and ears. I like being able to rediscover some of these great pieces of music, really fascinating histories, situations, and contexts. That’s truly what I enjoy – the material, and also the interactions with the students – hearing them discuss the pieces with each other and with me. One of the best parts of my job is classes like these.
Do students need to acquire or prepare materials in advance (e.g., a textbook)?
No, not necessarily. If students are interested in a particular composer in the 20th century or 21st century from those areas, if they want to kind of work ahead a little bit and do some reading on those composers, visit the library and see what they can find, that would be welcomed, and I think they will be ahead of the game in some ways. But there’s really no need to necessarily do any preparation.
How useful will experience in Latin music be for the students?
It’ll be useful, certainly, I think. That’ll help them get ahead of the game a little bit, but these composers are working out of the Western classical tradition in a lot of ways, and they combine that in very innovative methods in ways that are distinct from what’s happening in Europe and the United States. But, they’re all kind of operating with a similar language. Even if you’re an expert in Latin American popular music, that would shed a different perspective. However, if you only know Brahms, Beethoven and Bach, that still gives you a good basis for exploring Latin American composers. There are a lot of avenues to learning about them, and no one should feel like they’re unprepared necessarily. Certainly, DMA students are already very prepared, I’d say.
Who are some of the composers in the Latin style that will be explored during the course?
I like to look at some of the major figures like Alberto Ginastera, Carlos Chávez, Silvestre Revueltas, Leo Brouwer, and we’ll also look at some of the lesser-known composers, my own research into the music of Felipe Boero, Hilda Paredes, Julián Carrillo, etc. I guess Julián Carrillo has been getting more attention recently, but I try to mix him with more well-known composers. They are significant in so many ways, but also to get into the weeds a little bit with some of the really fascinating composers who may not get as much attention as they should.
What is the culminating, final project for your class?
So, the final project will be a presentation paper. Basically, the paper that you write will be the source of your presentation. So, it’s really killing two birds with one stone, I guess. I think it will give people an opportunity to really polish the presentation and kind of be the expert in that area, and then answer questions from the class. I think at this level, these classes are really about the student interaction with each other, as well as my interaction with the students. The students have so much insight and bring such a wealth of experiences and knowledge that getting that feedback from each other is a really important part of a class like this.
Will there be a dance component to the class?
Certainly, when you get into the actual pieces and depending on the approach the composer is taking, dance is really an integral part, like Piazolla with the tango. It varies depending on which composer we’re talking about because so many different styles and approaches occur between 1900 and today. That’s an opportunity for the student to see if they want to explore how dance, modernity and Western classical music collide with a particular composer.
Considering your role as director of the Sibley Music Library, how do you balance your work in Sibley with being a musicologist?
Well, they work really well together. To understand the purpose and mission of the library, it helps to be involved in research and teaching. My teaching informs my work in the library, whether it’s building collections or determining priorities for the library, and vice versa. Being a librarian, you get a real breadth of buying scores from various periods, and from different languages that are maybe outside of our French, German, and Italian, which definitely makes your experiences broader. I really feel like Musicology and Library Science inform each other.
Could you tell us about your background and connection to your class’s subject?
Yes, I was getting my Ph.D. and wanted to explore Latin American music. I have a Mexican background, I have some language skills in Spanish, and I thought this would be a good way of developing a niche in research that would be useful to the field. My advisor was a professor at the University of North Texas. He is an Argentine musicologist and had a lot of experience and connections with the music madrigal scene there. That was helpful to me to get started in that area, and I’ve always been fascinated by the turn of the 20th century, the shift away from tonality, stretching tonality and challenging the ear. It’s such a fascinating era – the early 20th century throughout the last 100 years or so. So much change and so much social upheaval, and it’s really an interesting time to study on a number of levels. That’s kind of how I ended up in that era.
Do you hope students will perform this repertoire after taking your course? If so, will they have access to resources for finding repertoire?
Yeah, definitely! I hope they get a lot out of the research and investigation. I’ll definitely be focusing on how to find music, how to learn about this music, and who are the composers that I’m interested in, who are the composers that need to be explored more, and how do I find those resources because it can be challenging. They’re not necessarily in all libraries, and they’re not necessarily easily purchased scores sometimes. So yes, it would be really ideal if the students become aware of these composers and are able to champion them; and maybe, make them an integral part of their repertoire that can set them apart from other performers.
Although this is listed as a research and writing seminar, how much listening of Latin styles of music will take place?
There will be a lot of listening. I think that you can’t really study music without listening to it. We’ll be discussing the pieces as a whole, maybe understanding how important parts fit together with each other. But certainly, listening to music and kind of understanding the context that led to its composition are going to be the main focuses. It’s a summer course, so we might be challenged for time, but I hope there’s an opportunity to integrate more performance in the class. Certainly, for the final presentation, I require or strongly encourage some listening, preferably live, but certainly prerecorded is fine also.
Is there anything else you’d like to add about what students can expect in the class?
Come ready to learn from each other, approach the readings, don’t be afraid to ask questions and give your opinion. I read all this material and I know the pieces, so I’m really interested in the students’ opinions because they’re the ones I haven’t heard from yet.
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Latin American Musical Modernism runs June 25-August 1, 2024. Visit the course web page for details.