Collective Difference: The Pan-American Association of Composers

FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY
COLLEGE OF MUSIC
COLLECTIVE DIFFERENCE: THE PAN-AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF
COMPOSERS AND PAN-AMERICAN IDEOLOGY IN MUSIC, 1925-1945
By
STEPHANIE N. STALLINGS
A Dissertation submitted to the
College of Music
in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
Degree Awarded:
Summer Semester, 2009
Copyright © 2009
Stephanie N. Stallings
All Rights Reserved

The members of the Committee approve the Dissertation of Stephanie N. Stallings
defended on April 20, 2009.
ii
______________________________
Denise Von Glahn
Professor Directing Dissertation
______________________________
Evan Jones
Outside Committee Member
______________________________
Charles Brewer
Committee Member
______________________________
Douglass Seaton
Committee Member
The Graduate School has verified and approved the above named committee members.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to express my warmest thanks to my dissertation advisor, Denise Von
Glahn. Without her excellent guidance, steadfast moral support, thoughtfulness, and
creativity, this dissertation never would have come to fruition. I am also grateful to the
rest of my dissertation committee, Charles Brewer, Evan Jones, and Douglass Seaton, for
their wisdom. Similarly, each member of the Musicology faculty at Florida State
University has provided me with a different model for scholarly excellence in “capital M
Musicology.” The FSU Society for Musicology has been a wonderful support system
throughout my tenure at Florida State. Thank you to all of my colleagues who serve on its
committees. This dissertation was completed with financial support from the Florida
State University College of Music, the Curtis Mayes Foundation, the Presser Foundation,
and Malcolm Brown, who generously donated funding for FSU’s annual Musicology
student paper award.
There are also many individuals who contributed to this project. I would like to
thank George Boziwick, Chief of the Music Division at The New York Public Library for
the Performing Arts, for his help navigating the Cowell Papers. Robin Rausch and Karen
Moses, Music Specialists at the Library of Congress, were also cooperative and kind.
Electra Slonimsky Yourke generously allowed me to photocopy from her father’s
collection at the Library of Congress. Richard Teitelbaum of the David and Sylvia
Teitelbaum Fund allowed me to reproduce materials from the Cowell Collection at the
NYPL. The staff of the Fleisher Collection of Orchestral Music at the Free Library of
Philadelphia has provided me with much assistance, especially Curator Kile Smith,
Librarian Stuart Serio, and Archival Preservationist Gary Galván. Robert Falvo, Assistant
Professor of percussion at Appalachian State University, shared his ensemble’s excellent
recording of José Ardévol’s Estudio. Carmen Hendershott, Reference Librarian at the
New School, found information for me in the New School Catalogs. I can only imagine
how much time Velma Smith and Sara Nodine spent processing my interlibrary loans.
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Amy Dankowski, an archivist at the Cleveland Orchestra, sent me programs. I would also
like to express my gratitude to other American music scholars whose work has been
helpful to me in the process of writing this dissertation: Jacqueline Avila, (for sharing a
rare recording of Silvestre Revueltas’ music), Gary Galván, Christina Taylor Gibson,
Eduardo Herrera, Carol Hess, Ana Alonso-Minutti, Alejandro Madrid, Carol Oja, Anna
Ochs, Robert Parker, Deane Root, Leonora Saavedra, and Deborah Schwartz-Kates.
Tatiana Flores deserves special thanks for graciously hosting me in New York, for
showing me a great time in Harlem the night Barack Obama was elected, and for the
invaluable sources I found on her bookshelves. The friendship and support of Laura
Moore Pruett, Sean Parr, John Spilker, Janine Tiffe, and Emily Swift Gertsch have been
sources of strength throughout my career at FSU. My lunch meetings with John, who is
completing a dissertation that reassesses Henry Cowell’s contributions to dissonant
counterpoint, gave me fresh perspectives on Cowell’s work and allowed me to blow off
steam. Walks with Alegra Toccata always cleared my mind and cheered me up.
My deepest thanks go to my parents, Everett and Marian Stallings, who continue
to provide not only constant support for my every endeavor but love and encouragement
that keep me afloat. Sean, Celeste, Carson and Riley Stallings never fail to make me
laugh. León García lovingly persuades me that I deserve to succeed. It is largely due to
his daily encouragement that this project came to completion.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Figures ..........................................................................................................vii
List of Musical Examples ............................................................................................ix
Abstract ......................................................................................................................xii
INTRODUCTION: THE PAN-AMERICAN ERA (1925-45) .........................................1
1. PAN-AMERICANISM IN 1930s PERCUSSION ENSEMBLE MUSIC ...................11
Ultramodernism, Neo-primitivism, and New Uses of Percussion in Europe .......14
Amerindian Themes in American Music .............................................................16
Percussion Music in the Americas .......................................................................19
William Russell, Percussion Studies in Cuban Rhythms (1935)...........................22
Amadeo Roldán, Rítmicas Nos. 5 and 6 (1930) ...................................................26
Edgard Varèse, Ionisation (1929-31) ...................................................................31
Henry Cowell, Ostinato Pianissimo (1934) .........................................................41
William Russell, Fugue for Eight Percussion Instruments (1931) ......................45
José Ardévol, Estudio en forma de preludio y fuga (1933) .................................50
2. ORGANIZING THE HEMISPHERE: THE PAN-AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF
COMPOSERS ..................................................................................................................61
Early Organizing Efforts and the First Two Concerts, 1928-30 ..........................65
The Concerts in New York and Cuba, 1931-34 ...................................................80
3. COLLECTIVE DIFFERENCE: THE PAN-AMERICAN ASSOCIATION ABROAD
............................................................................................................................................93
Paris, 6 and 11 June 1931 ....................................................................................95
Paris, 21 and 25 February 1932 .........................................................................108
Berlin, 5 and 10 March 1932 .............................................................................113
Other European Concerts 1931-32
Varèse’s Return to New York and the Last Two Concerts, 1934 ......................126
4. ESTA BOCA ES LA MIA: JAZZ, BLUES, AND POPULAR FRONT PAN-
AMERICANISM.............................................................................................................133
Blues and Son: A Pan-American Literary and Musical Exchange ....................136
Alejandro García Caturla, “Bito manué” (1930).....................................141
Amadeo Roldán, Motivos de son, “Sigue” (1931) .................................145
Mexico Sings the Blues .....................................................................................150
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Silvestre Revueltas, “Canto de una muchacha negra” (1938) ...............151
Carlos Chávez, “North Carolina Blues” (1942) ....................................155
EPILOGUE: FROM PAN-AMERICAN TO INTER-AMERICAN...............................167
APPENDIX A. CONCERTS OF THE PAN-AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF
COMPOSERS ................................................................................................................171
APPENDIX B. LIST OF EXTANT CONCERT PROGRAMS AND REVIEWS OF THE
PAN-AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF COMPOSERS ..............................................181
BIBLIOGRAPHY ...........................................................................................................186
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .........................................................................................199
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LIST OF FIGURES
FIGURE I.1. Pan-American Exposition Official Seal by artist Raphael Beck....................7
FIGURE 1.1. Some Percussion Ensemble works written between 1929 and 1942...........12
FIGURE 1.2. Diagram of a teponaztli. Daniel Castaneda and Vicente T. Mendoza,
Instrumental precortesiano (Mexico City: Museo Nacional de Arqueologia, Historia y
Etnografia, 1933; reprint Mexico City: UNAM, 1991), unnumbered insert.....................20
FIGURE 1.3. Henry Cowell, Ostinato Pianissimo. Diagram of each ostinato..................44
FIGURE 1.4. William Russell, Fugue. Form diagram.....................................................49
FIGURE 1.5. Estudio en forma de preludio y fuga, instrument groups (voices) in the
fugue and the measures in which they appear...................................................................55
FIGURE 1.6. Jose Ardevol, Estudio en forma de preludio y fuga. Form diagram............56
FIGURE 2.1. Concert program, Carnegie Chamber Hall, April 21, 1930........................78
FIGURE 2.2. Program cover for Henry Cowell’s solo concerts in Havana, December 23,
and 26, 1930. Cowell Papers, NYPL.................................................................................79
FIGURE 2.3. Concert program, Slonimsky’s performances with the Havana
Philharmonic, March 18 and 21, 1931. Cowell Papers, NYPL.........................................80
FIGURE 2.4. Concert program, New School Auditorium, November 4, 1932. Cowell
Papers, NYPL....................................................................................................................84
FIGURE 2.5. Concert Program of Alejandro García Caturla’s Orquesta de Conciertos de
Caibarién, April 15, 1933...................................................................................................87
FIGURE 2.6. Alejandro García Caturla, “Fanfarria para despertar espiritus apolillados.”
The Fleisher Collection, Free Library of Philadelphia......................................................89
FIGURE 3.1. Concert program. Paris, February 21, 1932 (Cowell Papers, New York
Public Library for the Performing Arts)..........................................................................110
FIGURE 3.2. Concert program. Madrid, November 23, 1931 (Cowell Papers).............120
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FIGURE 3.3. Concert program. Bauhaus, Dessau, December 1, 3, and 12, 1931 (Cowell
Papers)..............................................................................................................................121
FIGURE 3.4. Concert program. Vienna, February 21, 1932 (Cowell Papers)................123
FIGURE 3.5. Concert program. Budapest, April 2, 1932. (Fleisher Collection, Free
Library of Philadelphia)...................................................................................................126
FIGURE 3.6. Concert program. Hamburg, December 8, 1932 (Cowell Papers)............127
FIGURE 3.7. PAAC circular from late 1932 ..................................................................129
FIGURE 3.8. Concert program. New York City, April 22, 1934 (Cowell Papers).........131
FIGURE E.1. Covers from the 1938 and 1941 Boletín Latino-Americano de Música...162
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LIST OF MUSICAL EXAMPLES
EXAMPLE 1.1. William Russell, Percussion Studies in Cuban Rhythms, Opening of No.
1 “Havanera,” mm. 1-15....................................................................................................25
EXAMPLE 1.2a. The “2-side” of a son clave in 4/4 ........................................................26
EXAMPLE 1.2b. The “3-side” of a son clave in 4/4 ........................................................26
EXAMPLE 1.3. William Russell, Percussion Studies in Cuban Rhythms No. 2,
“Rhumba,” mm. 1-10. .......................................................................................................26
EXAMPLE 1.4. Amadeo Roldán, Rítmica No. 5, mm. 14-21, top system only...............29
EXAMPLE 1.5. Amadeo Roldán, Rítmica No. 5, first page.............................................30
EXAMPLE 1.6. Amadeo Roldán, Rítmica No. 5, mm. 35-47. Layered entrances of the 3-
2 son clave. ........................................................................................................................30
EXAMPLE 1.7. Edgard Varèse, Ionisation, mm. 9-12 Snare drum in “Parade drum
passage” ............................................................................................................................37
EXAMPLE 1.8a. Edgard Varèse, Ionisation m. 26 (long, short, short) ...........................38
EXAMPLE 1.8b. Edgard Varèse, Ionisation, mm. 28-29 (short, short, long) .................38
EXAMPLE 1.8c. Edgard Varèse, Ionisation mm. 34-37 Güiro “solo” and rhythmic
elaboration. ........................................................................................................................38
EXAMPLE 1.9a. Edgard Varèse, Ionisation, Lion’s (leopard’s?) roar, (player 5, Tambour
á corde), mm 45-47. ..........................................................................................................40
EXAMPLE 1.9b. Amadeo Roldán, Rítmica No. 5, mm. 14-18, Bongo glissando (first
staff of second system). .....................................................................................................40
EXAMPLE 1.10. Henry Cowell, Ostinato Pianissimo, mm. 14-17. Accents creating
Brazilian clave...................................................................................................................45
EXAMPLE 1.11. William Russell, Fugue, mm. 1-8. Subject...........................................48
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EXAMPLE 1.12. William Russell, Fugue, mm. 9-16. Answer in xylophone and
countersubject in snare drum with accented rhythm..........................................................49
EXAMPLE 1.13a. José Ardévol, Estudio, mm. 1-6. ........................................................54
EXAMPLE 1.13b. José Ardévol, Estudio, m. 5, second system. Accelerated time values
as in Russell’s Fugue (shown in Example 1.11 above). ...................................................54
EXAMPLE 1.14a. José Ardévol, Estudio. Actual notation of rhythmic subject, mm. 1-6.
............................................................................................................................................57
EXAMPLE 1.14b. José Ardévol, Estudio. Rhythmic subject in 4/4 (my rewrite) ...........57
EXAMPLE 1.15. José Ardévol. Estudio, mm. 4-5. Cinquillo. .........................................57
EXAMPLE 1.16a. Edgard Varèse, Ionisation, mm. 8-12. ...............................................58
EXAMPLE 1.16b. William Russell, Fugue, mm. 1-8. .....................................................58
EXAMPLE 1.16c. José Ardévol, Estudio . . . fuga, mm. 1-6. ..........................................58
EXAMPLE 3.1. Adolph Weiss, American Life, mm. 1-3. ................................................98
EXAMPLE 3.2. Carlos Chávez, Energía, mm. 35-36. (Melville, NY: Belwin Mills,
1968), 12. ........................................................................................................................102
EXAMPLE 3.3. Alejandro García Caturla, Bembé: An Afro-Cuban Movement, mm. 83-
87 (Paris: Senart, 1930), 9. ..............................................................................................104
EXAMPLE 3.4. Wallingford Riegger, Three Canons for Woodwinds, mm. 21-25. (San
Francisco, CA: New Music, 1932), 4. ............................................................................106
EXAMPLE 3.5. Henry Cowell, Two Appositions, first movement, mm. 1-7. ...............111
EXAMPLE 4.1a. Alejandro García Caturla, “Bito Manue,” mm. 21-24. ......................145
EXAMPLE 4.1b. Alejandro García Caturla, “Bito Manue,” mm. 59-62. ......................145
EXAMPLE 4.1c. Alejandro García Caturla, “Bito Manue,” mm. 65-68........................145
EXAMPLE 4.2. Alejandro García Caturla, “Bito Manue,” mm. 1-8..............................146
EXAMPLE 4.3. Amadeo Roldán, “Sigue” (Motivos de son), mm. 1-16........................148
EXAMPLE 4.4. Amadeo Roldán, “Negro Bembón” (Motivos de son), mm. 1-6...........148
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EXAMPLE 4.5. Amadeo Roldán, “Sigue,” mm. 17-21. ................................................149
EXAMPLE 4.6. Amadeo Roldán, “Sigue,” mm. 4-13. ..................................................150
EXAMPLE 4.7a. Rhythm for the tresillo........................................................................150
EXAMPLE 4.7b. Rhythm for the cinquillo ....................................................................150
EXAMPLE 4.7c. Rhythm for the lundu......................................................................... 150
EXAMPLE 4.8. Amadeo Roldán, “Sigue,” mm. 1-6. Tresillo and its elaborations in the
accompaniment. ..............................................................................................................151
EXAMPLE 4.9. Amadeo Roldán, “Sigue,” mm. 28-31. “Drumming” rhythms.............151
EXAMPLE 4.10. Silvestre Revueltas, “Canto de una muchacha negra,” mm. 12-13.
Inverted “stride” based on gesture similar to James P. Johnson’s in “I’m Gonna Sit Right
Down and Write Myself a Letter,” 1930. .......................................................................155
EXAMPLE 4.11. Silvestre Revueltas, “Canto de una muchacha negra,” mm. 16-17.
“Plodding” chords, as in Leroy Carr’s “How Long, How Long Blues,” 1928................156
EXAMPLE 4.12. Silvestre Revueltas, “Canto de una muchacha negra,” mm. 16-17.
Improvisatory vocal line with reciting tone (C) and surrounding thirds.........................156
EXAMPLE 4.13. Silvestre Revueltas, “Canto de una muchacha negra,” m. 1. Piano’s
sighing gesture. ...............................................................................................................156
EXAMPLE 4.14. Carlos Chávez, “North Carolina Blues,” mm. 18-27. ........................165
EXAMPLE 4.15. Carlos Chávez, “North Carolina Blues,” mm. 43-48..........................166
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ABSTRACT
This dissertation probes the relationship between Pan-Americanism and musical
production in its cultural and historic context through close analysis of the music, concert
programming, and publications of the Pan-American Association of Composers. The
PAAC presented concerts of new music from the Americas between 1928 and 1934 in
New York City, Havana, and Europe. Purposeful diversity, or “collective difference,”
was the PAAC’s strategy for approaching European audiences by collaborative force.
The principle of collective difference describes both the stylistic diversity present on
PAAC concerts and also the ultimate goal of that diversity, which was to reverse the flow
of musical culture from west to east. Through social and cultural research, style analysis,
and reception history, I demonstrate collective difference in the combinations of
primitivist, nationalist, modernist, and neo-classical tendencies present in the PAAC
repertory. In doing so, I reevaluate accepted nationalist discourses in the Americas from a
transnational perspective and demonstrate how Pan-American musical creation arose
organically from interactions between Mexican, Cuban, and U.S. composers.
In the final chapter I explain literary and musical connections between African
Americans and Latin Americans during the late 1930s. Here I examine four Latin
American art songs that participated in the international movement of negritude, or
blackness, and incorporated elements of jazz and blues. This chapter provides a necessary
counterpoint to the PAAC’s activities by emphasizing connections between African
American and Latin American cultures, which circumvented the Anglo-American
interpretation of Pan-Americanism that the PAAC espoused.
xii

