The Emergence of Spanish Impressionism and its Interaction with French Impressionism in Music at the Turn of the Twentieth Century: selections from the solo and collaborative piano repertoire

French Impressionism is a term which is often used in discussing music originating in France towards the end of the nineteenth century. The term Spanish Impressionism could also be used when discussing Spanish music written by the Spanish composers who studied and worked in Paris at the same time as their French counterparts. After all, Spanish music written during this time exhibits many of the same characteristics and aesthetics as French music of the same era. This dissertation will focus on the French and Spanish composers writing during that exciting time. Musical impressionism emphasizes harmonic effects and rhythmic fluidity in the pursuit of evocative moods, sound pictures of nature or places over the formalism of structure and thematic concerns. The music of this time is highly virtuosic as well as musically demanding, since many of the composers were brilliant pianists. My three dissertation recitals concentrated on works which exhibited the many facets of impressionism as well as the technical and musical challenges. The repertoire included selections by Spanish composers Manuel de Falla, Isaac Albéniz, Enrique Granados, Joaquín Turina, and Joaquín Rodrigo and French composers Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. The recitals were on April 30, 2013, February 23, 2014 and October 11, 2015. They included solo piano works by Granados and Albéniz, vocal works by Debussy, Ravel, de Falla, Turina and Rodrigo, piano trios by Granados and Turina, instrumental duos by Debussy, Ravel and de Falla, and a two-piano work of Debussy transcribed by Ravel. All three recitals were held in Gildenhorn Recital Hall at the University of Maryland and copies of this dissertation and recordings of each recital may be found through the Digital Repository at the University of Maryland (DRUM).

El repertorio infantil para piano en la creación española contemporánea (1975-2014). Aspectos analíticos y pedagógicos

En los primeros años de formación de un pianista es vital que el material que se utilice sea adecuado y progresivo, desde el punto de vista técnico, pero que además le aporte musicalmente una iniciación a las diferentes estéticas compositivas de los periodos históricos más representativos. A través de mi experiencia docente he observado que la música contemporánea apenas está presente en la formación reglada de los conservatorios en el Grado Elemental, que corresponde a los primeros cuatro años de estudio (de los ocho a los doce años aproximadamente). Por ello en la presente investigación se ha trabajado con obras españolas para piano pensadas para niños, editadas y compuestas entre 1975 y 2014. Se ha elegido el año 1975 como inicio del estudio por ser un punto de inflexión en la Historia de España. No obstante, se trata previamente el repertorio español para niños en el siglo XX hasta 1975 como contexto creativo previo. También se estudian las obras clave de la historia del repertorio pedagógico para niños, que son el punto de referencia en la formación de todo pianista, desde J. S. Bach, R. Schumann, C. Debussy o B. Bartók, así como otros compositores del siglo XX. Dentro del repertorio español infantil analizado se seleccionan aquellas obras que están editadas, y son accesibles, haciendo la investigación desde dos puntos de vista: 1. Analítico-histórico: importancia de la obra dentro de la producción del compositor a través de breves datos biográficos y catálogo de la producción para piano. 2. Pedagógico: importancia y adecuación de la obra dentro de la formación técnico-pianística en el Grado Elemental...

Iberian and Latin American Music Scholarship on the Ascent: Reflections from the United States

In the early twentieth century, musicology was established as an academic discipline in the United States. Nonetheless, with the exception of Iberian medieval and Renaissance repertories, U.S. scholars largely overlooked the music of the Spanish- and Portuguese- speaking world. Why should this have been the case, especially in light of Spain’s strong historical presence in the United States? This autobiographical essay examines this question by tracing the career of an individual musicologist, the Hispanist musicologist Carol A. Hess. Evaluated here are disciplinary shifts in U.S. musicology —methodological, philosophical, and ideological— over the past thirty years. These transformations have combined to make this repertory a viable field of study today. Musicologists in the United States can now make their careers by specializing in Iberian and Latin American music, as well as the music of the Hispanic diaspora. They research topics ranging from the avant-garde composer Llorenç Barber to the rapper Nach Scratch or the popular bandleader Xavier Cugat and his U.S. audiences of the 1940s, while others also pursue the time-tested areas of medieval and Renaissance music. Iberian and Latin American music is regularly offered in postsecondary institutions while instructors now have a variety of textbooks and other pedagogical resources from which to choose. All add up to a disciplinary freedom that would have been unthinkable only a few decades ago.