The Reception of the Vienna School in Latin America: Centers, Musical Practice, and Creative Appropriation

The school that developed around the composer Arnold Schönberg and his disciples in Vienna during the first decades of the twentieth century played an important part in the international advancement of New Music. The “Vienna School” was especially associated with the establishment of twelve-tone music, which avoided tonal centers and so implied a new understanding of music. This dissertation project examines the reception of the Vienna School in Latin America between approximately 1935 and 1960. It understands this reception as a process that disseminates not only a certain repertoire and techniques of compositions but also aesthetic ideas and knowledge about performance practices. In the context of emigration to Latin America by European intellectuals and artists in the 1930s and 1940s, cooperation between Latin American and European musicians (especially those of German and Austrian ancestry) represented a unique feature of this process, as both groups worked together to participate in teaching and interpretation. This cultural transfer produced works of music and ensembles that specialized in the repertoire of Latin American music and international New Music. Yet these works and ensembles were not integrated into the official musical institutions of their countries. The dissertation focuses on examining the three most important centers for the reception of the Vienna School. These were centered around the Ensembles Música Viva (Brazil), the Agrupación Nueva Música (Argentina), and Tonus (Chile). Research with archival materials from Europe and South America will allow the most important actors in this process of reception to be identified. The project will ask about the sociocultural reasons for the dissemination, assimilation, and reinterpretation of specific artefacts from the Vienna School in Latin American music culture. The consideration of works composed in Latin America will show the extent to which the creative appropriation of these ideas led to a mixing of foreign and local musical traditions. 

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Dr. Daniela Fugellie publishes her PhD dissertation "Musiker unserer Zeit". Internationale Avantgarde, Migration und Wiener Schule in Südamerika" by edition text + kritik of the Richard Booberg Verlag München in February 2018.

Born in Chile. Studies in musicology (main subject), cultural management, and art history at the University of Music FRANZ LISZT Weimar and the Friedrich Schiller University Jena. From 2010 to March 2012, research associate at the Department of Musicology Weimar-Jena. Since 2016 is Fugellie Assistant Professor at the Universidad AlbertoHurtado in Santiago de Chile. She completed her PhD at the BerlinUniversity of the Arts publishing "Musiker unserer Zeit". InternationaleAvantgarde, Migration und Wiener Schule in Südamerika, München:text+kritik 2018. Her research focuses on Latin American art music of the20th and 21st centuries and on cultural transfers between Latin Americaand Europe.

„León Schidlowsky. Un compositor transcultural“, in: Schidlowsky, David (Hg.): León Schidlowsky. Gráfica musical, Santiago de Chile: RiL Editores, 2012, S. 47–53.

„La ,música gráfica’ de León Schidlowsky. Deutschland, ein Wintermärchen (1979) como partitura multimedial“, in: Revista musical chilena, Nr. 218, 2012, S. 7–37.

„Reale und imaginäre Reisen in Neue Welten. Musikalische Zeitausflüge und Kartografien in der lateinamerikanischen Musik des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts“, in: Humboldt-Gesellschaft für Wissenschaft, Kunst und Bildung e.V. (Hg.): Die Humboldt-Brüder. Eine unerschöpfliche Quelle, Roßdorf: TZ-Verlag, 2013, S. 121–140.

„Luigi Nono: Al gran sol de la revolución. Algunos de sus encuentros con América Latina entre evolución y revolución de la nueva música (1948–1972)”, in: Boletín Música, Nr. 35, 2013, S. 3–29.

„Zur Rezeption der Wiener Schule in Lateinamerika (1935–1950)“, in: Storch, Christian (Hg.): Reflexion – Improvisation – Multimedialität. Kompositionsstrategien in der Musik des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts, Göttingen: Universitätsverlag Göttingen, 2015 (=Freie Referate. 15. Internationaler Kongress der Gesellschaft für Musikforschung, Bd. 2), S. 29–48.

dfugellie_ @uahurtado.cl