INTRODUCTION
Friendly cultural and musical relations flourished between the United States and
much of Latin America between 1925 and 1945, a period in which the American
hemisphere aligned to geopolitically distinguish itself from Europe. This project
investigates Pan-American musical activity during this period, focusing on musical
exchange between U.S. and Latin American composers and musicians. Previous research
has acknowledged the existence of Pan-Americanism in music at this time, but has not
examined its raison d’être. To make sense of how the postcolonial nations of the western
hemisphere created their own musical identities, musicologists have often focused
sharply on independent nationalist projects in the region, for example, the development
by certain U.S. composers of a distinctly “American” 1 sound or the musical wing of the
Mexican Aztec Renaissance. In addition to national projects, however, a number of
seminal composers in the Americas were also interested in creating music that
transcended national boundaries in order to define a multifaceted music of the western
hemisphere.
This dissertation probes the relationship between Pan-Americanism and musical
production in its cultural and historic context through close analysis of the music, concert
programming, and publications of the Pan-American Association of Composers. I argue
that these composers expressed a desire for a multivalent but unified intercontinental
musical aesthetic. They transplanted and remodeled traits that marked French and Eastern
European modernism, such as primitivism, the use of musical folk material, and a
growing interest in novel musical resources. In both the United States and Latin America,
the proliferation of these traits opened possibilities for expressing local flavor with a
newly modernist conception of its value.
1 Throughout the dissertation, I use the term “American” in its broader sense to refer to the entire American
hemisphere. In the above context, however, I mean “U.S. American.”
1

This project grew out of my observations about certain stylistic similarities
between Carlos Chávez’s Sinfonía India (1935-6) and Aaron Copland’s Billy the Kid
(1938). Both composers responded to modern life and urbanization by attempting to
revive, recreate, or imagine dying or mythic cultures by using folk melodies. The
orchestration and development of the melodies in both pieces sound strikingly similar,
and many musicologists have used both composers’ respective influence from French and
Eastern European modernism to explain the correspondences in their musical styles. In
truth, if Chávez or Copland absorbed certain French or Russian models, it was in both
cases a conscious action to free their art from a widely acknowledged Teutonic musical
hegemony. Both composers, as well as many others on the American continent, saw the
1920s and 1930s as an opportunity to break free from European, particularly German,
leadership. Thus, they shared conceptions of their artistic worth with some of their
French and Eastern European counterparts, and also certain values: modern objectivity,
conciseness, and fresh authenticity. In an essay about Chávez, Copland called for artistic
autonomy shared among non-hegemonic musical cultures of the Western world and
perhaps revealed a hint of envy: “We in the United States who have long desired musical
autonomy can best appreciate the full measure of [Chávez’s] achievement. We cannot . . .
borrow from a rich melodic source, or lose ourselves in an ancient civilization, but we
can be stimulated and instructed by his example. His work presents itself as one of the
first signs of a new world with its own new music.” 2 With these words Copland
acknowledged a burgeoning musical community that embraced both North and South.
Only through their collective difference could composers of the Americas distance
themselves from European art.
At the heart of Pan-American concert activity was the Pan-American Association
of Composers (PAAC). This organization has not yet received the scholarly attention it
deserves. Truly international in both spirit and practice, it included composers from
Cuba, Mexico, and the United States. By conscientiously presenting concerts of new
music from the Americas between 1928 and 1934 the PAAC fulfilled its stated purpose,
which was to “promote wider mutual appreciation of the music of the different republics
2 Aaron Copland, “Chávez, Mexican Composer,” In American Composers on American Music edited by
Henry Cowell (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1933; reprint New York: F. Ungar, 1962) 323.
2

of America, and [to] stimulate composers to make still greater effort toward creating a
distinctive music of the Western Hemisphere.” In a broad sense, I examine why, in light
of the aggressive military and economic interventionist policies of the United States
before and after this brief period, individuals behind cultural forces in the Western
hemisphere found it in their best interest to create alliances. The cultivation of empathy
across cultural, political and ideological boundaries represented by the PAAC and similar
organizations was at the time an urgent necessity that also profoundly resonates in the
current political climate of increasingly divisive factions and blurring borders. Through
this project I seek to illuminate the various reasons the PAAC considered inter-American
musical collaboration important and expedient and how it sought to achieve such a goal.
Purposeful diversity, or “collective difference,” was a strategy for approaching European
audiences by collaborative force. As used in the context of the PAAC, the principle of
collective difference describes both the stylistic diversity present on PAAC concerts and
also the ultimate goal of that diversity, which was to reverse the flow of musical culture
from west to east.
The Pan-American Project, 1826-1945
The PAAC carried in its name a political buzzword of the day, “Pan-American,”
aligning itself with a political ideology. James Monroe proclaimed on December 2, 1823
that the United States would not tolerate European interference in the affairs of American
republics, viewing such action as hostile. Theodore Roosevelt created an amendment in
1904 that asserted the right of the U.S. to intervene to stabilize the economic affairs of
smaller nations that were unable to pay their international debt. The term “Pan-
American” both evokes solidarity and establishes difference between the American
republics. Its first recorded use dates to 1826, when the celebrated South American
revolutionary and statesman Simón Bolívar (1783-1830) called the first Pan-American
Conference to be held in Panama. 3 The U.S. government later appropriated the term
“Pan-American” in the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine in 1904. Several U.S.
3 Though the United States did not attend this meeting, it hosted and attended later Pan-American
Conferences, the first one being held in Washington, D.C. in 1889. The conferences eventually led to the
formation of the Pan American Union and, more recently, the Organization of American States (OAS).
3

presidents used the corollary to justify the invasion of Cuba (1906-10), Nicaragua (1909-
11, 1912-25, and 1926-33), Haiti (1915-34) and the Dominican Republic (1916-24). In
1928 Calvin Coolidge’s undersecretary of state J. Reuben Clark reversed the Roosevelt
Corollary in the Clark Memorandum, stating that the Monroe Doctrine did not entitle the
United States to intervene in Latin American affairs unless a European power directly
threatened the Americas. 4 The Clark Memorandum thus paved the way for later New
Deal policies.
In the decade that followed, a new political landscape was wrought in the United
States as a result of the widespread economic depression. The U.S. economy was
flattened, making it more closely aligned with those of many Latin American countries.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s foreign policy adapted to this change in economic
topography. In striking contrast to Theodore Roosevelt’s American Exceptionalism were
notions about Good Neighborliness from F.D.R.’s administration. These ideas were
spurred in part by a rising tide of fascism in Western Europe, a situation that dramatically
increased Latin America’s importance as a trading partner.
Politicians and intellectuals in Latin America during the period in question often
referred to two opposing political ideologies: Pan-Americanism and Pan-Latinism. 5 Pan-
American sentiment had run high in Mexico, Central and South America in the early days
of Latin American independence, as some authors advocated emulation of U.S.
democracy. Domingo F. Sarmiento (1811-1888), president of Argentina and an
aggressive social reformer, wrote in his Vida de Abrán Lincoln (1865), “The political
school for South America is in the United States, as the sharer of English liberties, as the
creator of a government absolutely free and strong, which in peace has built up the most
prosperous nation of the earth and in war has displayed resources, has gathered armies . .
. that open a new page in the history of modern war.” 6 Simón Bolívar, often known for
his committed political opposition to the U.S., nevertheless wrote, “The example of the
4 The PAAC was founded in the same year.
5 Proponents of Pan-Latinism foresaw the imperialist leanings of the U.S. government and advocated a
unification of Latin American republics to maintain a balance of power in the region.
6 As quoted in Samuel Guy Inman, Problems in Pan Americanism (London: George Allen & Unwin,
1926): 324.
4

United States, because of its wonderful prosperity, was too prominent not to be emulated.
Who can resist the victorious attraction of a full and absolute enjoyment of sovereignty,
independence and liberty?” 7
Though many in Latin America were clearly impressed with the United States
asserting its power, negative feeling between the U.S. and its Spanish- and Portuguese-
speaking neighbors also intensified in the second half of the nineteenth century,
beginning with the U.S.-Mexican War (1846-48). As the first war to be fought by the
U.S. on foreign soil, this was also the first major political event that drew Latin America
into the national consciousness of the United States. Technological innovations made
print media production easier and cheaper, and newspapers like the New York Sun
dropped their prices to one cent in 1833. Suddenly, their publications were available to
everyone. The U.S.-Mexican War was thus the first war to receive mass media coverage.
For many U.S. Americans the conflict became a window to customs and attitudes largely
alien to their own, and they believed their country would never be the same. They were
correct; this war more than any other set the United States on its trajectory to prosperity
and established it as a major power in the western hemisphere. Control over the
California gold mines, as well as over water resources and, therefore, agricultural
potential in the west, is responsible for much of the subsequent wealth of the United
States. The redistribution of land between Mexico and the U.S. also opened trade routes
to Asia and gained the U.S. Santa Fe, which had in the previous century become a major
trade center. Although many U.S. citizens have forgotten the details and the lasting
consequences of this war, their Mexican neighbors have not.
While the U.S.-Mexican War had won the United States half a million square
miles of new territory, the Spanish-American War half a century later had an even larger
impact on the United States’s awareness of its Latin American neighbors, and vice versa.
The circumstances surrounding the beginning of the conflict are still debated. The
mysterious sinking of the USS Maine in February 1898 led William Randolph Hearst and
other journalists immediately to conclude that Spanish officials in Cuba were to blame,
though analysis of evidence decades later found that assumption unverifiable. The
resulting furor in the months following the explosion (as exemplified by the cry
7 Ibid, 324.
5

Remember the Maine, To Hell with Spain!) pressured President McKinley to ask
Congress on April 11 to send American forces to Cuba to demand Spanish withdrawal. A
peace treaty signed in August 1898 gave the United States control of the former Spanish
colonies of Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam. Called a “splendid little war” by
Secretary of State John Hay, the Spanish-American conflict trumpeted America’s entry
into world affairs and officially established the United States as an imperialist nation. Not
surprisingly, the Pan-Latin school of thought was strengthened by the U.S. war with
Spain in the decade that followed, and several prominent writers became very active in
promoting opposition to the United States. 8
From a U.S. perspective, however, the Spanish-American War has not yet been
fully considered as a site of cultural exchange with regard to the resulting era of political
Pan-Americanism. After demonstrating its new military might in 1898, the United States
proudly displayed its intentions to establish widespread inter-American trade in the Pan-
American Exposition held in Buffalo, New York, from May 1 through November 2,
1901. The official logo for the exposition, designed by artist Raphael Beck (1848-1957)
and used on stationery and commemorative coins, shows two women whose respective
garments overlay both North and South America. North America’s representative is
blonde and fair-skinned; she extends her hand down to Ms. South America, who is
noticeably darker in complexion. In some renderings, as in Figure I.1 below, a caption
reads, “To Unite the Americas in Bonds of Prosperity and Peace.”
Though familiarity bred through trade agreements may have provided one catalyst
for Pan-American activities, anxiety about the future of U.S. culture began to reinforce
the country’s interest in Latin America. By 1930 many U.S. citizens began to view
Western ideals of progress as chimerical. They also witnessed their once vast western
frontier rapidly being plowed over by mechanized agricultural implements. The imminent
loss of Nature’s/God’s seemingly limitless bounty that had gratified generations of U.S.
Americans in response to European urbanity caused many in the Anglo-American
cultural elite to revalue native and Hispanic cultures and religions as alternatives to a
8 These include Manuel Ugarte, Rufino Blanco-Fombona, José Enrique Rodó, and José Martí, among
others. Pan-Latin opposition to the U.S. was summarized in a novel that enjoyed enormous success in Latin
America, Rodó’s Ariel (1900).
6

Figure I.1. Pan-American Exposition official seal by artist Raphael Beck.
modernity that was increasingly driven by materialism. Hundreds of artists and
intellectuals began pouring into the desert southwest of the United States. Taos, New
Mexico, and especially the home there of Mabel Dodge Luhan, became a favorite
destination for many city-worn artists. D. H. Lawrence, Georgia O’Keefe, Ansel Adams,
Martha Graham, Carl Jung, and Willa Cather, among many others, stayed at Luhan’s
estate.
Many of the novels, paintings and photographs created there show Anglo-
Americans’ softening attitudes toward the Spanish-speaking and Native American
inhabitants of the southwest. Willa Cather’s Pulitzer Prize-winning historical novel Death
Comes for the Archbishop (1927), which presents a Catholic Bishop and priest attempting
to establish a diocese in New Mexican territory, portrays Hopi, Navajo, and Mexicans
sympathetically. In certain moments Cather’s French clergymen seem to realize the
futility of imposing an alien religion on millennia-old belief systems, as evident in the
Bishop’s reaction to his Indian guide: “The Bishop seldom questioned Jacinto about his
thoughts or beliefs. He didn’t think it polite, and he believed it to be useless. There was
no way in which he could transfer his own memories of European civilization into the
Indian mind, and he was quite willing to believe that behind Jacinto there was a long
tradition, a story of experience, which no language could translate to him.” 9
9 Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop. (New York: Vintage Books, 1927. Reprint: Vintage
Classics Edition, 1990): 91.
7

Several U.S.-based composers’ organizations preceded and set the groundwork
for the Pan-American Association. The first association dedicated to presenting American
works was the American Music Guild (1921-24). Its founders were Marion Bauer,
Frederick Jacobi, Emerson Whithorne, Louis Gruenberg, and Albert Stoessel. While
among the first Americans to be labeled modernist, their lush textures and French
impressionist tonal style represented a conservative brand of modernism. Another
organization active during those years was Pro Musica, founded in 1920 by E. Robert
Schmitz. Known as the Franco-American Music Society until 1923, its scope was more
international, and its purpose was to promote musical exchange between France and the
United States. Edgard Varèse and Carlos Salzedo formed the International Composers
Guild in 1921 to ensure performances of contemporary music. Concerts were restricted to
previously unheard works, which upset some Guild members who quit and founded the
League of Composers in 1923.
Another internationalizing force in modern music was the International Society of
Contemporary Music, founded in Salzburg in 1922 with the purpose of breaking down
national barriers and promoting contemporary music regardless of aesthetic trends or
nationality, race, religion or political views of the composer. In their constitution the
ISCM defined contemporary as “music of all European countries written within the last
fifteen years,” which, of course, technically excluded Americans. Members of the I.C.G.
requested the constitution be amended. It was, and an international organization with
headquarters in London was created in 1923. The New York chapter was established in
1928, the same year that a Cuban chapter was founded in Havana. The League of
Composers, which merged with the ISCM in 1954, was founded to promote the
composition and performance of contemporary music. The League commissioned works
by American and European composers, sponsored American premieres of notable
European works such as Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du printemps. Its quarterly, Modern
Music, ran from 1924-46.
The first west-coast organization for contemporary music was Henry Cowell’s
New Music Society (1925-1958). Besides concerts, the society was responsible for the
publication of New Music Quarterly (1927-58), the only series of its day dedicated solely
to the publication of new scores including the New Music Orchestra Series (1932-9) and
8

the New Music Quarterly Recordings (1934-42). These ventures were funded almost
exclusively by Charles Ives. The society generally championed U.S. American
composers, but New Music ventures also presented Schoenberg, Webern, Latin American
and Russian composers. Between 1928 and 1931 Aaron Copland and Roger Sessions
organized a concert series they called the Copland-Sessions Concerts. Not intended as a
competitor with the League of Composers, to which both men belonged, this series was
dedicated to the younger generation of American composers. Its programs included four
works by Carlos Chávez but no other Latin Americans. Chávez, then living in New York,
thought it would be a good idea to form a group to showcase talent from all of the
Americas in the name of cultural exchange. Thus, the Pan-American Association of
Composers was established. This society is the focus of Chapters 2 and 3 of this
dissertation.
Archival source material for this dissertation comes primarily from the New York
Public Library of the Performing Arts and the Library of Congress. Travel has been made
possible through grants from the Curtis Mayes Fund and the Presser Foundation. As the
organizational backbone of the PAAC, Henry Cowell is of primary importance. His
papers are housed at the New York Public Library. The collected papers of Nicolas
Slonimsky, principal conductor of PAAC concerts, housed at the Library of Congress, are
also an essential resource, because they provide his perspective on presenting Pan-
Americanism to the world. Stylistic analysis of the music in Chapters 1, 3, and 4 provides
evidence toward untangling the different strands of Pan-Americanism: modernism,
indigenism and nationalism.
Another essential aspect of this project is a reception history of the landmark
PAAC concerts in Europe, which has not been attempted by previous research. A goal of
the utmost importance to members of the PAAC was to present themselves and their art
in a positive light to Europeans and to be taken seriously by them. They counted on their
collective difference to push the margins of their peripheral position in Western musical
culture.
Chapter 1, “Pan-Americanism in 1930s Percussion Ensemble Music,” examines
six percussion ensemble works composed between 1929 and 1935 and traces the intricate
stylistic and aesthetic connections between them, demonstrating the combinations of
9

primitivist, nationalist, modernist, and neo-classical tendencies usually treated as separate
in the musicological literature. In doing so, this discussion reevaluates accepted
nationalist discourses in the Americas from a transnational perspective and demonstrates
how Pan-American musical creation arose organically from interactions between
Mexican, Cuban, and U.S. composers. Chapter 2, “Organizing the Hemisphere: The Pan-
American Association of Composers,” examines the early organizing efforts of the
association and its concerts in New York and Cuba between 1931 and 1934. Here I
introduce the society’s organizing principle of collective difference and assess its ability
to impact the modern music scene in New York City and Havana. Chapter 3, “Collective
Difference: The Pan-American Association Abroad,” provides a chronology and
reception history of the society’s European concerts. Chapter 4, “Esta boca es la mía:
Jazz, Blues, and Pan-Americanism during the Depression and the Popular Front,”
explains connections between African Americans and Latin Americans that developed
during the late 1930s and examines four Latin American art songs that participate in the
international movement of negritude, or blackness, and incorporate elements of jazz and
blues. Two anti-lynching songs by Carlos Chávez and Silvestre Revueltas show the
extent to which the popular front of the late 1930s, with its wave of socialist activity,
strengthened bonds between those in the western hemisphere who identified themselves
(or each other) as members of a common Pan-American proletariat. Ultimately, this final
chapter provides a necessary counterpoint to the PAAC’s activities by emphasizing
connections between African American and Latin American cultures, circumventing the
Anglo-American interpretation of Pan-Americanism that the PAAC espoused. The
Epilogue that concludes this study briefly discusses other developments of Inter-
American musical cooperation, including the publication of the Boletín Latino-
Americano de Música in Uruguay by Francisco Curt Lange and the activities of the
Music Division of the Pan-American Union with Charles Seeger as its director.
10

