Biography

Alberto Ginastera is one of the most influential composers in Latin America. Ginastera, who received a music education centered on piano from the age of seven, entered the Williams Conservatory at age 12, where he studied music theory, solfège, harmony, and composition. Being an excellent student, and at his parents' wish, he also studied business at a prestigious high school in Buenos Aires at the age of 14. At 19, after graduating from the Williams Conservatory with a gold medal in composition, he went on to study harmony, composition, and counterpoint at the National Conservatory of Music in Buenos Aires. Known as a young national composer even during his studies, Ginastera traveled to the United States at the age of 29 on a Guggenheim Fellowship (after an approximately three-year postponement due to World War II). Subsequently, Ginastera gradually expanded his activities internationally, moving to Geneva, Switzerland, in the 1970s following his second marriage. From around 1981, he was repeatedly hospitalized due to health issues, but he did not recover and passed away on June 25, 1983. This was just a few months before his home country, Argentina, transitioned from military rule to civilian government.

Musical Style

A characteristic feature of his compositional style is the combination of folk music elements from South America, particularly Argentina, with contemporary compositional techniques of the time. Especially in his early works, various regional musical elements are used, either directly or indirectly, alongside depictions of the vast Pampas plains and the imagery of the gauchos, the cowboys said to roam freely there on horseback. Among these, rhythmic characteristics known as sesquialtera (a type of hemiola where duple and triple meter rhythms coexist simultaneously) and the use of the same pitch series as open guitar strings (E-A-D-G-B-E) are prominent. During the period when he was actively expanding his international career, Ginastera gradually distanced himself from folk music elements, as he himself stated that “the period of regional music has passed.” However, in his later works, composed after his move to Switzerland and fueled by a growing nostalgia for his homeland, where various freedoms were being suppressed under a harsh military regime, South American musical elements re-emerge in an abstracted form.

Educator and Personality

What is important when discussing Ginastera is not only his achievements as a composer but also his character. Ginastera, who constantly sought new imagination and creativity, spoke at home about the importance of encountering “wonderful things.” This also extended to his approach as an educator. Already known as a leading composer in both Americas by the 1950s, Ginastera dedicated himself to the establishment of the Latin American Center for Advanced Musical Studies at Torcuato di Tella University, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, in 1961. Ginastera had long felt the need to teach talented young Latin American composers the latest compositional techniques and to provide them with diverse cultural and creative perspectives. In 1963, Ginastera resigned from all positions except that of director of the center and devoted himself to nurturing the next generation. He invited composers with whom he had personal friendships, such as Copland, Xenakis, and Messiaen, as guests, thereby enabling young people to truly encounter “wonderful things.” Regarding this everyday side of Ginastera, the late journalist Abel López Iturbe fondly recalled: “Ginastera was a man of few words, not one to push himself forward.” And he also shared the words that Ginastera consistently conveyed.