Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
I: Background
1. Introduction: Early Twentieth-Century Art Music Culture in
Caracas; The Significance of Plaza and His Colleagues
2. A Portrait of Plaza: The Man, the Musician
3. The Composer
II: Plaza's Life and Works
4. Beginnings; First Compositions; Vocational Indecision; First
Writings on Music (1898-1920)
5. Rome; Plans for Musical Renewal in Venezuela (1920-1923)
6. Paid to Compose: The Chapel Mastership (1923-1948)
7. The Educator, Part 1 (1923-1928)
8. The Early Secular and Nationalist Compositions (1924-1929)
9. The Nascent Journalist (1925-1928)
10. The Founding of the Orfeón Lamas, and Plaza's Creative Response
(1927-1963)
11. Plaza and the Orquesta Sinfónica Venezuela (1930-1957)
12. The Mature Journalist; Writings on Nationalism in Music
(1929-1948)
13. The Principal Nationalist Compositions with Instruments
(1930-1956)
14. The Educator, Part 2 (1930-1941)
15. The Musicological Pioneer (1936-1964)
16. Plaza as the Subject of Reportage
17. The Later Non-Nationalist Compositions (1930-1963)
18. The Educator, Part 3 (1942-1962)
19. Retirement; Final Thoughts on Education and Culture
(1962-1964)
20. Plaza in Retrospect
Notes
Bibliography
Index
The first English-language study of a critical figure in the development of Venezuelan music
Marie Elizabeth Labonville is Assistant Professor of Musicology at Illinois State University.
Labonville (Illinois State Univ.) divides this exploration of the
life and works of Venezuelan composer, musicologist, educator, and
music critic Juan Bautista Plaza (1898-1965) into two parts. The
first provides a biographical portrait of Plaza and background on
Plaza's compositional career and 20th-century art music in Caracas
in general. In part 2 the author presents her research, examining
periods in Plaza's career as they relate to the varied musical
activities that occupied him during his productive life. Like other
Latin American nationalist composers—for example, Amadeo Roldán and
Carlos Chávez—Plaza was influential in modernizing the musical
infrastructure of his country in order to bring it in line with
European and American musical practices. Making extensive use of
primary sources, Labonville chronicles Plaza's productivity in the
realms of composition, musical nationalism, music education,
musicology, and journalism. In so doing she demonstrates how Plaza
exemplifies the Latin American nationalist musicians of his
generation, not only because of his compositions but also because
of the broader service he provided to the musical culture of
Venezuela. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division
undergraduates through faculty.G. Torres, Lafayette College,
Choice, September 2008
"Making extensive use of primary sources, Labonville chronicles
Plaza's productivity in the realms of composition, musical
nationalism, music education, musicology, and journalism. In so
doing she demonstrates how Plaza exemplifies the Latin American
nationalist musicians of his generation, not only because of his
compositions but also because of the broader service he provided to
the musical culture of Venezuela.... Highly recommended." —G.
Torres, Lafayette College, Choice, September 2008
"A path-breaking work that will be of great use to American
scholarship in mapping out what remains, to our shame, largely
terra incognita to musical scholarship." —Alejandro Enrique
Planchart, Emeritus Professor of Music, UCSB
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