Radio: In ‘Mainstream’

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31085, 14 June 1966, Page 14

Radio: In ‘Mainstream ’

In its Christchurch concert on Wednesday, the Juilliard String Quartet has included the Second Quartet of the Argentinian composer, Alberto

Ginastera. The name is one that is turning up now and then in Christchurch programmes. Juan Matteucci introduced it with the work “Estancia” in a Pan Pacific Arts Festival concert, and later this year Kendall Taylor will play the Piano Concerto with the N.Z.B.C. Symphony. In the last few years Ginastera has grown from a nationalist in the Villa Lobos tradition to an important musiscal thinker in the international mainstream. But unlike some who have gone from a brand of nationalism to embrace serial and aleatoric practices, there has been no break in style, no split between folklore and the new universalism, for even in his most nationalistic days Ginastera was writing 1240ne music, and his evolution has been gradual and unforced. “In his latest scores the strong, earthy personality that has always characterised his music has remained,” Howard Klein wrote in a “New York Times” profile. “Regardless of style, a composer has a subjective expression if his personality is strong,” Ginastera said. “Beet hoven is Beethoven from ‘Fur Elise’ to the last quartets. I am a Latin composer. I like

hot climates. No matter what style I write in, it is still me.” The Second Quartet of 1958 (which will be broadcast from the concert on 3YC) is his first entirely serial work and Ginastera considers it as the start of a new period. The serial procedures are not those of Webern or his followers, but represent Ginastera’s free adaptation of serial principles to his own needs.

EARLY INFLUENCE Ginastera was born in Buenos Aires in 1916 and grew up in a musical atmosphere of post-romanticism and folklore. When he was 18 he came In contact with the music of Stravinsky and Bartok and, influenced by the latter in particular, began working towards an “objective nationalism.” He now runs the Buenos Aires Conservatory and an annual Festival of Contemporary Music which includes all styles and composers. At his Latin American Centre for Advanced Musical Studies, he has had an international line-up of visiting professors, including Copland, Dallapiccola, Davidovsky, Lutoslawski, Malipiero, Messiaen, Nono and Sessions. The musical traffic is now two-way and Ginastera’s scores are regularly heard in Europe and North America. Earlier this year his grandiose first opera, “Don Rodrigo,” commissioned by his home city for one million

pesos, was performed as the New York City Opera’s opener for its first season in Lincoln Centre.

He is currently composing a second opera, “Bomarzo,” for the Washington Opera Society.

POSTWAR TECHNIQUES Ginastera is neither for nor against musical techniques which have been developed since the Second World War. “I use pointillism when I need it, as in the Nocturne of ‘Don Rodrigo,* for instance. But in moments of great passion, I can’t use pointillism. “In my opinion a given technique should be used according the musical situation.” Although he also uses aleatory writing when he requires it, Ginastera acknowledges its limits: “A work of art without an internal structure is like a building without cement. I don’t believe in artistic formlessness. Art must be premeditated, not improvised. “There have always been two types of creative artists—the experimental, who constantly seeks novelty for its own sake, and the classicist, who with the elements at his disposal creates works of lasting significance. “Satie was an experimentalist, Debussy a classicist. 1 should prefer to be considered a classicist, in the full sense of permanence the term contains. Originality cannot be sought, it can only be encountered.”