CHAPTER 1
1930s PAN-AMERICAN PERCUSSION ENSEMBLE MUSIC
“Nuts to Europe!” was the rallying cry issued by a group of modern composers
from the Americas in the decade leading up to the Second World War. 1 Though these
Americans had been inspired by the work of formidable European modernists such as
Igor Stravinsky, Béla Bartók, Darius Milhaud, and Manuel de Falla, they sought
recognition of their own in the international modern music scene through a process
Steven Schick has described as the “reexpression of inherited culture by means of new
language.” 2 To accomplish such a goal, the composers examined in this chapter explored
unorthodox or folk instruments, created new combinations of timbres, and developed
fresh rhythmic devices. Works belonging to one genre in particular can be understood as
an upwelling of Pan-American musical creation: music written for an ensemble
composed only of percussion instruments. The extant percussion ensemble works of the
1930s provide ample evidence of an era of playful technical innovations and self-
conscious explorations of rhythm and timbre. They also embody the collective difference
that guided the programming on concerts of the Pan-American Association of
Composers. In the percussion ensemble repertory one can find qualities of ancient and
modern, quantifiable and mystical, cosmopolitan and parochial, programmatic and
abstract. The following discussion reevaluates accepted nationalist discourses in the
Americas from a transnational perspective. This revaluation de-emphasizes the
importance of certain “-isms” associated with modern music (especially ultramodernism,
1 A review of conductor Nicolas Slonimsky’s concert at the Hollywood Bowl in 1933 appears in a
magazine issue entitled “Nuts! to Europe: Swell Stuff by Rodriguez, Lord and Vanderbilt,” Rob Wagner’s
Script Weekly (Beverly Hills, CA) July 22, 1933 9/231. Nicolas Slonimsky Papers, Library of Congress.
2 Steven Schick, The Percussionist’s Art: Same Bed, Different Dreams. (Rochester, NY: University of
Rochester Press, 2006), 35.
11

neo-classicism, and neo-primitivism) by demonstrating each -ism’s similar goals in the
context of Pan-American percussion ensemble music.
Below is a partial list of percussion works composed between 1929 and 1942.
Note that this list includes American composers from the United States, Mexico, and
Cuba, as well as two naturalized U.S. citizens: Edgard Varèse and Johanna Beyer.
Edgard Varèse, Ionisation (1929-31)
Amadeo Roldán, Rítmicas V and VI (1930)
William Russell, Fugue for eight percussion instruments (1931)
José Pomar, Preludio y Fuga para instrumentos de percusion (1932)
José Ardévol, Estudio en forma de preludio y fuga (1933)
John J. Becker, The Abongo: A Primitive Dance (1933)
Johanna Beyer, Percussion Suite in Three Movements (1933)
William Russell, Ogou Badagri: A Voodoo Ballet (1933)
William Russell, Three Dance Movements (1933)
Henry Cowell, Ostinato Pianissimo (1934)
William Russell, Studies on Cuban Rhythms: Rumba, Habanera, Son (1935)
Johanna Beyer, IV (1935)
William Russell, March Suite (1936)
William Russell, Made in America (1937)
Johanna Beyer, March for 30 Percussion Instruments (1939)
Johanna Beyer, Waltz for Percussion (1939)
Lou Harrison, Fugue for Percussion Instruments (1941)
Carlos Chávez, Toccata (1942)
Figure 1.1. Some percussion ensemble works composed between 1929 and 1942.
As discussed in the Introduction, the concerts of the Pan-American Association of
Composers presented a uniform pose based upon a strategy of unity in diversity. The
1928 manifesto, however, stated that the organization’s ultimate aim was to create a
“distinctive music of the Western Hemisphere.” 3 This goal would, presumably, require
some degree of similarity among the works presented. Percussion ensemble music
figured prominently in the creation of a Pan-American style. Six of the ten composers in
Figure 1 had works performed on PAAC concerts. Six of the eighteen works in the same
list were either performed on PAAC concerts or published in Henry Cowell’s New Music
Quarterly. Cowell noted that never before 1932 had he been offered any work for
3 The manifesto is mentioned in the Introduction and reprinted in its entirety in Chapter 2.
12

publication composed for percussion instruments alone. In the 1932-33 season he
received fifteen such works. 4 A few of these works had been completed as early as 1930.
Noticing a trend, in October 1931 Cowell embarked on a three-month trip to Berlin to
study world musics at the Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv. 5 His goal was to determine
universal principles among world musics. While there, Cowell found sufficient
confirmation of what he already believed: that “most [folk music] is sung to the
accompaniment of percussion” and contains “rapid rhythmical changes, syncopations,
polyrhythms and cross-rhythms.” 6 He used this information to explain the new
compositional tendency in the Americas toward a music written for percussion
ensembles.
Primitivist compositional techniques sprang from the seeds of radical modernist
experiments. Many Pan-American moderns drew from sources they defined as
“primitive,” such as those with non-Western tonal systems or those based primarily on
rhythm, to shape their conception of the new. These materials served as a stimulating
force that helped certain composers formulate their own aims, attributing to those
materials the modern qualities they themselves sought to attain. Ultimately, the use of
primitive materials to invoke tangible remnants of “pre-history” (especially as such
remnants were recognized among living populations) made both modernity and
modernization more visible. After all, primitive materials always emerged as by-products
of Western exploration and conquest. Thus, primitivist artistic representations soon
became “highly charged signal[s] of otherness . . . that came to signify modernity.” 7
According to Cowell, referring to the neo-classical works of Stravinsky, Copland, and
others, the purpose of neo-primitivism was to counter the “supercilious formalism of a
return to the particular style of some past century.” 8 Percussion music, then, contained
4 Henry Cowell, “Towards Neo-Primitivism.” Modern Music 10/3 (1932-33), 153.
5 This trip was financed by a grant from the Guggenheim Foundation.
6 Cowell, “Towards Neo-Primitivism,” 152.
7 Elazar Barkan and Ronald Bush, Prehistories of the Future: The Primitivist Project and the Culture of
Modernism. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995): 3.
8 Ibid., 150.
13

enough novelty to be modern (especially in rhythm, form, and timbre) and to offer a
break from neo-classical European modernism, since it was ostensibly “unhampered by
ecclesiastical rules.” 9
Several different approaches to the percussion ensemble are evident in the titles in
Figure 1. Certain works, such as John J. Becker’s The Abongo: A Primitive Dance,
clearly invoke a neo-primitivist aesthetic. These works incorporate Afro-Cuban, Haitian,
and African-American rhythms. In doing so, they locate themselves in the Western
Hemisphere while indicating the composer’s desire to participate in a cosmopolitan
modernism based in neo-primitivist materials. The first part of this chapter examines this
culture-specific neo-primitivism as found in percussion ensemble works.
Building on the neo-primitivist strain, another style of percussion ensemble music
evident in the pieces listed above involves a different approach to folk materials. Works
such as Varèse’s Ionisation and Cowell’s Ostinato Pianissimo contain “primitive”
characteristics such as sliding pitch, polyrhythms, and percussion but de-familiarize these
elements by placing them within an ultramodern idiom. These pieces achieve a more
generic, universalized exotic sound that does not locate itself in a specific place or time.
Still others among the titles in Figure 1 appear suspiciously European-derived in
form or style: Prelude, Fugue, Toccata, Waltz, Suite, and March. In the ultimate
expression of the sentiment “Nuts to Europe!” some Americans turned these common-
practice forms or styles on their heads. Even the most staid of European forms, the fugue,
received such treatment. In a percussion ensemble fugue, rhythmic subjects replace
melodic ones and combinations of timbres usurp the role of harmony. Another way of
contextualizing this practice is to say that these composers mitigated the jarring effect of
radically new materials with an established form that an audience might identify, such as
a fugue. The latter part of this chapter examines two such percussion ensemble fugues.
Ultramodernism, Neo-Primitivism, and New Uses of Percussion in Europe
Percussion instruments, with their enormous variety of materials and sound
production methods, seemed to many modern composers a vast uncharted territory of
new timbral and rhythmic possibilities. As such, these possibilities fell into the category
9 Ibid., 153.
14

of scientific and technological advancement that marked much early modern art.
Composers were also, however, aware of the archaic origins of these instruments. Thus,
percussion music participated in an underlying tension in art that was felt intensely in the
early twentieth century: between the specificity and rationalization of art on the one hand
and its universality and essential immediacy on the other. Because of this underlying
tension, modernism (defined as progressive, forward-looking, and futuristic) and neo-
primitivism (delving into an ancient past in a search for cultural renewal) have often
seemed to be contradictory modernist projects. Consequently, these two strains of
modernism have been treated separately in much of the criticism of the period as well as
in the musicological literature. This is especially true regarding the criticism of Latin
American composers, who, if they were considered at all, were often viewed as either
modernists or primitivists/nationalists.
However groundbreaking the percussion ensemble works of the early 1930s
seemed, they were not without precedent. Several important developments in the use of
percussion led to its embrace by Pan-American composers. Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du
printemps (1913) evoked prehistoric ritual by transforming the orchestra into an
impetuous, largely percussive organism. With this work Stravinsky departed sharply from
the musical styles of the Russian Five while extending their quest for a compositional
identity that functioned both on national and international levels. Audiences throughout
the Americas had to wait close to a decade after the premiere of Stravinsky’s Rite of
Spring to hear the work in its orchestral form. Many musicians and composers, however,
knew the piece through the orchestral score and the two-piano reduction. 10 The U.S.
première of the Rite was given by Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra on
March 3, 1922. The first choreographed version in the United States was performed by
Martha Graham, Stokowski, and the Philadelphia Orchestra in New York’s Metropolitan
Opera House in April 1930 under the auspices of the League of Composers. The
implications of Stravinsky’s elevation of timbre and rhythm in the Rite caused
tremendous repercussions throughout the Americas. Alejo Carpentier noted that in
Havana during the 1920s, “those who already knew the score of The Rite of Spring—the
10 Henry Cowell, Carl Ruggles, and others recalled performing this arrangement. Carol Oja, Making Music
Modern: New York in the 1920s. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 46.
15

great revolutionary banner of the day—began to notice that in Regla, on the other side of
the bay, there were rhythms just as complex and interesting as those created by
Stravinsky to evoke the primitive rituals of pagan Russia.” 11 Stravinsky composed the
Rite in a Europe on the brink of war. The final, explosive danse sacrale was widely heard
by contemporaries as an anti-nationalist commentary on human sacrifice in the name of
one’s tribe. 12
Simultaneously, however, in spite of the work’s aural association with a specific
time and place, elements of its musical style could be easily extrapolated and its
instrumentation adapted to express other times and places—other tribes or nations.
Stravinsky was widely hailed as the father of modernism as a generation of composers
attempted to transpose his innovations in harmony, texture, form, and instrumentation to
their own locales. In other words, the location of the Rite in an ancient time and place
(pagan Russia) reinforced the work’s universality rather than precluding it. The Rite gave
composers everywhere the impetus to mine the cultural materials of their ancient pasts to
create their own versions of international modernism. If they did not have an ancient past,
as in the relatively young United States, they simply borrowed or imagined musical
elements of Native Americans, descendents of imported Africans, or their Latin
American neighbors.
Amerindian Themes in American Music
Native American culture had been an object of study for European and American
artists, writers, and composers since the first encounters between explorers of the
American continent and Native Americans. One of the first Americans to treat
suggestions of Amerindian melodies in concert music was Anthony Philip Heinrich
(1781-1861). The orchestral works of this German-Bohemian born composer were highly
programmatic. His works that utilized Native American lore were often loosely based on
historical meetings between Indians and whites or portraits of Indian leaders. Heinrich’s
first such work was Pushmataha, a Venerable Chief of a Western Tribe of Indians (1831).
11 Alejo Carpentier, Music in Cuba (268-9).
12 In 1915, Jean Cocteau wrote that the work seemed to him a “prelude to war.” Quoted in Glenn Watkins,
Proof through the Night: Music and the Great War (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 122.
16

In his Tecumseh, or the Battle of the Thames (1846), Heinrich introduced cymbals,
triangles, and other percussion, applying a Janissary sound to the “feats of a savage.” 13
At the turn of the twentieth century an entire generation of composers embraced
Native American lore. Many of them followed the lead of Louis Moreau Gottschalk
(1829-1869), Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904), and Edward MacDowell (1860-1908) in
signifying Native Americans through pentatonic melodies and pounding drums. Henry F.
Gilbert (1868-1928) was a Massachusetts-born composer and student of MacDowell.
Gilbert’s works, such as The Intimate Story of Indian Tribal Life and Indian Sketches
(both composed in 1911), incorporated such devices.
Other composers, however, turned to ethnographic research to portray more
accurately Native Americans in music. During the summers of 1902 and 1903 Arthur
Nevin (1871-1943) visited the Blackfoot Indians of Montana and transcribed their
melodies. At the invitation of Theodore Roosevelt, Nevin presented his resulting opera,
Poia (1907), in the form of an illustrated lecture at the White House. Though it was never
staged in the United States, Poia garnered much interest in Western Europe, which had
had an ongoing fascination with exotic Native American cultures since the eighteenth
century. The stage production of Poia premiered at the Royal Opera in Berlin on April
23, 1910. Arthur Farwell (1872-1952) was another avid collector and arranger of
Amerindian melodies and a dedicated publisher of American music. Farwell’s
arrangements incorporated chromaticism and whole-tone scales, as in his Impressions of
the Wa-Wan Ceremony of the Omahas, op. 21 (1905). Charles Wakefield Cadman (1881-
1946) became interested in the music of American Indians after reading articles by
ethnologist Alice C. Fletcher and Francis La Flesche, son of a chief of the Omaha.
Cadman recorded tribal songs on the Omaha and Winnebago Reservations, and the
resulting material gave him impetus to initiate a series of lecture performances beginning
in 1909. In 1918 the Metropolitan Opera produced Cadman’s Shanewis. His solo piano
music, especially his Four American Indian Songs, op. 45, and his song cycles on Indian
themes, including From Wigwam and Teepee (1914) were widely disseminated.
13 Michael V. Pisani, Imagining Native America in Music, (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University
Press, 2005), 108.
17

All these composers idealized Amerindian themes by setting them to Romantic or
Impressionistic harmonies and forms. After the First World War, however, an emerging
generation of modern composers expanded their interest in Native American musical
elements. Futurism and widespread fascination with mechanization and technology in the
1920s produced composers who were eager to experiment with new timbres and new
instruments. Edgard Varèse, for example, used Native American percussion instruments
such as rasps, rattles, and tom-toms in the early 1920s. His Hyperprism (1922-23) seems
to have been the first work to incorporate an Amerindian drum and rattles in an
ultramodern setting. Henry Cowell’s Adagio for Cello and Thunderstick (1924) and
Ensemble for String Quartet and Thunderstick (1924) both use the instrument known
more commonly as the bullroarer. 14
After Le Sacre du printemps other compositions soon followed that explored a
new timbral sensibility, especially works for expanded percussion sections. Stravinsky’s
Les Noces, completed in 1921, is a notable example. With its instrumentation of solo
voices, four pianos used mainly percussively, and an ensemble of seventeen percussion
instruments, the work seemed a logical next step in the development of a percussive
genre. Around the same time, Darius Milhaud combined percussive possibilities with
American themes. 15 His ballet L’Homme et son désir, Op. 48 (1918) contained sections of
music written exclusively for percussion, which were inspired by his trip to the Brazilian
rainforest. Similarly, his 1927 opera Christophe Colomb paid homage to the European
discoverer of the American continent by illustrating stories from his life. Premiered at the
Berlin Staatsoper in 1930, this work originally included a rhythmically complex
percussion part to accompany the narrator. Between 1929 and 1930 Milhaud composed
the first concerto for percussion and orchestra. He also participated in the movement of
“negritude” (blackness) with La Création du monde (1922-23), a ballet employing jazz
idioms that depicts the creation of the world based on African folk mythology. In a more
futuristic vein, George Antheil’s Ballet mécanique (1924-25), a work scored for a large
14 The bullroarer is an oval-shaped wooden instrument with a slight twist in its shape. It is attached to and
spun through the air “lasso-style” by a piece of rope, which produces a humming sound. The bullroarer is
not unique to Native American populations. It is traditionally used to create sound that travels long
distances.
15 Milhaud visited Brazil in 1917 and toured the U.S.A. in 1922 and 1927.
18

percussion ensemble, eight pianos and two airplane propellers, captured the ultramodern
spirit of mechanization. 16
Percussion Music in the Americas
U.S. composers’ interest in ancient musical materials can be most readily
understood as an interest in exoticism. Elsewhere in the Americas, however, the use of
neo-primitivist musical materials can sometimes be considered constituents of broader
nationalist movements. As these materials emerged from modernization, composers
discovered timbral and rhythmic resources in their own native pasts. In Mexico, for
example, a well-documented series of nation-building projects followed the Mexican
Revolution of 1910-11. This nationalist movement initiated a tidal wave of government-
sponsored archaeological research on pre-Columbian cultures and artifacts. One result in
the area of music was Daniel Castañeda’s and Vicente Mendoza’s exhaustive work on
pre-Hispanic musical instruments, Instrumental precortesiano (Pre-Cortesian
Instruments, 1933). Dedicated specifically to percussion instruments, this 280-page
volume was published under the auspices of the Mexican National Museum of
Archaeology, History and Ethnography. It included hundreds of photographs, detailed
drawings, and explanations of the origins and evolution of percussion instruments in
Mexico such as the varied types of teponaztli, huéhuetl, and timbal, as well as their
accompanying rhythms. Figure 1.2 is a diagram from Instrumental precortesiano of a
teponaztli, or slit drum, showing its exact measurements and relief carvings.
Carlos Chávez (1899-1978) and his students at the National Conservatory of
Mexico in Mexico City benefited from the research presented in Instrumental
precortesiano. Between 1931 and 1934 Chávez held a series of composition seminars, the
purpose of which was to give young Mexican composers “a living comprehension of the
musical tradition of their own country.” 17 Seminarians included Instrumental co-author
16 In the 1920s mechanization was outré. By the early 1930s, however, it was considered largely outdated
as an elevated mode of expression, having been satirized and given mass-market appeal by media such as
the Charles Chaplin film Modern Times (1936).
17 Carlos Chávez, “Revolt in Mexico.” Modern Music 13/3 (1936), 39.
19

