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Composer, pianist, editor, writer, and pedagogue Mario Lavista (1943-2021) was a central figure of the cultural and artistic scene in Mexico and one of the leading Ibero-American composers of his generation. In this book, author Ana R. Alonso-Minutti explores the intertextual connections between the multiple texts--musical or otherwise--that are present in Lavista's music. Implementing an innovative mosaic of methodologies, the book offers both a fascinating look at Lavista's compositional career and a contextual panorama of the contemporary music scene in Mexico.
List of contents
- List of Figures
- List of Musical Examples
- Acknowledgements
- Chapter 1: Introduction: The Mirrors of Sounds in Lavista's Music
- Chapter 2: Embracing a Cosmopolitan Ideal
- Chapter 3: Permuting Cage, Permuting Music
- Chapter 4: Poetic Encounters and Instrumental Affairs
- Chapter 5: Of Birds, Ballerinas, and Other Creatures
- Chapter 6: Mirrors of a Superior Order: Tradition, Memory, and Spirituality
- Chapter 7: The Composer as Intellectual: Mario Lavista and El Colegio Nacional
- Chapter 8: Epilogue: Nihil novum sub sole: Perpetual Mirrors
- Appendix - Chronological List of Works of Mario Lavista
- Bibliography
- Index
About the author
Ana R. Alonso-Minutti is Associate Professor of Music at the University of New Mexico. Her scholarship focuses on experimental and avant-garde expressions and music traditions from Mexico and the U.S.-Mexico border. Coeditor of Experimentalisms in Practice: Music Perspectives from Latin America (Oxford University Press, 2018). She has published extensively on the music of Mario Lavista and serves as curatorial advisor of the Mediateca Lavista.
Summary
This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.
Composer, pianist, editor, writer, and pedagogue Mario Lavista (1943-2021) was a central figure of the cultural and artistic scene in Mexico and one of the leading Ibero-American composers of his generation. His music is often described as evocative and poetic, noted for his meticulous attention to timbre and motivic permutation, and his creative trajectory was characterized by its intersections with the other arts, particularly poetry and painting. Lavista was a relational composer; he did not write music as a private enterprise but for and alongside people with whom he established close relations.
Understanding analysis as an affective practice, author Ana R. Alonso-Minutti explores the intertextual connections between the multiple texts--musical or otherwise--that are present in Lavista's music. Alonso-Minutti argues that, through adopting an interdisciplinary and transhistorical approach to music composition, Lavista forged a cosmopolitan imaginary that challenged stereotypes of what Mexican music should sound like. This imaginary becomes a strategy of resistance against imperialist agendas placed upon postcolonial peripheries. Departing from traditional biographical and chronological frameworks that exalt masters and masterworks, the author offers a nuanced, personal narrative informed by conversations with composers, performers, artists, choreographers, poets, writers, and filmmakers.
Through an innovative mosaic of methodologies, from archival work, to musical and intertextual analysis, oral history, and (auto)ethnography, this book is the first in-depth study of Lavista's compositional career and offers a contextual panorama of the contemporary music scene in Mexico
Additional text
Alonso-Minutti's in-depth examination of Lavista's compactional orientation is well written,...Those interested in new music genres will identify with and be inspired by the sources for Lavista's composition.
