American Musics Alberto Ginastera, Argentine Cultural Construction, and the Gauchesco Tradition Deborah Schwartz-Kates In October 1957 Gilbert Chase pioneered the study of Latin American music with his article on Alberto Ginastera (1916-1983), which ap- peared in the pages of this journal." His study broke new scholarly ground begause it represented one of the fist serious attempts to analyze the works of a Latin American composer in a respected English-language publication. What was especially visionary about Chase's study was the extent to which it anticipated the integration of context and creation thar characterizes current musicological discourse by locating musical sound structures within a relevant cultural framework. In his article, Chase heralded a contextually integrated approach by connecting Gi- rnastera’s compositions with the cultural, literary, and ideological move. ment known as the gauchesco tradition, which upheld the gaucho (the landless native horseman of the plains) as a symbol of the Argentine na- tion. Because Ginastera identified so deeply with this powerful national current, he achieved, in Chase's words, “the creative synthesis to which his music, in line with the best Argentine tradition, aspires.”* Although Chase's formative study proved prophetic in many ways, it also reflected historiographical tenets of the past. Conceived during an age that upheld the ideal of the “great composer,” Chase's article illumi- nated the contributions of a single remarkable individual. By making a ‘case for Ginastera’ extraordinary achievement, he tacitly sought to vali- date the field of Latin American composition as a whole through the personification of an exemplary musical figure. That Chase's article fos- tered increased acceptance of Latin American music during a period in which it occupied a marginalized position in the European and North American repertory remains much to his credit. Yet because his task re- quired him to focus on a single “exceptional” composer, he provided sig- nificantly less information about the sociocultural landscape that in- formed Argentine musical creation and Ginastera’s place within it. The Musical Quarterly 86(2), Summer 2002, pp. 248-281; DOL: 10.1093/musgtl/gdg009 © 2004 Oxford University Press 248Ginastera an the Gauchesco Tradition 249 The present study extends the scope of Chase's original investiga- tion by reevaluating Ginastera’s contribution within the contextual matrix that informed Argentine cultural values and musical expres It proposes that the gauchesco tradition emerged a a vical source of na~ tional identification for composers such as Ginastera because it served as a locus of Argentine discourse on identity. This article demonstrates the extent to which the gauchesco heritage was embedded within the social map, political agenda, and cultural project of the emergent nation and, as such, formed the basis of master narratives that inscribed, articulated, and transformed changing images of Argentine selfhood. Discursive rep- resentations of the gaucho anticipated Ginastera’s earliest works by al- most one hundred yeats and included compositions that predated his music by three generations. His remarkable artistic achievement thus constitutes a relatively late stage of Argentine cultural development, and it is therefore within the context of the national construction of the ‘gaucho that his music can now be meaningfully understood. I. The Search for Identity The need to implant a symbolic system that embodied Argentine uniqueness and united its vast geographical territory emerged as a cen- tral project from early in the country’s history. Faced with the task of governing a young nation marked by social, economic, and political dif- ferences, Argentine leaders forged symbolic resources to define and over- ‘come internal polarized divisions. Interlocutors in the national debate described the country in terms of binary oppositions—a conceptualiza- tion perpetuated throughout Argentine intellectual history and mani- fesced in the titles of scholarly works such as Thomas McGann’s Ar- sentina: The Divided Land and James Scobie's Argentina: A City anda Nation. Historically, the roots of this bifurcation date back to the colo- nial period, when Spanish trade routes produced a concentration of set- dlers in two main regions: the coastal city of Buenos Aires and the rural interior. The tensions between these two sectors intensified after 1810, when the urbanized residents of Buenos Aires (known as portefios) came under the spell of libertarian ideals from the Enlightenment. They re- volted against Spain, secured independence for the region, and subjected the territories they liberated to their far-from-enlightened rule. Conflicts soon erupted over the distribution of power, the direction of the new government, and the merits of native versus European sociopolitical ‘models. Such disparities only intensified over time, creating a factional- ized ideological climate that obstructed, yet defined, the nation-building process essential to Argentine development.*‘The Musical Quarter The gaucho, who embodied the values of the rural interior, soon ‘emerged as a focus of national debate. He frst entered the impassioned polemic in the works of Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (1811-1888), nationalist writer, cultural architect, and future president of Argentina. In 1845, twenty-three years prior to his presidency, Sarmiento penned the comerstone work Facndo, which denounced the rural life of the provinces as uncultivated and regressive and evoked the image of the native horseman as a symbol of the nation’s ostensible backwardness. He then posited the central problem of Angentine existence as the conflict between “civilization” (the world of high European culture) and “bar- barism” (the rudimentary lifestyle of the native interior). To build a moder nation, Sarmiento argued that Argentines must choose civiliza tion over barbarism, eliminating the gaucho from the open range. Al- though today his dichotomy is considered reductionist, contentious, and problematic in terms of contemporary standards of ethnicity, during the late nineteenth and carly twentieth centuries his dualistic precept was hailed as a clear formulation of a complex national problem.’ Portefio leaders put Sarmiento’ theories into practice by implementing a far- reaching social program. They enclosed the open range with wire fenc- ing, marginalizing the gaucho outside the new borders or subjugating him within them. Shortly after 1845, when this technology made its frst appearance, Sarmiento himself admonished, “Fence! Do not be barbar- ians!” and enclosed his own property with wire. He and his compatriot waged war against resistant gaucho leaders, who violently rejected pro- gressive plans for the nation. Argentine landowners harshly regulate aspects of rural life as they aimed to purge the countryside of all bar- barisms. In doing so, they drew upon central tenets of Facundo to justify the persecution, imprisonment, and military conscription of the gaucho, who tellingly, by end of the nineteenth century, disappeared from the Argentine plains. A corollary belief system upheld European ideals, materials, and aesthetics as a source of cultural betterment. As the Argentine intellec- tual leader and romantic poet Esteban Echeverria proclaimed, “Europe is the center of the civilization of the centuries and of humanitarian progress.” In contrast to foreign cultural models, Echeverria’ view was cone of Argentina asa vast barren wasteland that could only improve if the trappings of European high society were transplanted onto native soil. Progressive leaders aimed to attract foreign immigrants to rebalance the native population and to minimize whar they considered to be a detrimental admixture of Spanish, indigenous, and African bloodlines that formed the mestizo or mixed racial inheritance of the gaucho. In 1852 Juan Bautista Alberdi, the framer of the Argentine constitution, all