Mendoza, Daniel Ayala, Blas Galindo, and Silvestre Revueltas. Chávez was, therefore,
among the first to teach non-Western music in an academic setting.
Figure 1.2. Diagram of a teponaztli. Daniel Castañeda and Vicente T. Mendoza, Instrumental precortesiano
(Mexico City: Museo Nacional de Arqueologia, Historia y Etnografia, 1933; reprint Mexico City: UNAM,
1991), unnumbered insert.
One goal of these seminars was to explore ways to incorporate indigenous
instruments, mostly percussion, into Mexican orchestral music. In a 1936 article in
Modern Music Chávez explained that the seminars resulted in “the group of instruments
we call the Mexican Orchestra . . . a specially balanced ensemble of conventional
instruments with the addition of huéhuetls, teponaxtles, chirimias, and various kinds of
water-drums [and] rasps.” 18 At that time, however, although all of the seminarians
worked toward incorporating such percussion in their compositions, none of them
composed for an all-percussion ensemble. In fact, Chávez would not do so until 1942,
when he wrote Toccata for percussion at the behest of John Cage.
In Cuba during the 1920s the commercialization and internationalization of son
and rumba led some composers to experiment with the Afro-Caribbean rhythms present
18 Ibid.
20

in those popular dance genres. The international movement of negritude and the
appropriation of blackness by white Cuban society led to the adoption of this popular
music as an agent of nationalization. Composers such as Amadeo Roldán and Alejandro
García Caturla, however, adapted the instruments and rhythms associated with son and
commercial rumba to modernist frameworks, affirming their participation in international
modernism that had been established in Cuba by the grupo minorista. 19
In several South American countries composers experimented with native
materials in order to achieve modernist national musics. This chapter, however, is limited
to three American countries in which percussion ensemble works were composed in the
1930s: Cuba, Mexico, and the United States. Composers from these three countries had
more contact with each other during this decade than any of them had with composers in
South America (with the exception of Brazilian Heitor Villa-Lobos). That would change
dramatically in the following decade, when the Pan-American spectrum was broadened
as a result of increased geopolitical awareness caused by the Second World War. Some
Pan-American musical developments of the 1940s are briefly discussed in the Epilogue to
this dissertation.
As political and economic circumstances ushered in a new era of Pan-American
sentiment U.S. composers expanded their compositional purview to include Latin
American musics as well. Throughout the 1920s a vogue for Hispanic culture,
particularly Mexican and Cuban, provided fertile soil for the cultivation of Pan-American
exchanges. In some ways this vogue merely expanded the concept of the “frontier,”
which had long been a potent force in the history of American ideas. 20 As the western
frontier of the United States was settled and the north became increasingly industrial, a
new frontier emerged: the largely agricultural societies in Latin America, which provided
the U.S. with a new space for economic and artistic cultivation.
19 The grupo minorista (minority group) was comprised of artists, writers, and composers from Cuba’s
leftist intellectual vanguard who, building on the work of Cuban ethnologist Fernando Ortiz, recognized the
significant contribution of West African traditions to postcolonial Cuban culture. The group included Alejo
Carpentier, José A. Fernández de Castro, Jorge Mañach, and José Z. Tallet, among many others. Their
political and cultural manifesto appeared in Social in June 1927. They began a journal, the Revista de
Avance, the same year.
20 See, for example, J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer (1782, reprinted,
New York: Dover, 2005).
21

In music this cultivation often involved experimentation with Mexican,
Caribbean, or South American rhythms (such as the habanera or huapango) and
percussion instruments. As in early portrayals of Native American cultures, some of these
experiments were based on generic or invented Afro-Caribbean sounds. John J. Becker’s
Abongo: A Primitive Dance calls for nine drums of varying size, tin pans, small and large
barrels, timpani, cymbals, a large gong, and the hand clapping and voices of a dance
chorus, but it does not contain specific local rhythms or styles of drumming. William
Russell (1905-1992), a more ethnographically-minded musician and a student of Cowell,
tried to reproduce Haitian rhythms and drumming in his Ogou Badagri: A Voodoo Ballet
after a trip to the island in 1932. He attempted a similar experiment in 1935: a set of
studies on Cuban rhythms scored exclusively for Afro-Cuban percussion.
Russell is primarily known today as a tireless collector of jazz records, for making
the first recordings of a New Orleans brass band, and for having been the first curator of
the Hogan Jazz Archive at Tulane University in 1958. His contribution to the percussion
ensemble literature, however, is also substantial. Cowell and Cage both championed
Russell’s percussion works. These pieces, eight altogether, were performed on at least
fifteen concerts between 1933 and 1961, an enviable frequency considering that Russell
was disinclined to promote his own works.
Russell was born as Russell William Wagner in Canton, Missouri. To avoid
association with Richard Wagner when Cowell published his Fugue for Eight Percussion
Instruments in 1933, he changed his name to William Russell. 21 The new sounds of the
jazz band captivated Russell at an early age. When at ten years old he expressed an
interest in playing drums, his mother encouraged him to instead take up the violin, which
he did. He graduated from Culver-Stockton College in 1926 with a certificate in music
education. After spending a year teaching at a high school and a small college in
Yankton, South Dakota (at which he had the college orchestra perform Gershwin’s
Rhapsody in Blue), Russell moved to New York City to attend Columbia University
Teachers’ College. At the same time, he took violin lessons from Max Pilzer,
21 Unless otherwise indicated, biographical information on William Russell is taken from Southern
Quarterly 36/2 (Winter 1998), which is dedicated to the composer. The most pertinent article to the present
discussion is Don Gillespie’s “William Russell: American Percussion Composer” (35-55).
22

concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic, and became interested in various world
musics under Cowell’s tutelage.
Russell began collecting jazz records in 1929 while teaching part time at the
Staten Island Academy. Sifting through a few records that one of his students left behind
at the end of the year, one caught Russell’s eye: Jelly Roll Morton and His Red Hot
Peppers playing “Shoe Shiner’s Drag.” That record sparked an interest in jazz that
influenced the remainder of his career. He eventually amassed one of the country’s most
complete collections of jazz recordings by such musicians as Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll
Morton, Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, and King Oliver. 22
Soon Russell’s interest in jazz extended to African and Caribbean music, as well.
Biographer Don Gillespie reported that “around 1930, [Russell] heard a group of African
drummers in New York City” and he was captivated by the non-Western rhythms.
Russell embarked on a month-long trip to Haiti in August 1932 to hear “voodoo
drummers” perform native dances. He hiked into the country to a psychiatric asylum run
by an American voodoo enthusiast. Describing the experience in a 1991 interview with
Don Gillespie and Donal Young, Russell recalled, “[Dr. Reiser] put on sort of a fake
ceremony, not with the dancers, mainly with the music. . . . I was trying to learn the
rhythms so I could write them down.” 23 While still in Port-au-Prince, Russell began
composing his “voodoo ballet” Ogou Badagri, which he completed in New York in 1933.
The work was his largest for percussion ensemble, and it included a detailed scenario for
musicians and dancers. Despite Russell’s efforts to have the ballet produced (among
others, he offered it to Martha Graham and Leopold Stokowski), Ogou Badagri remained
unperformed for six decades.
In addition to Haitian drumming Russell encountered Cuban music while living in
New York City. The ease of travel between New York and Havana in the 1930s led to an
influx of Cuban citizens and culture into the United States. Russell recalled being
impressed by the infectious Afro-Caribbean rhythms of visiting Cuban musicians in
22 William Frederick Wagner, “A Brother Remembers William Russell,” Southern Quarterly 36/2 (Winter
1998): 19-26.
23 Don Gillespie and Donal Young. “Interview with William Russell.” Percussive Arts Society Research
Proceedings 1 (1991): 23-24. Quoted in Gillespie, 38.
23

Cowell’s world music class at the New School in 1934: “They used two guitars, but four
of them just played percussion: marimbula, cencerro, bongos, jawbone and all. It was
thrilling. The whole audience went wild about them. They weren’t even professional—
just happened to be in New York.” 24 The melding of U.S. and Afro-Cuban popular
musics in New York, leading to salsa and its related genres, has been well documented. 25
Bongos, cowbell, quijada, and other Cuban instruments left their mark on concert music,
as well. After hearing the Cuban musicians in Cowell’s seminar, Russell immediately
purchased a set of similar instruments in Harlem and began composing his Percussion
Studies in Cuban Rhythms. All three studies use only Afro-Caribbean percussion
instruments: güiro, cowbell, maracas, claves, quijada, bongos, and marimbula (a large
lamellophone in the form of a wooden box usually sat upon by the player). Each piece is
a study on an Afro-Caribbean genre and its characteristic rhythms. In no. 1, “Havanera,”
the habanera rhythm is the most prominent feature. It is also the simplest of the three
studies and represents Russell’s first attempt at experimentation with Afro-Cuban
rhythms and instruments. Each instrument enters the texture in succession, as shown in
Example 1.1.
24 Don Gillespie, “William Russell: American Percussion Composer” Southern Quarterly 36/2 (Winter
1998): 43.
25 See, for example, John Storm Roberts, The Latin Tinge: The Impact of Latin American Music on the
United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979).
24

Example 1.1. William Russell, Percussion Studies in Cuban Rhythms, Opening of No. 1 “Havanera,” mm.
1-15.
Study No. 2, “Rhumba,” maintains a 3-2 son clave throughout. Son is the Cuban
music and dance genre that developed in the province of Oriente at the end of the
nineteenth century. “Clave” is the name of both the instrument and fundamental rhythm
of Cuban music. Son clave is a two-measure rhythmic figure. One measure contains two
articulations (called the “2-side,” Example 1.2a), and the other measure contains three
articulations (the “3-side,” Example 1.2b). The two-measure figure may start on either
side of the clave and is named accordingly. Thus, playing the 2-side first results in a 2-3
clave while beginning on the 3-side yields a 3-2 clave. For the percussionists, other
instrumentalists, and singers in a group to sound concerted they must remain on the same
side of the clave; in other words, their accented notes must coincide. A typical amateur
mistake in Afro-Caribbean repertoire is to play on the wrong side of the clave. The
jumbled result of non-aligned accents is called cruzao (crossed) clave.
25

Example 1.2a. The “2-side” of a son clave in 4/4 Example 1.2b. The “3-side” of a son clave in 4/4
A crossed clave pervades Russell’s “Rhumba.” Instruments do not align on crucial
accents, creating a sense of rhythmic imbalance. This instability is especially pronounced
in the opening measures shown in Example 1.3. The marimbula opens the work with a
two-measure pattern. Maracas enter with their own two-measure pattern in m. 3. The
clave enters at m. 4 creating a crossed clave since it sounds one measure out of sync with
the marimbula and maracas. Even more curiously, the bongo enters at m. 5 so that it
should align with the two-measure patterns of the marimbula and maracas, but instead it
opens with one measure of roll before beginning its two-measure gesture. By m. 8 in the
figure below it has aligned with the crossed clave. The pattern of the güiro, which enters
in measure 31 and exhibits a cinquillo rhythm, similarly crosses the 3-2 clave.
Example 1.3. William Russell, Percussion Studies in Cuban Rhythms No. 2, “Rhumba,” mm. 1-10.
No. 3, entitled “Tiempo de son” (Tempo of a son), is the most complex of the three
pieces but is also replete with distracting cruzao sections. It is possible that Russell was
intentionally experimenting with these crossed rhythms; his application of Cowell’s
theories on rhythm is discussed later in the chapter.
If Russell’s Percussion Studies in Cuban Rhythms does not adhere to the rhythmic
guidelines of Afro-Cuban composition, it at least represents, along with his ballet Ogou
Badagri and John J. Becker’s Abongo, the enthusiasm for Afro-Caribbean rhythms and
26

instruments that contributed to the development of the percussion ensemble. Perhaps if
Russell had been able to consult Amadeo Roldán’s percussion Rítmicas (1930) he would
have had a better model for the use of Afro-Cuban musical elements. Unfortunately,
these pieces (the final two in a series of six Rítmicas) were not performed publicly until
1939.
Roldán (1900-1939) contributed an essay to Henry Cowell’s book American
Composers on American Music (1933) that demonstrated his willingness to take part in
the Pan-American modernist enterprise: “My aim is first of all to attain a production
thoroughly American . . . an art that we can call ours, continental, worthy of being
universally accepted not on account of its exotic qualities . . . [but] for its meaning as a
contribution of the New World to the universal art.” While recognizing the importance of
transforming folklore into a modernist expression, Roldán also likened the use of U.S.
jazz in concert music to Afro-Cuban music when he wrote, “the sound of a banjo must
not always bring jazz to our mind, nor should the rhythm of our güiro always recall a
rumba.” 26 Roldán’s contributions to Cuban musical modernism have been well
documented. 27 His participation in the Pan-American enterprise, however, has been less
recognized. As director of the West Indies section of the PAAC, Roldán planned his own
concerts of Pan-American music in Havana. His activities on behalf of the organization
are discussed in Chapter 2.
Critics and scholars have noted that the last two Rítmicas are studies on the Cuban
son and rumba, respectively, and, indeed, Roldán scored the last two of his six Rítmicas
for an ensemble entirely of Afro-Cuban percussion: four sets of claves, cowbell, maracas,
quijada, güiro, bongos, timbales, bombo, and marimbula (usually performed today with a
double bass pizzicato). Both pieces demonstrate Roldán’s mastery of the rhythms of
popular Afro-Cuban music and his willingness to fragment and reconstruct them. The
result was a national Cuban music that resonated far beyond the island republic.
26 Amadeo Roldán, “The Artistic Position of the American Composer,” in American Composers on
American Music: A Symposium, ed. Henry Cowell (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1933; reprint
New York: Frederick Ungar, 1962).
27 See Zoila Gomez, Amadeo Roldán (Havana: Editorial arte y literatura, 1977) and Maria Antonieta
Henríquez and José Piñero Díaz, Amadeo Roldán: Testimonios (Havana: Letras Cubanas, 2001).
27

At only 109 measures, Rítmica No. 5 is brief. Beginning in 2/4, it is marked
“tiempo de son” (in the tempo of a son), which does not mean that this work is limited to
the folk rhythms of the Cuban son, as were Russell’s Studies. Rather than an amateur’s
experiment with son rhythms and instruments, Rítmica No. 5 is a carefully constructed
play on the listener’s expectations of how Afro-Caribbean rhythms are used. Roldán
begins the work by deconstructing the 3-2 clave in the nine-measure introduction, which
breaks down the pattern into its two component parts. Measures 1-6 present only the “3-
side” of the clave, also widely known as tresillo (Example 1.2b). Measures 7-9 contain a
modified version of the “2-side” of the clave. The purpose of Roldán’s subtle rhythmic
devices is to create startling syncopations and rhythmic dissonances between instruments,
which cause playfully disorienting sensations throughout the piece. This disorientation is
more carefully considered, however, than that of the distracting cruzao sections found in
Russell’s Cuban suite.
Roldán accomplishes rhythmic dissonance by establishing an ostinato rhythm,
only to shift it abruptly. The most striking of these situations is caused by a meter shift
from 2/4 to 3/8 for only one measure (16). This shift displaces the güiro’s cinquillo
pattern, which finishes across the barline of m. 17. The shift is, therefore, imperceptible
until it displaces the cinquillo of the maracas in m. 17. Instead of the clear downbeat
given in the score, the maracas’ rhythm sounds displaced, or what might be called a
carefully planned cruzao section (Example 1.4). By the omission of one eighth note the
“groove” of the ensemble is successfully thrown off, and syncopation abounds as
successive entrances of the 3-side and then the modified 2-side of the clave lead to a mini
climax in m. 29.
28

Example 1.4. Amadeo Roldán, Rítmica No. 5, mm. 14-21, top system only.
The following section presents another set of rhythmic dissonances to challenge the
listener (Example 1.6). In this passage, four pairs of Claves 28 enter one at a time and
intersect in an increasingly complex contrapuntal texture. Claves B enter after the 3-side
of Claves A. Claves C enter in the middle of the 3-side of Claves B, and Claves D enter
in the middle of the 3-side of Claves C, a progression that is best understood through the
chart of entrances in Example 1.6. In the resulting texture it is still possible to identify
individual clave patterns because the Claves are separated by register. Their presentation
together, however, thwarts the otherwise steady pulse and is rhythmically disorienting,
since the clave (and Clave) are normally the most audible and ever-present elements of
the traditional Cuban son.
28 To avoid much confusion in the following paragraph, I capitalize Claves (the instrument) to avoid
confusion with clave (the rhythm). Also, the four pairs of Claves in Figure 8 are labeled A-D to distinguish
them from references to the 2-side and 3-side of the clave.
29

