Synopses & Reviews
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.
Review
"This brilliant book offers the first critical analysis of the reception of Latin American art music in the US during and after the Cold War... Highly recommended." --Choice
Synopsis
Winner of the 2015 Robert M. Stevenson Award from the American Musicological Society In Representing the Good Neighbor: Music, Difference, and the Pan American Dream, Carol A. Hess investigates the reception of Latin American art music in the US during the twentieth century. Hers is the first study to probe Latin American art music in relation to Pan Americanism, or the idea that the American nations are bound by common aspirations. Under the Good Neighbor policy, crafted by the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt to cement hemispheric solidarity amid fears of European fascism, Latin American art music flourished and US critics applauded it as "universal." During the Cold War, however, this repertory assumed a very different status. While the United States supported Latin American military dictators to assuage fears that communism would overwhelm the hemisphere, musical works were increasingly objectified through essentializing adjectives such as "exotic," distinctive," or "national"--through the filter of difference.
Hess explores this phenomenon by tracking the reception in the United States of the so-called Big Three: Carlos Chavez (Mexico), Heitor Villa-Lobos (Brazil), and Alberto Ginastera (Argentina). She also evaluates several important US composers and critics-Copland, Thomson, Rosenfeld, and others-in relation to Pan Americanism, and offers a new interpretation of a work about Latin America by US composer Fredric Rzewski, 36 Variations on "The People United Will Never Be Defeated " Whether discussing works performed in modern music concerts of the 1920s, at the 1939 World's Fair, the inauguration of the New York State Theater in 1966, or for the US Bicentennial, Hess illuminates ways in which North-South relations continue to inform our understanding of Latin American art music today. 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.
Synopsis
In
Representing the Good Neighbor: Music, Difference, and the Pan American Dream, Carol A. Hess investigates the reception of Latin American art music in the US during the twentieth century. Hers is the first study to probe Latin American art music in relation to Pan Americanism, or the idea that the American nations are bound by common aspirations. Under the Good Neighbor policy, crafted by the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt to cement hemispheric solidarity amid fears of European fascism, Latin American art music flourished and US critics applauded it as "universal." During the Cold War, however, this repertory assumed a very different status. While the United States supported Latin American military dictators to assuage fears that communism would overwhelm the hemisphere, musical works were increasingly objectified through essentializing adjectives such as "exotic," distinctive," or "national"--through the filter of difference.
Hess explores this phenomenon by tracking the reception in the United States of the so-called Big Three: Carlos Chávez (Mexico), Heitor Villa-Lobos (Brazil), and Alberto Ginastera (Argentina). She also evaluates several important US composers and critics-Copland, Thomson, Rosenfeld, and others-in relation to Pan Americanism, and offers a new interpretation of a work about Latin America by US composer Fredric Rzewski, 36 Variations on "The People United Will Never Be Defeated!" Whether discussing works performed in modern music concerts of the 1920s, at the 1939 World's Fair, the inauguration of the New York State Theater in 1966, or for the US Bicentennial, Hess illuminates ways in which North-South relations continue to inform our understanding of Latin American art music today. 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.
About the Author
Carol A. Hess is Professor of Musicology at University of California, Davis. She is author of
Manuel de Falla and Modernism in Spain, 1898-1936 (Chicago, 2001, winner of an ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award and the Robert M. Stevenson prize for outstanding scholarship in Iberian music) and
Sacred Passions: The Life and Music of Manuel de Falla (Oxford 2004).
Table of Contents
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Editorial matters
List of musical examples
List of figures
Chapter One. Introduction
I. Difference and History in the Americas
II. The Narrative
Chapter Two: The Roots of Pan Americanism
I. Historical Premises
II. Pan Americanism and Music: An Overview
Chapter Three: Carlos Chávez and Ur-Classicism
II. Absolute Mexican Music: "True Classicism" and Universalism in the Americas
Chapter Four: Carlos Chávez's H.P.: Dialectical Indigenism, Mestizaje, and the Politics of Sameness
I. To "Suggest Objectively the Life of All America": Chávez and Dialectical Indigenism.
II. "Find Me a Primitive Man": Premiere and Reception
Chapter Five: Brazilian Modernism and the Making of "American Rhythm": Villa-Lobos at the 1939 World's Fair
I. From "Hallucinated City" To Democracity: Villa-Lobos, the Many Faces of Brazilian Modernism, and the Good Neighbor
II. Caliban Unbound: Villa-Lobos and Unsublimated Primitivism
Chapter Six: The Golden