Louth Contemporary Music Society, ‘We Sing for the Future’, 14–18 April 2021, online

The Louth Contemporary Music Society festival, based in Dundalk, only six miles from the border with Northern Ireland, is now an established presence on the contemporary music scene. Thanks to its founder, Eamonn Quinn, it attracts both local musicians and major international figures and also issues CDs. This year, the programme featured a strong Irish connection and a lot of music that is quiet, meditative and minimal. Music for guitar formed another theme, with new work by the Norwegian guitarist/composer Fredrik Rasten and the Cuban Leo Brouwer.

Art Music and Transterritoriality: Reflections on Cuban Migrations to Europe during the 1990s

The fall of Communist rule in Eastern Europe (1989–91) had a profound impact on economic, socio-political, and cultural conditions in Cuba during the 1990s. It was the beginning of the so-called ‘Special Period in Times of Peace’. Increasing dire economic conditions on the island led to many changes that impoverished cultural life, including the relocation of composers in Europe, the United States, and other countries in the Americas. The situations encountered by composers who migrated to Europe varied, depending on generational differences and on the dynamics of the socio-political and cultural powers to which each of them were exposed in their new reception contexts. Whether adopting an uncontested identification with the new cultural milieu or resorting to discursive strategies of appropriation and de/re-territorialized negotiation, this text centres on the compositional journeys of four Cuban composers who settled in different European cities: Leo Brouwer (Córdoba, Spain); Eduardo Morales-Caso (Madrid); Keyla Orozco (Amsterdam); and Louis Aguirre (Aalborg, Denmark). Each case represents an invaluable experience of aesthetic reconstruction in a new creative territory that, by its own transterritoriality, has in turn enriched the sonic map of the Caribbean island.

“Vanguardia” y “retaguardia” musical en Cuba: relatos históricos y polémicas (1961-1971)

Este trabajo parte de un interrogante ¿cuál ha sido el relato historiográfico sobre la vanguardia musical cubana y sus polémicas? El objetivo es definir las tensiones que tuvieron lugar en torno a la creación musical en los inicios de la Revolución Cubana a través del examen de las fuentes historiográficas firmadas por sus protagonistas. La vanguardia musical en Cuba se emplaza en el contexto incipiente de la Revolución y estuvo liderada inicialmente por Juan Blanco (1919-2008) y Leo Brouwer (1939). Este movimiento no sólo destacó por la innovación técnica, estética y social de su propuesta, sino que devino en una élite artística e ideológica. En paralelo, existió otro discurso en el terreno compositivo y de la crítica, calificado como “retaguardia musical” (Martín, 1971) y, por ello, postergado en el reconocimiento y visibilidad de sus creadores. Se toma como referencia documental el análisis de publicaciones donde debatieron los compositores entre 1961 y 1971, de manera recurrente, La Gaceta de Cuba y el boletín Mensajes (UNEAC). Se reflexiona sobre cuatro ejes centrales identificados en esta polémica: la definición de “música nueva”, la confrontación entre “vanguardia” vs “retaguardia musical”, el compromiso político de los compositores y la valorización del público.

A teoria da Gestalt aplicada à música: considerações sobre o Nuevo Estudio Sencillo X – Omaggio a Stravinsky de Leo Brouwer

Este trabalho tem como objetivo demonstrar a funcionalidade dos princípios da teoria da Gestalt como ferramenta de análise aplicada ao campo musical. Buscando considerar o objeto sonoro em sua totalidade, cuja estrutura é composta pelas relações estabelecidas entre seus elementos constituintes, pretende-se conceder ao intérprete subsídios que auxiliem seu trabalho de compreensão e interpretação do material musical. Inicialmente, apresenta-se um estudo sobre os fundamentos da Gestalt e suas diversas abordagens, desde o seu surgimento. São identificados e definidos os princípios que regem a interpretação e a organização da forma, os quais são aplicados, posteriormente, ao fenômeno sonoro, utilizando exemplificações de excertos musicais extraídos de obras selecionadas. Ao final, apresenta-se uma análise prática sobre o Nuevo Estudio Sencillo X – Omaggio a Stravinsky, do compositor cubano Leo Brouwer (1939), no qual são aplicados os princípios da Gestalt.

Experimental Music and the Avant-garde in Post-1959 Cuba

This chapter examines how experimental music in the 1960s in Cuba reached wider audiences as a product of the cultural policies of the Cuban Revolution and of the aesthetic goals of a particular set of individuals who took advantage of the new cultural institutions to promote experimental music under the banner of vanguardia. As music advisor of the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional, Juan Blanco programed new music by international and Cuban composers. As music director of the Instituto Cubano de Artes e Industrias Cinematográficas, Leo Brouwer recruited composers who shared his interest in experimental music. The chapter’s case studies prove that experimental music in Cuba was not aimed at an elite group of initiated avant-gardists but reflected the new political and social climate, in which all types of music were meant to reach as wide a segment of the population as possible.

Experimental Alternatives

In 1969 the director of Cuba’s film institute, Alfredo Guevara, founded a musical collective whose official purpose was to provide film music for Cuba’s vibrant and experimental new socialist cinema. The resulting Grupo de Experimentación Sonora represented something of a “rescue mission” for artists who for reasons political, aesthetic, or of personality found themselves on the margins of increasingly conservative and restrictive state-run cultural institutions. Under the direction of composer Leo Brouwer, the Grupo incorporated musicians who became some of the Revolution’s most renowned artists. Brouwer declared that the primary mission of the Grupo was not to create film music but “to transform the repertoire of Cuban popular music to the best of our abilities.” The Grupo merged discourses of the artistic avant-garde with those of revolutionary praxis and in doing so, positioned their sonic experiments both aesthetically and politically. The Grupo has had a marked impact on later groups who also struggled on the margins of state institutions. Drawing overt references to the Grupo and appropriating similar avant-garde rhetoric, collectives such as Habana Abierta and Interactivo promoted a new musical and social “revolution from within,” one that advocated from the margins of official discourse for a radically new transnational model of Cuban citizenship and civic participation.