Example 1.5. Amadeo Roldán, Rítmica No. 5, first page.
Example 1.6. Amadeo Roldán, Rítmica No. 5, mm. 35-47. Layered entrances of the 3-2 son clave.
These measures sound exactly like what one would expect from the figure above: a
canon. This passage is an early example of canonic writing for percussion, a technique
that was emulated by composers of percussion fugues discussed later in this chapter.
30

Rítmica No. 5 separates rhythmic elements of the popular son and reconstructs them to
create a piece of music fit to participate in international modernism by virtue of its
combination of local forms, rhythms, and timbres, and its international qualities such as
rhythmic experimentation and brief incorporation of canon.
Rítmica No. 6 is Roldán’s interpretation of what he heard on the streets of
Havana. This is not the commercial rumba played in the cabarets and nightclubs of Paris
or New York. It is the noncommercial rumba, a music and dance that developed in the
Black urban slums of Havana and Matanzas in the late nineteenth century. The
noncommercial rumba sounds more African due to the cyclic nature of the rhythms and
the fact that it utilizes only percussion and voices. 29 In No. 6 rhythmic cells enter but
never drop out of the texture; they become more elaborate and improvisational-sounding
until the work ends on a loud climax.
Some confusion has resulted from several sources that list “Rítmicas (for
percussion)” on a PAAC concert in New York City on March 10, 1931. 30 The New York
Times announcement on March 9 listed Roldán’s work as “Four Rítmicas” (Nos. 1-4,
which include no percussion). The rest of the program on March 10 consisted of pieces
for chamber instrumental ensembles without percussion. Due to practical concerns (both
percussionists and percussion instruments—especially Afro-Cuban ones—were difficult
to obtain), no other PAAC concert presented only one piece for percussion ensemble.
According to Roldán biographer Zoila Gomez, Rítmicas Nos. 1-4 were presented on a
program of Cowell’s New Music Society in San Francisco in 1930 and “in 1931 they
were conducted by Adolph Weiss in New York” 31 (the March 10 performance, which
was the only PAAC concert Weiss conducted in 1931). In their book Amadeo Roldán:
Testimonios, editors María Antonieta Henríquez and José Piñero Díaz confirm a New
29 For more on the differences between commercial and noncommercial rumba, see Robin Moore, “Poetic,
Visual, and Symphonic Interpretations of the Cuban Rumba: Toward a Model of Integrated Studies.” Lenox
Avenue: A Journal of Interarts Inquiry 4 (1998), 101.
30 This appears in Deane Root, “The Pan American Association of Composers (1928-1934),” Anuario
Interamericano de Investigación Musical 8 (1972): 62. It is repeated in Carol Oja’s appendix to Making
Music Modern: New York in the 1920s. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 394.
31 Zoila Gomez, Amadeo Roldán, 72.
31

York performance of Nos. 1-4 in 1931. 32 Furthermore, the manuscript of Rítmica No. 6 in
the Fleisher Collection of the Free Library of Philadelphia contains the inscription: “First
performance Seattle, Cornish School,” one of John Cage’s famous percussion concerts of
1939. This is an important issue to clarify, because if the last two Rítmicas had been
performed in 1931, they would mark the first performance of percussion ensemble music
in the Americas other than George Antheil’s Ballet mécanique. As it is, this is not the
case.
Russell’s “Percussion Studies in Cuban Rhythms” shows a young composer
experimenting with an exotic set of rhythms and instruments. Roldán’s folk rhythms and
ensemble also signify Cuban music, but he altered those rhythms and enlarged their
capacity for participation in international modernism. Rather than merely exploiting the
exotic qualities of Afro-Cuban music, Roldán modernized it. Conversely, Edgard Varèse
(1883-1965) added exotic musical elements, including Afro-Caribbean instruments and
rhythms, to ultramodernism in his percussion ensemble work, Ionisation.
It may seem strange to label Varèse’s Ionisation a Pan-American work, since
Varèse composed it entirely in France between 1929 and 1931. The essence of Ionisation
is firmly rooted in a cosmopolitan urban atmosphere in all its cultural diversity. The piece
represents a mixture of cultures, evident from the short repeating cells of traditional Latin
music and the Chinese cymbals and gongs that mark important structural moments, the
European and American marching traditions in the snare drums, and the sirens of the
urban soundscape.
Paris, with its influx in the 1920s of Pan-American artists, was an ideal place to
compose this music. Varèse returned to France as a U.S. citizen and as President of the
PAAC. 33 He intended to present music of the Americas as an antidote to the reigning neo-
classicism in French music. But music from the Americas had preceded him. When
Varèse arrived in France, Joséphine Baker was taking Europe by storm and Cuban singer
Rita Montaner’s version of “El manisero” (The Peanut Vendor) was surging through
Parisian popular society. As early as 1922 Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier reported from
32 Antonieta Henríquez and José Piñero Díaz, Amadeo Roldán: Testimonios, 219.
33 Varèse became a U.S. citizen in October 1927.
32

Paris, “there is nothing more contemporary, nothing more now these days than the abrupt
and unexpected triumph of Cuban music.” 34
Varèse sought to convince his fellow Frenchmen that there was more to music in
the Americas than that borrowed from their African roots. He believed, as he later
famously wrote, that composers “must draw a line between entertainment and art. Art is
from the shoulders up. The other is from the hips down.” 35 While Cuban musicians and
composers typically did not accept rigid boundaries between low/popular and high/art
music, 36 Varèse would have easily dismissed the prospect of using the Cuban son and
rumba as sources for art music on the basis of their association with popular dance and
negritude. It is not surprising, therefore, that another Varèse biographer, Odile Vivier,
claimed that Varèse remarked to her in reference to Roldán’s Rítmicas, “I know I am
really the first to have written compositions for solo percussion.” 37
Ionisation is likely the most analyzed piece in the percussion ensemble literature.
Henry Cowell wrote that it “sprang from the composer’s association with futurist
esthetics.” 38 Nicolas Slonimsky offered a different approach to the work, describing it as
a kind of sonata form. 39 Varèse himself described his work rather cryptically: “There is
an idea, the basis of an internal structure, expanded and split into different shapes or
groups of sound constantly changing is shape, direction, and speed, attracted and repulsed
by various forces. The form is the consequence of this interaction.” 40 In a letter to Carlos
Salzedo in which Varèse described Ionisation, he included an enclosure from
34 Timothy Brennan, “Preface,” in Alejo Carpentier, Music in Cuba, 3.
35 Edgard Varèse and Chou Wen-Chung, “The Liberation of Sound,” Perspectives of New Music 5/1
(Autumn-Winter 1966), 16.
36 A Cuban composer who was equally accepted as a composer of popular and concert music was Ernesto
Lecuona (1895-1963), whose most popular songs include “Siboney” and “Malagueña.”
37 Odile Vivier, Varèse. (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1973): 93. Quoted in Paraskevaídis (2004): 11. Since
Varèse never composed for any one solo percussion instrument, we can safely assume he (or Vivier) meant
percussion ensemble.
38 Henry Cowell, “Drums along the Pacific.” Modern Music 18/1 (1940-1): 46.
39 Nicolas Slonimsky, Music Since 1900, (New York: Schirmer, 1937; sixth ed. 2001), 340-341.
40 Varèse and Chou, “The Liberation of Sound,” 16.
33

astrophysicist Arthur Stanley Eddington’s 1927 book Stars and Atoms, which Varèse said
explained both the work’s title and its organization. The enclosure read: “At the high
temperature inside a star the battering of the particles by one another, and more especially
the collision of the ether waves (X-rays) with atoms, cause electrons to be broken off and
set free . . . This breaking away of electrons from atoms is called ionization.” 41
Cryptically, Varèse concluded this letter, “Ionisation represents . . . the mystery of the
skies of America.” 42
Mystery, Americanness, and the primitive are aspects of Varèse’s works
sometimes overlooked because of his dedication to abstract music after 1945. His
projects during his time in Montparnasse, however, reveal his enthusiasm for expressing
the primitive. In 1930, at the same time he was working on Ionisation, he was also
writing The-One-All-Alone, a stage work that was conceived on a grand scale but never
finished. He wrote instructions to his wife Louise Varèse, who was writing the scenario,
“Don’t forget the aspect of returning to the primitive: pounding dance of fear, almost
voodooistic prophetic cries—shaking, twitching—and the ending as grand as the heavens.
Apocalypse. Apocalypse.” 43 Though Varèse was writing about The-One-All-Alone, it is
easy to hear a pounding dance and voodooistic cries in Ionisation, and the cataclysmic
ending could certainly be interpreted as apocalypse. Generally, analysts have emphasized
the importance of rhythmic cells in Ionisation, but a regular pulse that appears in several
large sections is what drives the piece forward; what might be described as a “pounding
dance.” Notably, such a steady pulse is missing in Varèse’s prior works that rely heavily
on percussion: Hyperprism, Intégrales, and Arcana. Evidently, Wallingford Riegger
thought Ionisation expressed a return to the primitive, when he used a recording of the
work in a dance composition in 1937. The work, presented in its entirety, formed the
climax of Riegger’s piece, and was said to express “the survival of society out of a state
41 Varèse: Composer, Sound Sculptor, Visionary, 226. Originally printed in A.S. Eddington, Stars and
Atoms (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1927): 17.
42 Varèse: Composer, Sound Sculptor, Visionary, 226.
43 Letter from Varèse to Louise Varèse, Divonnes-les-Bains, July 15, 1930. Quoted in Olivia Mattis,
“Edgard Varèse and the Visual Arts,” (Dissertation: Stanford University, 1992), 181.
34

of decadence and collapse.” 44 Nevertheless, scholars have traditionally not made much of
this interpretation, choosing instead to hear Ionisation as a precursor to Varèse’s later
electronic music. I have chosen to discuss Ionisation not only because it was one of the
first and most noteworthy percussion ensemble works in western music but also because
it positions a neo-primitivist aesthetic (evident in its borrowing of folk instruments and
rhythms) within an ultramodern idiom. The result is a universal exoticism that, unlike
Stravinsky’s Rite or Roldán’s Rítmicas, is not located in a particular time or place.
Universalizing often went hand in hand with ultramodern practices. Percussionist
Steven Schick’s recent analysis of Ionisation argues for multiculturalism in the work as
well as the notion that “western percussion practice was home to the instruments and
sounds of all cultures.” 45
New percussion sounds . . . outlined a rapidly evolving social paradigm. In many
ways the young composers who explored the terra incognita of percussion music
fit neatly into traditional Emersonian views of American individuality and
transcendence. Possibilities were meant to be explored; definitions of culture and
society were meant to be inclusive and universalizing. . . . An artistic
representation of America and Americans as singular and monolithic was simply
no longer possible. 46
Varèse’s inclusive, universalizing tendencies are on display in Ionisation, which borrows
percussion instruments from several different music cultures. Schick, through his analysis
of multicultural elements, argues in favor of hearing Ionisation as a “percussive tower of
Babel,” truly the music of a culture comprised of diverse immigrant groups. 47 The
analysis included combining instruments into “groups of affinity,” or subsets of
44 John Martins, “Festival Dancers Appear in ‘Trend’: Bennington Group Executes a New Kind of
Composition by Hanya Holm, Large Crowd Applauds.” The New York Times August 14, 1937.
45 Steven Schick, The Percussionist’s Art: Same Bed, Different Dreams. (Rochester, NY: University of
Rochester Press, 2006): 36 (His emphasis).
46 Ibid.
47 Ibid., 37. In this sense Ionisation echoes Fritz Lang’s acclaimed 1927 film Metropolis, the grim portrayal
of an industrial future civilization. Lang claimed that his inspiration for Metropolis, for which the set
design included a tower of Babel modeled after Pieter Brueghel the Elder’s 1563 painting, came directly
from a widely publicized visit to New York in 1924. Metropolis was shown at the Rialto Theatre in New
York in March 1928.
35

instruments with conspicuous similarities of timbre. 48 He describes three groups of
affinity in the eight-measure introduction: “secco,” “resonant,” and “modified attack.”
These subsets account for differences that are rooted in the multicultural sources of the
instruments. Schick calls secco instruments “dry sonorities used primarily for the
articulation of rhythm”; in the first eight measures these are bass and snare drums.
Resonant instruments include tam-tams, gong, low bass drum, and crash cymbals, or
instruments used for non-rhythmic ringing sounds. Finally, the modified attack group
consists of instruments that “depart in some way from a straightforward stroke.” These
include maracas, güiro, sirens, and friction drum. The crux of the work, according to
Schick, is that these group identities become increasingly fluid as the instruments blend
and develop new “behaviors,” such as taking up each other’s rhythmic patterns. Schick
reads this phenomenon as the instruments speaking each other’s languages.
In 1977 Chou Wen-Chung presented his analysis of Ionisation in a lecture at the
City University of New York. His essential thesis was that in the absence of exact pitch
in the work, timbre exerts primary control over structure. He concluded that the germinal
rhythmic ideas presented in the work come from the qualities of the instruments
themselves and the typical techniques used to play them. Chou offered measures 9-12 as
an example of “typical snare-drum stick techniques.” 49 One question that arises from
such an analysis is: From what performance context did Varèse draw these “typical
snare-drum stick techniques”? We are given a hint when Chou labels measures 9-12 the
“parade-drum passage,” though the audience is given no other indication to hear this
passage literally as a military or parade band (see Example 1.7). The rhythmic cells that
we might recognize as characteristic patterns are out of context, and they are soon
subjected to fragmentation and development. Later in the piece, these cells become
combined in such a way that obscures any one rhythm or timbre.
48 Schick, 40.
49 Chou Wen-chung, “Ionisation: The Function of Timbre in Its Formal and Temporal Organization.” in
The New Worlds of Edgard Varèse: A Symposium ed. Sherman van Solkema. I.S.A.M. Monographs, 11
(New York: Institute for Studies in American Music, 1979).
36

Example 1.7. Ionisation, mm. 9-12 Snare drum in “Parade drum passage”
While Roldán deconstructed popular Afro-Cuban rhythms, they were still recognizable
and in their own local context. Varèse, on the other hand, by defamiliarizing exotic
instruments and rhythms, blended local elements into a universal melting pot. The
discussion that follows focuses specifically on the Latin American elements in Ionisation.
One musical culture that was conspicuously present in Paris while Varèse was
composing Ionisation was that of Cuba, and his use of Afro-Cuban instruments (bongos,
güiro, claves, and maracas) lends the work a sense of neo-primitiveness. Varèse’s interest
in these instruments is usually attributed to a curiosity about their timbral qualities, but he
learned about them through his interactions with Caribbean intellectuals and artists in
Paris. Varèse met the Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier in Paris in the autumn of 1928,
though Carpentier had been fascinated by Varèse’s music since hearing Chávez conduct
Octandre in Mexico in 1926. 50 Carpentier was a founding member of the grupo de
avance, a movement in Cuba that recognized in Afro-Cubanism a nationally specific
culture and a route to international modernism independent of outside (European or
Yankee) control. Participants in the grupo de avance were fascinated by the ritual
drumming of members of Abakuá, an Afro-Cuban secret society. Carpentier himself
experimented with Abakuá themes. One result was “Poemas Afrocubanos,” his
collaboration with Cuban composer Alejandro García Caturla that premiered in Paris in
1929. Carpentier had brought with him to Paris several of Roldán’s scores, including El
milagro de Anaquille and La rebambaramba, which he showed to Varèse and Heitor
Villa-Lobos. At a 1929 concert in the Salle Gaveau, Varèse’s Intègrales shared the
program with Roldán’s Danza negra. Carpentier, Villa-Lobos, and Varèse attended this
concert together. Carpentier wrote to Roldán that after hearing Danza negra both Varèse
and Villa-Lobos wished to meet him and that Varèse was particularly interested in
50 Caroline Rae, “In Havana and Paris: The Musical Activities of Alejo Carpentier,” Music and Letters
(July 2008), 378.
37

Roldán’s use of percussion. 51 According to Carpentier, Varèse studied Roldán’s
techniques of notating Afro-Cuban percussion at the same time he was writing
Ionisation. 52
What might Varèse have known about the characteristic performance techniques
of the Afro-Cuban instruments he included in Ionisation? He had used the güiro in
Arcana (1927), but Ionisation was the first work in which he employed cowbell, bongos,
claves, and maracas. The güiro is introduced in measures 25-30 with one of its most
characteristic rhythms in Afro-Cuban music: long, short, short (Example 1.8a). Notice
that despite Varèse’s note groupings the audible rhythm is still long, short, short. This is a
rhythmic cell that becomes reversed in its next appearance in measure 28, in Example
1.8b. Just to drive home that the rhythm is now short, short, long, the listener hears
“short-short-long, short-short-long, short-short-long-long-long.” This cell is further
developed in the güiro’s solo in measures 35-37 (Example 1.8c). By removing the timbre
of the güiro from its Latin American context and subjecting its characteristic rhythm to
the process of development, Varèse successfully fulfilled Roldán’s desire that the rhythm
of the güiro “not always recall a rumba.”
Example 1.8a. Edgard Varèse, Ionisation m. 26 (long, short, short)
51 Zoila Gomez. Amadeo Roldán, 70.
52 Alejo Carpentier, “Varèse vivant,” (Paris: Le Nouveau Commerce, 1980): 21. These techniques included
using a diamond-shaped note head to signal the performer to strike the center of the drum or an x note head
to strike the edge. While Varèse used x note heads to signify special effects in Ionisation, other composers,
such as Milhaud in his Concerto for Percussion, used x’s also. There is no evidence to suggest that Varèse
borrowed Roldán’s percussion notation techniques.
38

