Connecting tango and avant-garde languages in Uruguayan music
As well as in verbal language, translation can be found in musical languages which re elaborate a given material. What role does it play in composition, transcription, and performance? This concept is used to encompass a series of musical processes in works by the Uruguayan composers Héctor Tosar, Coriún Aharonián and Alvaro Carlevaro. References to rhythm and musical gestures from tango tradition can be found in their pieces, especially from La Cumparsita by Gerardo Matos Rodríguez, translated by each composer in different ways. Translation plays a fundamental role both in tango evolution as in the development of classical guitar repertoire. As an output of my artistic research I propose a recreation of two piano works: ¿y ahora? (1984) for solo guitar and Ritmo de tango (1963) for guitar and guitarrón duo, traditional tango instruments. By choosing the term translation I seek a transcription that goes further than adapting the pieces to a new instrument. Carlevaro’s Taschenstücke (2026), was originally written for ensemble with guitar. Translation will be analysed both as a process and a result in composition, transcription and performance. In some cases this can be seen as the suspension of the original material in a new medium. Some important questions arise: Is there also in musical translation a transfer of meaning? Do we find in the translated music what Walter Benjamin describes as the “echo of the original”? Is there also in music the equivalent to a message to be reproduced in such a way that it can be understood? How is this message reformulated? Héctor Tosar is considered the most relevant composer from Uruguay. Some of Peter Burkholder’s categories of “musical borrowing” can be found in his music: variations, reworking and stylistic allusion. The composer Coriún Aharonián was a central figure in Latin-American art music. He is also the main scholar on Tosar, who was his composition teacher. In some of his works, he reformulates gestures from tango and reflects on its evolution. Alvaro Carlevaro, guitarist and composer, is active in Stuttgart. My proposition of guitar versions of their pieces considers translating also the tensions between score and instrument in the original.