Compositional techniques in Rodrigo Asturias's "El banquete de las nubes"

by Beteta, Xavier

Rodrigo Asturias could be considered the most important Central American contemporary composer. His music combines the techniques of the post-serial period and different personal methods that have evolved into an original musical language. A general problem when researching his music is the lack of an English bibliography on contemporary Latin American composers. This thesis is a pioneering research on the biography and the music of Rodrigo Asturias presenting a concise analysis of his song cycle El Banquete de las Nubes. The discussion is centered around Asturias’s compositional techniques on form, pitch organization, rhythmic derivation and text painting. The works of prominent theorists such as Hasty, Caplin, and Cahn set the basis for the analysis of El Banquete under the current trends of scholarship. As a conclusion the cycle finds its genesis in micro and macro symmetries derived from the original series and exploits the subtleties of Juan Ramón Jimenez’s poetry as a compositional device. The different compositional techniques employed by Asturias in this cycle show the interesting development of his language with respect to the French school of serialism, and help us to understand his place as an exponent of the most progressive aesthetics in Latin American music. 1 2 A Rodrigo Asturias Por aquellas tardes en Guatemala Donde aprendí más que en cualquier universidad. 3