Example 1.8b. Edgard Varèse, Ionisation, mm. 28-29 (short, short, long)
Example 1.8c. Edgard Varèse, Ionisation mm. 34-37 Güiro “solo” and rhythmic elaboration.
Another instrument in Ionisation that is reminiscent of Afro-Cuban music is the
friction drum, or lion’s roar. Varèse had employed a friction drum in three pieces prior to
Ionisation: Hyperprism, Intégrales, and Arcana. It is most prominently featured,
however, in Ionisation, where it sounds like the Afro-Cuban ekué. Also called bongó
ekué, this is the single-headed friction drum sacred to Abakuá. The sound of the ekué is
meant to imitate a leopard’s roar and may have been the source for Varèse’s “voodooistic
cries” from his unfinished work The-One-All-Alone. Cuban popular musicians in the late
1920s who were initiates of Abakuá often reproduced this roar on their secular bongós. 53
A similar-sounding roar performed by the friction drum appears in Ionisation most
prominently at measures 45-47 and 85-88 (mm. 45-47 are shown in Example 1.9a). For
the sake of comparison, Example 1.9b shows the bongó performing a roar in Roldán’s
Rítmica No. 5.
53 One recorded example from 1928 is Sexteto Habanero’s “Tres Lindas Cubanas.”
39

Example 1.9a. Edgard Varèse, Ionisation, Lion’s (leopard’s?) roar, (player 5, Tambour á corde), mm 45-
47.
40

Example 1.9b. Amadeo Roldán, Rítmica No. 5, mm. 14-18, Bongo glissando (first staff of second system).
Due to their chronological proximity, the Rítmicas and Ionisation have often shared the
distinction of being recognized as the first percussion ensemble works. The similarities,
however, extend beyond mere chronology. Both composers employed Afro-Cuban
instruments. Both works contain complex polyrhythms and emphasize timbre and rhythm
rather than melody and harmony. Perhaps most importantly, both transform folk rhythms
and timbres in order to allow them to participate in international modernism.
Cowell developed yet another model for transforming local musical elements into
a cosmopolitan or universal modernism. From October through December 1931, he
traveled to Berlin “with the object of proving that there is but one foundation for all
music, whether Oriental, Occidental, Classic or Modern.” 54 Cowell was to study with
Erich von Hornbostel, but documents in his collected papers suggest that he never
worked directly with the renowned ethnomusicologist. In fact, with the exception of
54 Not signed, “Seeking the Basis of Music,” Musical Courier (October 3, 1931), 22.
41

listening to recordings of world music and a few lessons with Indian musician P.
Sambamoorthy, there is little evidence that illuminates Cowell’s actual investigations into
universal musical principles. 55 Instead, his correspondence from those three months is
filled with details of ambitious plans for PAAC concerts in Barcelona, Berlin, Brno,
Budapest, Madrid, Prague, Stockholm, and Vienna. 56 Cowell did, however, leave the
Phonogramm Archiv in Berlin with the understanding that “nearly all primitive music has
rapid rhythmical changes, syncopations, polyrhythms, and cross-rhythms. . . . [and] there
is considerable use of vocal slides.” 57 He returned to New York with a broader
understanding of the applicability of various world musics to modern musical
composition. His new purpose was to “draw on those materials common to the music of
all the peoples of the world to build a new music particularly related to our own
century.” 58 Cowell’s new transethnicism reflected a desire to combat the spread of French
neo-classicism in modern music (something he wrote was “easy to compose, easy to
understand, [and] easy to forget” 59 ). He would attempt this with a broader sense of what
constituted classic elements through the discovery and application of musical materials
common to various western and non-western musics. Cowell was not alone in conflating
classicism with universalism and attempting to distinguish both from European-based
neo-classical styles. Paul Rosenfeld, in a description of Chávez’s music, wrote in 1929:
Chávez writes an actual classic music; a music that is original and American . . .
This classicism does not parallel the return toward the past of that of several
eminent Europeans. It is not the product of a sudden “conversion” . . . We do not
find him genuflecting before the works of Johann Sebastian Bach; and his art
55 Sambamoorthy was the Chair of the Department of Music at Queen Mary’s College in Madras (now
Chennai), India. He was in Germany in 1931 to study violin, flute, and musicology.
56 The PAAC’s European tours are discussed in chapter three.
57 Cowell, “Towards Neo-Primitivism,” 152. Cowell’s time in Berlin seems to have only confirmed his
notions about universals in music. He had previously discussed all of these musical elements, especially
regarding rhythm, in his New Musical Resources (written in 1919; revised and published in 1930). He
returned from Europe in early 1932 with a new transethnicism.
58 Ibid., 151.
59 Ibid., 150.
42

coquettes neither with academies nor other agencies of “order.” Classicism with
him is an involuntary footing. 60
Cowell would not apply this new understanding of classic principles to his own
compositions, however, until at least fall 1933, when he began teaching world music at
the New School for Social Research in New York City. His courses had titles such as
“Music Systems of the World,” (fall 1933) “Primitive and Folk Origins of Music,” (fall
1934 and 1935) and “Theory and Practice of Rhythm,” (fall 1935). 61 These classes
introduced world music and novel uses of rhythm and timbre to the young John Cage,
among others. 62
Cowell most likely began composing his first work for percussion ensemble at the
same time he was teaching “Music Systems of the World” in fall 1933. This work,
completed in 1934 and eventually titled Ostinato Pianissimo, represents Cowell’s attempt
to synthesize and distill world music elements in order to find new possibilities for
modern music, especially in the new genre of percussion works. 63 Like Varèse, Cowell
borrowed percussion instruments from different world musics. The Afro-Cuban bongos
and güiro appear in Ostinato Pianissimo, as do Indian jalatarang (rice bowls) and gongs.
Also like Varèse, Cowell deemed it necessary to recontextualize some of these borrowed
instruments. Instead of altering the rhythms associated with them, as Varèse had done in
Ionisation, Cowell broadened their timbral possibilities by calling for them to be played
in uncharacteristic ways. The tambourine, for example, is played with the metal rattles
removed, making it a high-pitched drum. The güiro is tapped with a wooden stick instead
of played as a rasp. The strings of the piano are damped by the player’s hand and played
60 Paul Rosenfeld, An Hour with American Music (Philadelphia, PA: Lippencott, 1929), 32.
61 Course catalogs with detailed descriptions of each of these classes are located at The New School for
Social Research. I would like to thank Archival Reference Director Carmen Hendershott for her help in
locating them.
62 Leta Miller has discussed the impact of Cowell’s world music teaching on Cage in “Henry Cowell and
John Cage: Intersections and Influences, 1933-1941.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 59/1
(Spring 2006), 47-112.
63 H. Wiley Hitchcock covered many features of Ostinato Pianissimo in his article: “Henry Cowell’s
Ostinato Pianissimo,” The Musical Quarterly 70/1 (Winter 1984), 23-44.
43

on the keyboard. 64 Ostinato Pianissimo is scored for eight players covering two string
pianos, eight rice bowls (arranged in order of pitch but not tuned to specific pitches),
xylophone, two woodblocks, tambourine, güiro, a set of bongos, three (high, medium,
and low) drums, and three (high, medium, and low) gongs.
Most immediately apparent are the similarities of the texture of Ostinato
Pianissimo to that of Indonesian gamelan music. The instruments are roughly ordered by
pitch from low (gongs and drums) to medium (bongos, woodblocks, tambourine, and
güiro) to high (string piano, rice bowls, and xylophone). As in a gamelan, each
instrument’s pitch grouping corresponds to its pace. In 4/4, the low-pitched group moves
in whole notes throughout the piece while the medium group moves in quarter notes and
the higher instruments in eighth or sixteenth notes. The “ostinato” of the title refers to the
fact that each instrument repeats its own pattern, in lengths ranging from four to fifteen
measures, throughout the work. Although these ostinati occasionally align, they do not do
so at structural moments as in an Indonesian gong cycle. Figure 1.3 is a diagram that
shows the varying lengths of each ostinato and the plan of the overall work.
Figure 1.3. Henry Cowell, Ostinato Pianissimo. Diagram of each ostinato with its coda (C).
64 Cowell had become renowned for his “string piano” technique in 1923, when he performed Piece for
Piano with Strings on his European concert tour.
44

Rhythms and general direction of pitch movements remain constant in each repetition
while melodies (in the pitched instruments) change slightly. Cowell also changed certain
instruments’ accent patterns creating the illusion of different rhythms in each repetition.
The first repetition of string piano 1, for example, contains a Brazilian clave embedded in
the accent pattern (Example 1.10). 65 H. Wiley Hitchcock was thorough in his analysis of
the changes in each repetition. He found that though Cowell gave the appearance of an
overall system for the work, the accent patterns and melodies in the repetitions were not
governed by any particular set of rules. Cowell may have thought of them as sounding
improvisatory or like a theme and variations.
Example 1.10. Henry Cowell, Ostinato Pianissimo, mm. 14-17. Accents creating Brazilian clave.
All this begs the question of what Cowell considered “classic” or universal about
such an arrangement of musical elements. As a music historian and critic, he is not likely
to have missed the fact that the stratification of instruments by both pitch register and
frequency of attack recall the slow-moving tenor and faster upper parts of medieval
organum. Similarly, the separate elements that repeat at different rates evoke the non-
alignment of the color and talea of isorhythmic motet. Taken as a whole, the work is
almost a theme and variations, except that each instrument has its own theme and its
variations do not align temporally with those of other instruments. At the very least,
Cowell would have acknowledged that repetition is the simplest and most ubiquitous
structural principle in music of any culture.
Other features that may be considered classic on a world scale include
interlocking rhythms, also a feature of Indonesian gamelan music, which Cowell
understood as a type of rhythmic counterpoint, a canon figure that appears in the bongos
starting in m. 53, and perpetual motion, which pervades the entire work. The piece also
65 Brazilian clave is only slightly different from Cuban son and rumba claves. It is used to keep time in
samba and bossa nova.
45

exhibits gradual development. Intensity builds with each few sets of repetitions as
instruments enter, adding to the overall texture. As shown in Figure 1.3, rice bowls enter
at m. 13, the second string piano at m. 27 and xylophone and bongos about halfway
through the piece. Smaller subdivisions of beats in the upper and middle registers, as
running sixteenth notes replace eighth notes, begin at about the halfway point in m. 40
and continue to the work’s climax.
Ostinato Pianissimo exhibits Cowell’s long-time interest in combining universal
musical principles and radically expanded timbral palettes. It also represents an
intersection of neo-classical and exotic tendencies in modern music. Cowell was not
alone, however, in his attempt to create a new version of neo-classicism with a broader
understanding of what musical elements could be included in that exercise. Other
composers in the Americas were reinterpreting common-practice forms by applying them
to a percussion ensemble. One of the most popular of these forms for experimentation in
percussion music was the prelude and fugue.
Russell’s biographer, Don Gillespie, noted that “by the winter of 1931-32,
[Russell] was hard at work on a percussion fugue, perhaps choosing the baroque form in
deference to his recent academic training.” 66 In fact, by 1931 Russell had become
acquainted with Cowell who was teaching modern composition at the New School.
Cowell’s New Musical Resources had been published the previous year, and Russell’s
Fugue provides strong evidence that he was familiar with the compositional ideas Cowell
presented there. Tone clusters, the subdivision of measures into unconventional rhythmic
units, and experimentation with rhythms all appear in Russell’s Fugue. He was likely also
aware of Cowell’s work with “dissonant counterpoint,” the inversion of rules of
common-practice counterpoint in which consonances resolve to dissonances. Russell’s
Fugue, in which a rhythmic theme behaves as a fugal subject and timbre usurps the role
of harmony, is a similar subversion of a common-practice precompositional system.
Moreover, the idea to compose a prelude and fugue for percussion may have
come from Cowell. Counterpoint expressed using percussion instruments had been on his
mind for some time. After attending Béla Bartók’s performance of his Piano Concerto
66 Don Gillespie, “William Russell: American Percussion Composer” Southern Quarterly 36/2 (Winter
1998): 35-55.
46

No. 1 conducted by Fritz Reiner with the Cincinnati Orchestra on February 13, 1928,
Cowell lauded the “new loveliness revealed in each succeeding measure, and
counterpoint of lines formed by percussion instruments, which were used canonically.” 67
Russell attended Cowell’s composition classes at the New School and formed friendships
with several of the composers who participated in the Pan-American Association, such as
Wallingford Riegger, Carl Ruggles, Ruth Crawford, and Charles Seeger. He wrote a
compositional credo in 1934, probably at Cowell’s suggestion, which demonstrated that
he had absorbed Cowell’s compositional ideas regarding timbral and rhythmic
development. Compare, for example, excerpts of Cowell’s article “The Impasse of
Modern Music” and Russell’s “Memo”:
If we are blocked by the limitation of our instruments from further steps in
harmony, we can only turn for progress to the other elements of music, to
counterpoint, rhythm, tone clusters, and sliding tones. Varèse . . . has narrowed
the interest of his compositions to rhythm and the tone quality of the percussions.
(Cowell, “The Impasse of Modern Music,” 1927). 68
Development of rhythmic figures (often neglected in Western music) is more
clearly and easily produced with percussion instruments than any others. . . .
Many of the “new” sounds I use are not original with me. Some are taken from
Oriental and other extra-European musics. Others I have learned from watching
jazz drummers. (Russell, “Memo,” 1934). 69
Having finished Fugue in January 1932, Russell sent it to Cowell, who received it
enthusiastically. Cowell also likely made a few suggestions. On April 15 Russell wrote to
him, “Enclosed is the revised copy of my ‘Fugue for Eight Percussion Instruments.’ I did
not change the episode at the end of the exposition, for although it may not be strictly
polyphonic in nature, I still feel it as a ‘broadening out’ of the subject, in one voice or
67 Henry Cowell, “Music,” The Americana Annual: An Encyclopedia of Current Events, ed. A.H.
MacDannald (New York: Americana Corporation, 1929).
68 Henry Cowell, “The Impasse of Modern Music: Searching for New Avenues of Beauty” Century 114/6
(Oct 1927) 671-677.
69 From “Notes on Percussion Compositions,” Unpublished manuscript in William Russell Collection,
Historic New Orleans Collection. Quoted in Gillespie, 42-43.
47

unison.” 70 Cowell replied on April 23, “I am so glad to have your score, and will use it as
soon as I can. It looks very good in the new form.” 71
Cowell did use Russell’s Fugue, and it premiered, along with Varèse’s Ionisation,
on a PAAC concert of March 6, 1933. 72 In some ways, Fugue is constructed like a
conventional eighteenth-century tonal fugue except that it cleverly accommodates non-
pitched as well as pitched percussion instruments. Russell described his work as “a fugal
development of a rhythmic subject and counter-subject, applying some of the
conventional contrapuntal devices to rhythmic themes.” 73 The instrumentation includes
snare drum, xylophone, timpani, piano, triangle, cymbals, bells, and bass drum. A brief
explanation of the beginning of the exposition shows how the piece is constructed.
The rhythmic subject of the Fugue is an eight-measure series of accelerated time
values (Example 1.11). To simplify notation of the subject, Russell wrote the piece in 1/1.
His division of the fundamental beat answered Cowell’s complaint in “Impasse” that
composers typically “limit ourselves to half notes, quarters, eighths, and further division
by halves, but we do not divide by thirds, fifths, sevenths or ninths.” 74
Example 1.11. William Russell, Fugue, mm. 1-8. Subject.
A fugal answer, tonally centered on B, occurs in the xylophone in m. 9, while the snare
drum presents a countersubject: a rhythmic pattern that uses accents to produce a two-
70 Letter from William Russell to Henry Cowell, April 15, 1932. Cowell Papers.
71 Gillespie, 37.
72 This concert is discussed further in Chapter 2.
73 Russell, “Notes on Percussion Compositions.” Unpublished ms. in Russell Collection, Historic New
Orleans Collection. Quoted in Gillespie, 37.
74 Cowell, “Impasse,” 676. In his piano solo Fabric (1922) Cowell devised a system for notating unusual
divisions of a beat using differently shaped noteheads.
48

against-three cross-rhythm (Example 1.12). Compare this technique to Cowell’s use of
accented notes to embed a Brazilian clave in running eighth notes (Example 1.10).
Example 1.12. William Russell, Fugue, mm. 9-16. Answer in xylophone and countersubject in snare drum
with accented rhythm.
In the next statement (mm. 17-24) a pair of timpani reproduces the answer of the
xylophone transposed up a fifth to F#. The right hand of the piano states the subject in
mm. 25-32. This time the subject is accompanied (in the left hand) by its own
countersubject, which is derived from the fugal answer presented in the xylophone (the
first note of each measure: A#, F, A, C#, G#, F#, B.) This countersubject appears
throughout the fugue in all of the pitched instruments. Russell’s piece contains such
traditional contrapuntal devices as the diminution of the rhythmic subject (m. 95), a
stretto passage (mm. 123-130), and the retrograde of the subject (m. 131). The following
diagram illustrates the overall formal structure of this percussion fugue (Figure 1.4).
Figure 1.4. William Russell, Fugue. Form diagram showing the subject (S), answer (A), countersubject
(CS), and retrograde (R).
49

