Guitar Music Of Argentina

Description

Pujol • Saúl • Ayala • Guastavino • Falú • HeinzeGuitar Music of ArgentinaThroughout its recent history, South America has received successive currents of immigration. These, added to the native populations, have resulted in an ethnically diverse population, with a culture as rich as it is varied. The native inhabitants of these lands since ancient times, the Spanish and Portuguese conquistadors in the sixteenth century, the African slaves in the seventeenth, and Italian, French and other European colonists in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have all contributed to this their own customs, languages, religions, and, of course, their music. The works here included are an expression of the diversity of genres extant in the Republic of Argentina, not folk-music, but reflections of a unity in cultural diversity.Victor VilladangosMáximo Diego Pujol was born in Buenos Aires in 1957 and graduated from the Juan José Castro Provincial Conservatory. His instrumental studies were with Alfredo Vicente Gascón, Horacio Ceballos, Liliana Ardissone and Miguel Angel Girollet. He also studied harmony and composition under the guidance of Leónidas Arnedo. As a performer he has appeared throughout Argentina and at guitar festivals in Europe and Australia. His guitar compositions have won awards at competitions in Colombia, France and the World Festival in Martinique and in 1989 he was awarded the Argentine Composers’ Union prize as Best Composer of Classical Music. His work is strongly influenced by the great Argentine musician Astor Piazzolla. Like Piazzolla, Máximo Pujol uses the tango as a basic style in wonderfully colourful, melodically rich works that make full use of the expressive powers of the guitar. His Tres Piezas Rioplatenses (Three Pieces from the River Plate Region) attempt to summarize, as an integral work, the three great musical genres that emerge from the River Plate Basin: the tango, the milonga and the candombe. Written in the style of a little suite, the three pieces are linked to each other through a common melodic element. Usually there is no differentiation between the genres and the term "tango" is used for all forms of musical expression from the River Plate Basin. The tango, however, properly so called, is clearly urban and moderate in tempo; the milonga, of rural origin, is noted for its contemplative and somewhat melancholy character, and the candombe, stemming from Africa, for its rhythmic richness, and above all for the abundant syncopations, ostinatos and displaced accents. Born in 1957, Narciso Saúl graduated from the Conservatorio Provincial Juan José Castro in 1975. Since 1980 he has taught at the College of Music Therapy at the Universidad del Salvador and, since 1988 at the Conservatorio Municipal Manuel de Falla. An arranger, composer and guitarist for the tango group Siglotreinta (The Thirties), he has participated in recor