Art music in Guatemala

Art music in Guatemala includes different musical patterns like baroque, classical, Renaissance, romantic, post-modern music and the 20^th century music. Guatemala was one of the first areas of the new world to be exposed to European music. The Spanish missionaries and the clergy brought Flemish and Spanish liturgical music during the early 16^th century as part of the Roman Catholic rite. The first cathedral in the year 1534 at the newly founded city of Santiago de Guatemala was endowed with a choir who are in charge of plainchant and Latin Polyphony. Later in the century, three chapel masters from the Iberian Peninsula enriched the cathedral’s list with their compositions: Pedro Bermudez from 1558 to 1605, Hernando Franco from 1532 to 85, and Gaspar Fernandez from 1566 to 1629. Researchers have revealed that musical activity in the missions of Huehuetenango, in the northwestern mountains of present-day Guatemala, was important. Indigenous artists learned the art of polyphony composition from the missionaries and also helped a series of villancicos in Spanish and native Mayan languages to the list of matins and vespers music at their parish churches.

source: artmusicmexicoguatemala

The mainly singer during the late baroque and pre-classical era were Guatemalan-born chapel masters of the cathedral, Manuel Jose de Quirs (1765) and Rafael Antonio Castellanos (1791). The latter successfully brought Guatemalan folk-music elements in his vocal research, especially his villancicos for Christmas, which is an often show trait of Afro-Caribbean and Mayan rhythms, melodies and accompaniment patterns, his 176 extant work reveal Castellanos’ mastery of the pattern of his time, as well as unusual innovation based on plainchant models, baroque part-writing, and the frequent presence of traditional idioms. Many Castellanos’ disciples attained mastery of the villancicos and the cantata, as is reveal by extant work by Pedro Antonio Rojas, Manuel Silvestre Pellegeros, Pedro Nolasco Estrada Aristondo and Francisco Aragon. The heir of the latter as chapel master of the cathedral was Vincente Saenz who served in that throne from 1804 to the time of his death in the year 1841. The organist during his regime was his son Benedicto Saenz the elder, who prematurely died in the year 1831.

Among the singers of the classical style, the most significant Guatemalan composer is Jose Eulalio Samayoa from 1781 to 1866, the first artist in the new world to write symphonies besides a small amount of church music. His seventh symphony, dedicated to the victory of the Federal army at Xiquilisco in recent-day El Salvador, is a model of classical balance. His later Sinfonia Civica and Sinfonia Historica are kept in an early romantic idiom, with frequent programmatic chapters. Jose Escolastico Andrino, who worked in Guatemala City, El Salvador and Havana during the first half of the 19^th century, also produced several symphonies. The vibrant young artist Benedicto Saenz, the younger (1857) on the other hand wrote much church music, like his Messa Solenne published in Paris by advice of the Italian composer Saverio Mercandante. In the same time, Saenz and his brother Anselmo were first to bring Italian opera to Guatemala from 1843 on, an enterprise that after the first failure would turn into a big success, leading to the building of the superb National theatre, later known as the Teatro Colon. The late 19^th century is represented in Guatemala by many movements; the aforementioned brought the opera, the training abroad of several highly able pianist-composers, the influence of military band music and the invention and establishment of the chromatic marimba.

The piano music was extremely furthered by scholarships to study in France and Italy was awarded to several young talents. Thus, Luis Felip Arias from 1876 to 1908, herculano Alvarado from 1879 to 1921, Julian Gonzalez and Miguel Espinosa could current piano music by Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Liszt and Frederic Chopin never heard before in Guatemala. They had also measurable influence on the younger composers like Alfred Wyld, Rafael A. Castillo, and Rafael Vasquez, all of whom succeeded during the first eras of the twentieth century.

A group of singers furthered and instructed by the Prussian conductor and bandmaster, Emil Dressner, came from realm of military bands and salon music. German Alcantara from 1856 to 1911, Rafael Alvarez Ovalle from 1855 to 1946, Fabian Rodriguez from 1862 to 1926, Julian Paniagua Martinez from 1856 to 1946 and Manuel Moraga from 1833 to 96 backed a number of salon pieces, opera fantasies and dances to the list of bands and pianists.

Another significant success was the innovation and establishment of the chromatic marimba in the highland town of Quetzaltenango in the year 1894, by Julian Paniagua Martinez and the marimba founder, Sebastian Hurtado. Its new invention made it possible to play the stylish dance and salon music on the marimba, which during the past had been restricted to the diatonic scale. As a result, Guatemalan light music gained a huge spread at home and abroad by countless marimba bands that were formed from beginning of the twentieth century. Much of the music of that period is still available in the memorized list of current-day marimba groups.

By the end of the nineteenth and the first part of the 20^th century, many singers established a keen interest in Mayan mythology and the traditional music, on which they based their scenic and shows compositions. Jesus Castillo from 1877 to 1946 was the first artist to collect a small amount of folk tunes, which he later used in his work such as his opera Quiche Vinak, as well as ouvertues and symphonic poems. His half-brother Ricardo Castillo from 1891 to 1666 studied in Paris, where he gained impressionistic and ne-classical methods.

His piano music as well as his group output, reveals the mixture of the current art with Mayan mythology such as legends and myths from the Popol Vuh. Jose Castaneda from 1898 to 1983 also took keen interest in the Mayan past in his concert works such as ballet La serpiente emplumada (the feathered snake), premiere in the year 1958, while his two symphonies his cord quartets are much more experimental.

Composers from the following generation, some of them like Jose Castaneda’s and Ricardo Castillo’s students who could also gained from the teachings of the Austrian composer Ftanz Ippisch, continued to focus on the autochthonous Guatemalan tradition. In their show, vocal, and instrumental work, they have shown an interest in Mayan and Garifuna cultural elements, which they have stylized in different forms. Among these, Joaquin Orellana 91930) has established idiophones and aerophones derived from the marimba and other traditional instruments, which he uses in some of his aleatory compositions that deal with the social strife of present-day ethnic orchestras. Among his previous students, the Gandarias brothers have focused on the electronic process of the folk-music and bird calls recorded on site, producing several discs. At the beginning of the new era, two multimedia works by the current composer Dieter Lehnoff, Memorias de un dia remote (Memories of a Distant Day) and Rituales noctrurnos (Night Rituals) have arouse the Mayan past in a more current pattern, being conceived as the soundtrack to an imaginary film. The break of the Garifuna to the Central American shores on the hand is the subject of Satuye, his opera on progress. Among the younger singers, several have written books in a variety of post-modern styles, which often return to traditional or free tonality in their vocal and instrumental compositions.

In the year 1930 comes to air TGW, the Voice Guatemala first station of long wave. Later, in the year 1946, came the time of the national broadcasting. During that era, the transmitters produced dramatized pieces, emerge programs from quality that could compete with the foreigners; the broadcasting reached the peak development. This station has had an entertainment focus, featuring musicians like Gustavo Adolfo Palma, Paco Perez, Manolo Rosales, Jorge Paredes, Ernesto Rosales and Juan de Dios Quezade.