Fugue also demonstrates Cowell’s influence on Russell in his experimentation with new
timbres and extended techniques. In the piano part Russell calls for novel techniques
including the scratching of the strings “lengthwise along winding [coil], with a coin held
like a banjo pick” (mm. 47-54); glissandi with a fingernail on the strings (mm. 55-70);
muffling the strings spanning the octave A2 to A1 with the right hand while playing that
octave as a tone cluster with the left hand (mm. 100-108); and playing all the white keys
between G and B as a tone cluster with the right forearm (mm. 123-40). Other
instruments require the use of various mallets and a wire brush, placing a piece of paper
over the snare drum head at m. 55, drawing a double bass bow across the edge of a
xylophone bar at m. 70, and various hand-muffled notes in several instrument parts.
Notably absent from this piece, however, are non-western percussion instruments
or rhythms. At the time Russell composed his Fugue in 1931 Cowell had not begun
teaching world music, and he had yet to travel to Berlin’s Phonogramm Archiv. Russell
would not encounter Haitian drumming until August 1932, and it was not until 1935 that
he became enchanted with the Cuban instruments presented in Cowell New School class.
This work, therefore, does not present a distillation of elements drawn from various
world musics, as does Ostinato Pianissimo. It does, however, demonstrate that many of
the rhythmic devices Cowell used in Ostinato (such as cross-rhythms and rhythms
embedded in accents) came not from his study of world musics but from his previous
efforts to systematize modern musical composition, many of which he expounded in New
Musical Resources. Excluding the exposition of Russell’s Fugue, the work sounds much
like Ostinato Pianissimo in the sense that both works are based on themes, variations on
those themes, and constant repetition. This suggests that Cowell’s study of world music
did not furnish him with evidence of a “universal basis of music” but rather gave him
new musical resources and new justifications for developing his previous theories
regarding form, rhythm, and timbre.
Fugue was composed less than a year after Varèse completed Ionisation. Gillespie
maintains that Russell “had not the slightest knowledge” of Varèse’s new percussion
work. 75 Varèse’s sojourn in Paris between 1928 and 1933 and the Fugue’s stylistic
differences from Ionisation make it apparent that Russell did not have first-hand
75 Gillespie, 38.
50

knowledge of it. Certainly, the same new idea may emerge simultaneously in different
places. Cuban composer José Ardévol, however, wrote a prelude and fugue for
percussion in direct response to a PAAC performance of Ionisation in Havana in April
1933.
Ardévol (1911-1981) was born in Barcelona and studied piano, composition, and
conducting with his father, Fernando Ardévol. Later he studied conducting with Hermann
Scherchen and liberal arts at the University of Barcelona. He became acquainted with the
young Cuban composer Alejandro García Caturla in Barcelona in 1929 and met Amadeo
Roldán shortly after moving to Havana in December 1930 at age 19. Ardévol served as a
teacher in various Cuban institutions, including the Havana conservatory and the National
School of Music. He was an ardent supporter of the Cuban Revolution. Between 1922
and his death in 1981 Ardévol wrote over eighty solo, chamber, and orchestral
compositions, including three pieces for percussion ensemble: Estudio en forma de
preludio y fuga (1933), Suite para instrumentos de percusión (1934), and Preludio a 11
(1942).
In an article on Ardévol’s Estudio en forma de preludio y fuga, Robert Falvo,
professor of percussion at Appalachian State University, mistakenly stated that Ardévol
began composing Estudio in May 1930 and finished it on June 3, 1933. 76 In fact, the
manuscript score in the Fleisher Collection contains the following notation in the
composer’s hand (confirmed by his signature across the double bar): “principiado: 30/V.
terminado: 3/VI/33. La Habana.” Following the international day/month/year date format,
we may surmise that Ardévol composed the Estudio between May 30 and June 3, 1933, a
period of only five days. Falvo’s error is understandable; it sounds implausible that such
a technically sophisticated piece could be written in a short time. Ardévol’s ability to
compose rapidly was, however, legendary among his students. His pupil Harold
Gramatges noted, “he writes with amazing speed. Many of his works have been written in
the space of one or two weeks.” 77
76 Robert Falvo, “Uncovering a Historical Treasure: José Ardevol’s ‘Study in the Form of a Prelude and
Fugue’ (1933).” Percussive Notes 45 (December 1999): 54-57.
77 Harold Gramatges, “Nota Crítico Biográfica.” in Catalogo de obras de los compositores cubanos
contemporáneos; No. 3, José Ardévol (La Habana: Conservatorio Municipal, 1946): 6.
51

That the Estudio was composed in five days as opposed to three years is an
important distinction. Nicolas Slonimsky had conducted the world premieres of Varèse’s
Ionisation and Russell’s Fugue in the PAAC concert on March 6, 1933, in New York at
the Carnegie Chapter Hall. 78 Seven weeks later, on April 30, he conducted Ionisation on
one of two PAAC concerts in Havana, Cuba. 79 Alejo Carpentier recalled that when the
Havana orchestra played Ionisation under Slonimsky, “the ovation was so enthusiastic
that the conductor had to offer on the spot a second performance.” 80 Ardévol was present
at this concert; Slonimsky had included his fanfare Para despertar a un romántico
cordial on the program. 81 Ardévol set about composing his first all-percussion work on
May 30, exactly one month after the Havana premiere of Ionisation. Slonimsky, in his
book Music Since 1900 (1938), highlighted an important comparison between Ionisation
and the Estudio, perhaps unintentionally, when he wrote, “[In Cuba] I had conducted
Ionization [sic] by Edgar Varèse, scored for instruments of percussion, friction, and
sibilation.” 82 Slonimsky’s word choice here is not insignificant. Ardévol’s Estudio
manuscript, dated 1933, contains the same words in the exact same order: “instrumentos
de percusión, fricción y silbido.” Neither early manuscript copies nor published versions
of Ionisation use that distinctive wording. Perhaps Slonimsky spoke of the
instrumentation thus when he performed Ionisation in Havana in 1933.
Ardévol was familiar with Roldán’s and Caturla’s compositions using Afro-
Cuban percussion and rhythms. A fugal composition was even suggested by the canonic
passage in Roldán’s Rítmica No. 5 (Example 1.4). Estudio is, however, stylistically more
akin to Varèse’s works for percussion. In it, Ardévol employs claves, güiros, maracas,
and bongos but also sirens, anvils, and a police whistle. Though he was closely associated
78 This is actually the Carnegie Chapter Room; not one of the recital halls, but a meeting space for
organizations above what is now Weill Recital Hall.
79 The other concert was held on April 23. Both were at the Teatro Nacional in Havana.
80 Alejo Carpentier, “Varèse vivant,” 22.
81 This fanfare does not appear on the physical program located in the Cowell Papers. A complete list of
fanfares, some of which were composed specifically for this concert, is given in Appendix A.
82 Nicolas Slonimsky, Music Since 1900, 340. He uses the same wording in Nicolas Slonimsky, Music in
Latin America. (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1945): 5.
52

with both Roldán and Caturla in the early 1930s, he took little interest in the set of
aesthetic goals that defined afrocubanismo. He was, however, receptive in these years to
the universalist aesthetics promoted by Varèse and Cowell.
The prelude and fugue in Estudio evoke established Baroque genres, but the use
of the word “study” in the title suggests the exploratory nature of the percussion
techniques and timbres contained in the work. The instrumentation of Estudio (in score
order) is as follows: police whistle, 2 sirens (high, low), 2 claves, 3 güiros, maracas, 2
whips (small and large), 3 hand clappers, triangle, 2 anvils (2 hammers for each one),
small hand bell, 2 bells (high and low), cymbal (struck with mallet), cymbals, tam-tam,
gong, small military drum, 2 snare drums, bongos, 2 African drums, Low African drum,
small timpano, large timpano (both timpani with a loose membrane, such that there is no
determined pitch), 2 bass drums, and 2 pianos. The use of many instruments of
indeterminate pitch intrinsically subverts a musical structure that is based on established
pitch or tonal associations by substituting them with rhythmic relationships.
One pitfall of any percussion ensemble work is the potential to muddle the very
similar timbres. Ardévol solves this problem in much the same manner Varèse, Roldán,
and Cowell did: by arranging the instruments into groups. In the prelude, Ardévol
separated the instruments into two groups: high and low. The high group consists of
claves, güiros, maracas, whips, and hand clappers. The low group includes a military
drum, two snare drums, three African drums, two timpani, and two bass drums.
The prelude is also reminiscent of Varèse’s technique of using sound masses to
create form. As in Ionisation, the opening exhibits direct exchanges of rhythms and
textures between groups of instruments. In the passage from mm. 1-6, for example, the
respective rhythms of the higher voices (claves and güiros) and the lower voices (timpani
and bombos) are exchanged, as shown in Example 1.13a. Example 1.13b shows a series
of accelerated time values in m. 5 that recalls Russell’s Fugue. In addition to hearing
Ionisation twice on the PAAC concert in 1933 Ardevol may have seen the score of
Russell’s Fugue as well, since Slonimsky likely carried it to Havana.
53

Example 1.13a. José Ardévol, Estudio, mm. 1-6.
Example 1.13b. José Ardévol, Estudio, m. 5, second system. Accelerated time values as in Russell’s Fugue
(shown in Example 1.11 above).
Ardévol’s use of sound masses in Estudio is not the work’s only similarity to
Ionisation. As in the beginning of Varèse’s work, Ardévol included sirens in the opening
measures (Example 1.13a, top system). These sliding pitches crescendo from piano to
54

fortissimo 83 and are immediately followed by a long string of syncopated rhythms that
suggest no definite meter. The fugue, like Ionisation, exhibits instruments grouped by
timbral affinity. These are organized by fugal voice, as in the following figure.
Voice 1: Snare drums
snare drum I (1-6)
military drum (106-11)
Voice 2: Small timpano and African drums
African drum I, small timpano (7-12)
African drum I, small timpano (51-56)
African drums I and II, small timpano, piano I, high bell, tam-tam (81-92)
Low African drum, small timpano (116-19)
Voice 3: Large timpano and bombos
large timpano, bombo I (15-20)
large timpano, bombos I and II, gong, piano II (76-87)
Voice 4: Claves, güiros, triangle
claves, güiros, triangle, piano I (22-27)
claves, güiros, triangle (43-48)
claves, güiros, triangle (89-94)
cymbal struck with stick (114-19)
Figure 1.5. Estudio en forma de preludio y fuga, instrument groups (voices) in the fugue and the measures
in which they appear.
Ardévol, who wrote that his father had instilled in him an enormous appreciation
of J. S. Bach, constructed a masterful fugal form in the absence of a tonal center and a
melodic subject. The diagram in Figure 1.6 shows the overall structure, Ardévol’s use of
fugal augmentation and retrograde of the subject, and an extended stretto passage in mm.
123-35.
83 Perhaps not incidentally, Lou Harrison’s Fugue for Percussion Instruments (1941) begins with an
identical gesture. Harrison’s and Ardevol’s works were both featured in Cage’s West Coast percussion
concerts.
55

Ardévol’s fugue subject, though notated in 6/8, seems to fit into no definite meter.
An eighth rest at the beginning of the subject causes a series of syncopations and ties
across barlines (shown in Example 1.14a). To facilitate the performance of the subject,
Ardévol could have notated it in 4/4. Example 1.14b is a renotated version in 4/4.
Example 1.14a. José Ardévol, Estudio . . . Fuga. Actual notation of rhythmic subject, mm. 1-6.
Example 1.14b. José Ardévol, Estudio . . . Fuga. Rhythmic subject in 4/4 (my rewrite).
In the original 6/8 version of the subject, a cinquillo rhythm begins on the downbeat of m.
4 and ends on the downbeat of m. 5 (Example 1.15). The fact that this is the only
recognizable rhythmic figure that is notated as it would characteristically appear suggests
that the subject was conceived around this cinquillo, as if the purpose of the eighth rest at
the beginning of the subject and the barline-crossing ties was to simplify or showcase a
rhythm that was widely recognized as Cuban. The rest of the subject (mm. 5-6) that
follows the cinquillo contains accents that fall on regular beats.
Example 1.15. José Ardévol, Estudio . . . Fuga, mm. 4-5. Cinquillo.
The fugue, far from including only Cuban elements, also incorporates three hand clappers
(palmadas). The clappers evoke Spanish cante jondo or cante flamenco, genres of folk
song from Andalusia and aural signifiers of Ardévol’s Spanish heritage. Manuel de Falla,
a composer Ardévol greatly admired, had organized a tremendously successful contest of
cante jondo with Federico García Lorca in Granada on June 13 and 14, 1922. Ardévol
would have been eleven years old, but in the following years he came to understand the
significance of Falla’s endeavor to elevate cante jondo to the level of art music. Ardévol
57

wrote in 1932, “I am convinced that Spanish music of today has no other remedy than to
follow [Falla], despite the fact that it is very difficult; after what he has accomplished,
how do you do something in the same direction that is worth the effort?” 84
In Varèse’s Ionisation, Russell’s Fugue, and Ardévol’s fugue, the subject or
primary thematic material is presented with a snare drum solo (Examples 1.16a, b, and c,
respectively). Perhaps there is something about the timbre or the two-handed method of
playing of the snare drum that facilitates the articulation of complex rhythms.
Example 1.16a. Edgard Varèse, Ionisation, mm. 8-12.
Example 1.16b. William Russell, Fugue, mm. 1-8.
Example 1.16c. José Ardévol, Estudio . . . fuga, mm. 1-6.
Almost a decade after composing Estudio, Ardévol would promote a new
approach to Cuban concert music by establishing among his pupils a new musical society
called the Grupo de Renovación Musical, which denied the value of musical nationalism
in favor of neoclassical and serial techniques. 85 An additional goal of the Grupo was to
raise the level of musical composition in Cuba to international status. The group members
embraced the work of Paul Hindemith and Benjamin Britten and tended to downplay the
afrocubanism of the 1930s, effectively ending its influence on Cuban art music until the
1960s. Ardévol is, therefore, primarily associated today with his rejection of
84 From a lecture delivered at Ardévol’s first recital of works in Cuba on April 7, 1932. Reprinted in José
Ardevol, Musica y revolución (Havana: Contemporáneos, 1965), 63-68.
85 Well-known composers associated with this group were Hilario Gonzalez, Julian Orbón, Harold
Gramatges, and Gisela Hernandez.
58

afrocubanism in favor of a Cuban nationalism that did not rely heavily on working-class
genres such as son and rumba. His Estudio demonstrates that he was open to the
ultramodern, universalist aims of certain U.S. composers in the 1930s. As he stated in a
1956 interview:
I have always been in agreement with the ideas of Roldán and Caturla, and I am
convinced that they did what was most in accord with Cuban music at that
moment. . . . In their last years, [however], both great teachers became aware . . .
that our music could not reach its rightful place without obtaining three things: [1]
cultivation of the great forms and incorporation of these into our music; [2]
greater universal sense, that is, Cubanness with less localism and color, and [3]
complete dominion of [compositional] technique as can be found in the
composers of more advanced countries. 86
It comes as no surprise, then, that a close investigation of Estudio demonstrates Ardévol’s
sympathy with Cowell’s and Varèse’s universalist aesthetic.
The catalog of Ardévol’s works published by the Pan American Union in 1955
does not include Estudio, his later Suite, or any other works for percussion ensemble. A
note that accompanies the list of works explains this omission: “The composer considers
this list definitive. Many works in former catalogs do not appear here, either because the
author has destroyed the manuscripts or because they were suppressed at the time of a
general revision of his work in 1951.” 87 The percussion works do appear in a composition
list from 1946 published by the Municipal Conservatory of Havana. 88 Ardévol’s
reluctance to include Estudio in his definitive catalog is echoed by his silence on the
86 José Ardevol. “Entrevista.” Avance (November 1956), 71. “Siempre he estado de acuerdo con las ideas
de Roldán y Caturla, y estoy convencido de que en su momento hicieron lo que más convenía a la música
cubana . . . En sus últimos años, ambos grandes maestros tenían conciencia . . . que nuestra música no podía
conquistar el lugar a que estaba distinada sin lograr tres cosas: cultivo de las grandes formas e
incorporación de éstas a nuestra música; mayor sentido universal, o sea, cubanía menos localista y
pintoresca, y dominio tan completo de la técnica como pueda hallarse en los compositores de los países
más avanzados.”
87 Composers of the Americas: Biographical Data and Catalogs of Their Works, Volume 1. (Pan American
Union Music Section: Washington, D.C., 1955), 5.
88 Catalogo de obras de los compositores cubanos contemporáneos; No. 3, José Ardévol (La Habana:
Conservatorio Municipal, 1946).
59

subject of his early percussion works in his later writings. 89 Ardévol likely viewed
Estudio as an experiment with transposing fugal ideas to percussion music. The work is
remarkably well constructed, however, in its formal design, rhythmic complexity and
combinations of timbres.
The percussion ensemble music of the 1930s demonstrated a vast potential for
expressing a multiplicity of styles and aesthetics. The following chapter, which examines
the early activity of the Pan-American Association of Composers, details efforts by
members of that organization to institutionalize some of the practices outlined in this
chapter.
89 There is also no mention of these works in a collection of his critical writings: José Ardevol, Musica y
revolución.
60

