Overview

Juan Bautista Plaza (1898-1965) was one of the most important musicians in the history of Venezuela. In addition to composing in a variety of genres and styles, he was the leading figure in Venezuelan music education and musicology at a time when his compatriots were seeking to solidify their cultural identity. Plaza's compositions in the emerging nationalist style and his efforts to improve musical institutions in his home country parallel the work of contemporaneous Latin American musicians including Carlos Chávez of Mexico, Amadeo Roldán of Cuba, and Camargo Guarnieri of Brazil. Plaza's life and music are little studied, and Labonville's ambitious book is the first in English to be based on his extensive writings and compositions. As these and other documents show, Plaza filled numerous roles in Venezuela's musical infrastructure including researcher, performer, teacher, composer, promoter, critic, chapel master, and director of national culture. Labonville examines Plaza's many roles in an attempt to assess how the nationalist spirit affected art music culture in Venezuela, and what changes it brought to Venezuela's musical landscape.

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9780253348760

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Reviews

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 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 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 Roldan and Carlos Chavez-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

A path-breaking work that will be of great use to scholarship in mapping out what remains, to our shame, largely terra incognita to musical scholarship. Alejandro Enrique Planchart, Emeritus Professor of Music, UCSB

Author Information

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

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