Table of Contents

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

Promotional Information

The first English-language study of a critical figure in the development of Venezuelan music

About the Author

Marie Elizabeth Labonville is Assistant Professor of Musicology at Illinois State University.

Reviews

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