CHAPTER 2
ORGANIZING THE HEMISPHERE: THE PAN-AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF
COMPOSERS (1928-1934)
In an interview with Rita Mead in 1974 Nicolas Slonimsky (1894-1995) recalled
that the Pan-American Association of Composers was “just a tag. . . . there was a group
of people who didn’t have any money, didn’t have any resources, and they just
floundered around there in New York. . . . Pan-American was just a word.” 1 Slonimsky’s
recollections of a performance society that ceased to exist forty years earlier are echoed
in his autobiography Perfect Pitch. By virtue of having been the PAAC’s official
conductor and surviving most of the Association’s members by thirty or more years,
Slonimsky’s memories have shaped the historiography of the organization. His
sentiments quoted above have reinforced perceptions that the PAAC was not a real
organization but rather a loose collection of free agents who somehow managed to
present a small handful of concerts with limited significance in the early 1930s. In fact,
the PAAC functioned very differently than other New York-based modern music
organizations, whose regular meetings and well-publicized concerts make it easier to
assess their efficacy and influence. Despite the difficulties of piecing together evidence
from correspondence, critical reviews and extant programs, a reevaluation of the PAAC’s
position in the fabric of modernist musical life in the 1930s is long overdue. Only Deane
Root has attempted to compile the organization’s activities in an article published in 1972
in which he identified nineteen performances. Counting performances in New York,
Cuba, and Europe, however, some of which were co-sponsored by other performance
1 Nicolas Slonimsky interview with Rita Mead, October 29, 1974. Henry Cowell Papers, JPB 00-03, Music
Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

societies, the PAAC presented at least thirty-eight concerts over five seasons and
performed works by thirty-nine composers of the Americas. 2
During the first two years of its existence the PAAC sponsored three small
chamber concerts in New York; one each at Birchard Hall, Carnegie Chamber Hall, and
the New School. These events were largely neglected by critics and drew small
audiences. The seasons of 1931 through 1934, however, marked a period of recognition
for the society at home and abroad; its orchestral concerts in Havana, Paris, Madrid,
Berlin, Dessau, Vienna, Prague, Budapest, and Hamburg were well publicized and widely
reviewed. The European concerts are discussed in Chapter 3. This chapter focuses
entirely on the early organizing efforts of the PAAC and the concerts in the United States
and Cuba.
Under the direction of Henry Cowell for most of its brief life, the PAAC
functioned very differently from societies such as the International Composers’ Guild or
the League of Composers. Cowell ran the PAAC as he did his New Music Society of
California, which he founded in 1925; he organized all its activities on a shoestring
budget provided mostly by Charles Ives. In this sense, under Cowell the PAAC became
an East coast extension of New Music. In addition, many of the PAAC’s concerts were
co-sponsored by other performing organizations: chapters of the International Society for
Contemporary Music in Havana and Prague, the Ibero-German Musical Society under
director Guillermo Espinosa, and Lazare Saminsky’s Polyhymnia.
Henry Cowell (1897-1965) was a Californian who was largely self-taught in
music. In his late teens he studied composition with Charles Seeger, and in the early
1920s he became famous as a concert pianist for his innovative pianistic style. Cowell’s
brazen ultramodernism is evident in the tone clusters of pieces such as The Voice of Lir
and Dynamic Motion and in his performance on the strings inside the piano as in his most
famous piano piece, The Banshee. Concert tours in the United States and Europe between
1923 and 1932 generated a great deal of media renown. 3 Cowell’s California-based New
Music Society sponsored performances, publications, and recordings until it was
2 For a complete list of concerts, see Appendix A. Appendix B contains a list of extant reviews of PAAC
concerts.
3 Information about Cowell’s early life and concert tours can be found in Michael Hicks, Henry Cowell,
Bohemian (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002).
62

discontinued in 1958. A full assessment of his work as a modern music organizer has
only recently been undertaken by Rita Mead, Leta Miller, and Kyle Gann. The present
treatment of the PAAC, which considers how Cowell’s unconventional strategy of
inclusion led to both the successes and failures of the organization, contributes to the
work already begun by these scholars.
Members of the PAAC included several composers who had been active in the
International Composers’ Guild. Edgard Varèse (1883-1965) used his influence to gather
composers for a series of initial PAAC meetings. He nevertheless played a peripheral role
in most of the society’s activities. Carlos Salzedo, who co-founded the I.C.G. with
Varèse, was listed as an incorporating member of the PAAC. He did not, however, take
an active part in its activities until the final season. Emerson Whithorne (1884-1958),
American composer and pianist, was named vice president in the incorporation meeting
but was not involved in any way after Cowell assumed the role of director.
Adolph Weiss (1891-1971) and Wallingford Riegger (1885-1961) were active in
both the New Music Society and the Pan-American Association. They also maintained
good relations with Pro Musica and the League of Composers, on whose concerts their
works were occasionally performed. Weiss was Arnold Schoenberg’s first American
pupil. Riegger, who adopted the twelve-tone idiom through his association with Weiss,
later became well known for his dance compositions for Martha Graham, Doris
Humphrey and Hanya Holm.
Several members played crucial supporting roles in the organization. Charles Ives
(1874-1954) was the oldest member and served as a patriarch who contributed much of
the financial support that kept the organization afloat through rough economic waters.
Several of his most renowned works were premiered on PAAC concerts including Three
Places in New England, The Fourth of July, and Set for Theatre Orchestra. Nicolas
Slonimsky, a Russian émigré polymath, conductor, and founder of the Boston Chamber
Orchestra, helped organize and conduct the association’s concerts in New York, Havana,
and Europe. The society’s most devoted Latin American members carried out their
PAAC activities in Cuba. Pedro Sanjuán (1887-1976), a Spaniard who immigrated to
Cuba in 1924, founded the Orquesta Filarmónica de la Habana. His pupils Amadeo
Roldán (1900-1939) and Alejandro García Caturla (1906-1940) organized and executed
63

their own PAAC concerts in Havana and Caibarién, respectively. Sanjuán, Roldán, and
Caturla became associated with the PAAC through Cowell.
Certain other Latin American composers were increasingly recognized in New
York in the late 1920s, especially those who had studied in Europe. Works by Mexican
Carlos Chávez, Uruguayan Eduardo Fabini, and Chilean Acario Cotapos, for example,
were occasionally performed on I.C.G. and League concerts. As the works of all
American composers had originally been excluded from the I.S.C.M.’s definition of
“contemporary” music, 4 Latin American composers were excluded from the
Americanism of the existing New York-based modern music societies. A new society
was needed that maintained the internationalizing effects achieved by the I.C.G., the
I.S.C.M., and the League but repositioned the East-West axis from North to South.
From 1929 to 1936 Henry Cowell wrote the “Music” entries in The Americana
Annual: An Encyclopedia of Current Events. 5 Intended for a general audience but focused
primarily on modern music, these articles illustrate an overall arc of activity for music
organizations, composers, and concerts in the United States. These essays also document
Cowell’s strongly partisan opinions on the purposes and limitations of various modern
music organizations and the music performed on their concerts. The 1935 volume, for
example, noted that the “three main schools of modern creative music have their very
definite champions: Hanson’s Festival at Rochester for those who wish to be neo-
romantic, The League of Composers for those who wish to be neo-classical, and the Pan
American Association and New Music Society for those who wish to progress further
into the experimentally new.” 6 Since the Americana Annual was a general-interest
publication it was probably not high on the reading lists of members of New York’s
modern music circles. As such, it provided Cowell with a forum to comment on
developments in modern music with impunity. The 1929 volume, which covers activities
of the previous year, noted the birth of two new modern music organizations, the Pan-
American Association and the Copland-Sessions concerts.
4 As discussed in the Introduction.
5 Henry Cowell, “Music,” The Americana Annual: An Encyclopedia of Current Events, ed. A.H.
MacDannald (New York: Americana Corporation, 1929-1936).
6 Cowell, “Music,” The Americana Annual (1935), 474.
64

. . . the Pan American Association of Composers plans a clearing house of
unpublished musical scores, so that conductors will know where to look for music
by composers of all the Americas, and will sponsor performances of Latin-
American works in the United States and North-American works in southern
countries; and the Copland-Sessions concerts in New York will perform works by
young and relatively unknown composers, even where they are not entirely
perfected in style, for the purpose of making “discoveries” among the student
talent. 7
Almost completely ignoring the Copland-Sessions activities, Cowell then introduced
members of the PAAC, devoting at least a paragraph to each: Carlos Chávez (“a young
Mexican who writes in an indigenous style”), Adolph Weiss (“a student of Schoenberg . .
. one of the principal exponents of the modern Teutonic school in America”), Charles
Ives (“his Concord Sonata is a masterly welding of the improvisatory spirit of early
American folk music into a moving and powerful structure”), Nicolas Slonimsky (who
has “propounded through Boston concerts his interesting theory of building up a musical
style using literally only concords”), Roy Harris (“a young American whose sincerity and
personal fervor makes it possible for him to imbue rather sto[d]gy materials and
academic form with new vitality”), and Dane Rudhyar (who “has many interesting
theories concerning tone, one of which is that all tone complexes should be regarded as a
unit”). 8 In the 1932 volume Cowell discussed the success of the PAAC’s 1931 concerts in
Paris, noting that reviewers commented on the fact “that here is a whole new world of
music with tendencies unknown to Europe; that America really proved it has something
to say artistically.” In the same year the American chapter of the International Society for
Contemporary Music had cooperated in the dissemination of American music in Europe
by arranging a concert of American works in Berlin. “Unfortunately,” wrote Cowell, “the
works chosen were all of the same school: early works by Copland, Sessions, and
Gruenberg” 9 (my italics). The implication is clear: that the I.S.C.M.’s American concert
7 Cowell, “Music,” The Americana Annual (1929), 501.
8 Ibid.
9 Cowell, “Music,” The Americana Annual (1932), 570.
65

in Berlin was unsuccessful in Cowell’s view because it presented only one perspective of
new American music.
By contrast, the Pan-American Association afforded Cowell the opportunity to
present a wide variety of the American continent’s new compositional tendencies. For
decades, the flow of musical culture had been in one direction: east to west, from Europe
to the New World. Cowell and his associates in the PAAC attempted to reverse that flow
through the sheer force of their collective difference. They did not share a common set of
musical values. Some experimented with new musical resources; others used their
European training as a point of departure. All of them, however, adopted a uniform pose
to challenge European musical cultures they still revered yet considered outmoded.
Evoking a utopian sense of unity by smoothing over difference, the Pan-American
Association was more a political than an aesthetic enterprise, and its spirit was akin to its
eponymous political counterpart, which stemmed from the Monroe Doctrine. 10 Not all its
members would embrace this political message, however. Chávez and Revueltas, for
example, engaged in alternative forms of Pan-Americanism based on affinities between
Latin American and African American cultures. These are discussed in Chapter 4.
Early Organizing Efforts and the First Two Concerts, 1928-1930
After the dissolution of the International Composers’ Guild in 1927, Varèse
acknowledged the desirability of continuing to present concerts in New York, and he
solicited ideas from colleagues for a new performing organization. One of the early
options was an enterprise called the Composer’s Symphony Orchestra. An organizational
prospectus found in the Cowell Papers includes a list of members: Varèse, Cowell, Ives,
Riegger, Ruggles, Salzedo, and Weiss; many of the same composers who would
incorporate the PAAC. An inscription at the top of the typewritten proposal reads, “The
beginning of the Pan Amer. Assoc. of Composers – Varèse left for France soon after.” 11
The Composer’s Symphony Orchestra, in which members would have comprised the
controlling board, was designed to present on each concert one “very old” work, one
10 Political Pan-Americanism is discussed in detail in the Introduction.
11 Draft of a form letter, dated 1928. Letterhead: New School for Social Research. Cowell Papers. This
notation is in Sidney Robertson Cowell’s handwriting.
66

“standard repertoire” work chosen by the conductor, one “contemporary European work
by a leading and accepted master,” and one “work by one of the composers of the
committee.” The Composer’s Symphony Orchestra idea would be discarded, however,
only to be proposed again after Varèse dissolved the PAAC in 1934.
Instead, the group created a performance society based upon the idea of gathering
some of the most talented composers of the hemisphere. According to available
documentation, this idea belonged to Carlos Chávez, despite the fact that Varèse
appointed himself Founder and President. Upon returning from New York to Mexico
City in 1924, Chávez had begun a modern chamber music series along the lines of the
I.C.G. His programs featured music by Bartók, Honegger, Milhaud, Poulenc, Revueltas,
Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Varèse, and himself. The concerts attracted little critical
attention, however, and the series ultimately failed. 12 Chávez returned to New York in
September 1926. Three months later, on December 5, the New York Times published
Cuba’s call for a Pan-American Music Congress to be held in Havana in conjunction with
the Sixth Pan-American Conference scheduled for February 1928:
The first Pan-American Musical Congress will be held at Havana, Cuba, in
February 1928. President Machado has issued a decree appointing a committee
from the Cuban National Academy of Fine Arts and Letters to make all
arrangements and to issue official invitations. The academy has made an
exhaustive study of the origins of American music, its progress and its relation to
universal music. The committee will be headed by Señor José Manuél Carbonell,
President of the academy; Eduardo Sanchez and Hubert de Blanck, both of the
Academy of Fine Arts. Invitations will be issued to all American countries, to
their principal bands and orchestras, to representative composers. It is expected
that a committee of eminent musicians from the United States will assist at this
congress. Music of North America, Central and South America will be present at
different concerts. 13
12 Robert L. Parker, Carlos Chávez, el Orfeo contemporáneo de México. Mexico, D.F.: Consejo Nacional
para la Cultura y las Artes, 2002.
13 “Pan American Music,” New York Times (December 5, 1926), X14.
67

This music congress never took place, but the announcement may have inspired Chávez.
He proposed the idea of the PAAC to Varèse, who marshaled resources and invited
composers to a series of organizational meetings at the end of 1927. 14 The New York
Times and the Los Angeles Times published announcements on March 18, 1928, based on
the following prospectus written by Varèse:
The Pan-American Association of Composers is a newly formed group made up
exclusively of composers who are citizens of the countries of North, Central and
South America. The association will not limit its activities to any one locality, but
will sponsor the production of its members’ works in different cities throughout
the Americas. Emphasis will be laid on the advisability and necessity of giving
outstanding works as many performances as possible, in contra-distinction to the
organizations who [sic] are not in a position to give even second hearings to
work[s] which have aroused unusual interest. It is the hope of the association that
the performance of North American works in Central and South America and of
Central and South American works in the United States will promote wider
mutual appreciation of the music of the different republics of America, and will
stimulate composers to make still greater effort toward creating a distinctive
music of the Western Hemisphere. Encouragement may be derived from the fact
that whereas a few years ago it would have been impossible to find a sufficient
number of American composers with new musical ideals to form such an
association, today there is a sizeable group of progressive men and women who,
although representing many different tendencies, are banded together through
serious and sincere interest in furthering all the finest music being written in the
Americas. The present members of the Association are: Carlos Chávez, Acario
Cotapos, Henry Cowell, Ruth Crawford, E.E. Fabini, Howard Hanson, Roy
Harris, Charles Ives, Colin McPhee, S. Revueltas, D. Rudhyar, Carl Ruggles,
Carlos Salzedo, William Grant Still, Edgar [sic] Varèse, Adolph Weiss, Emerson
Whithorne. The executive board is composed of Edgar Varèse, President;
14 Chávez’s document is not extant, but Cowell referenced it in a letter to Chávez in 1929.
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Emerson Whithorne, Henry Cowell, Carl Ruggles, Carlos Chávez, Vice-
Presidents. 15
Of the composers listed as incorporating members in the February 1928 announcement,
three were from Latin American countries: Carlos Chávez, Acario Cotapos, and Eduardo
Fabini. Of these three, however, only Chávez played any role in the PAAC. Uruguayan
composer Eduardo Fabini was visiting New York in February 1928 for the premiere of
his orchestral work La isla de los ceibos (1924-26), conducted on February 12 by
Giuseppe Bamboschek with the Metropolitan Opera Company. He celebrated the
successful performance at Gentner’s restaurant with Varèse, who wrote an enthusiastic
review in French on the back of a menu:
The first performance of the symphonic poem by E.F. La isla de los ceibos took
place this evening at the Sunday Orchestral Concert in the Metropolitan Opera
Co. The work, warmly received by the large audience, recommends itself to
musicians because of the logic of its structure, the impeccability of its
developments and the poetry and freshness of the ideas. The richness and variety
of sonic timbres as well as the flexibility and firmness of the orchestral matter
reveal in the young master a solid and disciplined culture and an imagination from
which future fruits are eagerly expected. 16
It is not surprising, therefore, that Varèse included Fabini’s name among the founding
members when he released the PAAC press announcement a few weeks later. Chilean
composer Acario Cotapos, also among Varèse’s cohort, was similarly listed in the
prospectus. Cotapos, who lived in New York between 1916 and 1925, had been an
advising member of the I.C.G. From 1925 until 1935 he lived in Paris, where Varèse was
also present between 1928 and 1933. Neither Fabini’s nor Cotapos’ works were ever
programmed on a PAAC-sponsored concert. Evidently, due to lack of interest, their
association with the PAAC ended with the 1928 announcement.
Ambitious plans for a New York concert began almost immediately. It was
scheduled for late April, but lack of funding slowed the process. Cowell wrote to Ives,
15 PAAC Folder, Cowell Papers.
16 Translation provided by Gabriela Paraskevaidis in “Edgard Varèse and his Relationships with Latin
American Musicians and Intellectuals of His Time.” Contemporary Music Review 23/2 (June 2004): 4.
69

most likely in the hope that he would provide financial support: “[The PAAC] proposes
to give some concerts in April in New York, and would like to have your ‘Emerson’ [first
movement of the Piano Sonata No. 2, “Concord, Mass., 1840-1860”] performed, if you
are agreeable.” 17 Cowell suggested that Richard Buhlig be engaged to perform the work,
but no extant evidence suggests that this concert ever took place. 18
In addition to Ives, another financier of Pan-American concerts was Blanche
Wetherill Walton (1871-1963), a major patron of the modern artistic community in New
York. Walton, a pianist who had studied with Edward MacDowell, was a staunch
supporter of Cowell, Chávez, Varèse, Ruggles, Crawford, Riegger, Weiss and many
others. On her role in the New York music scene and her relationship with Cowell
Walton wrote,
The one contribution I could make to the gifted and struggling pioneer composer
was to turn my apartment in Central Park West into a meeting place. . . . My
rooms were comfortably apart which left other rooms for visiting composers of
whom Cowell was a frequent one. And it was through his keen initiative and
tremendous vitality that the music room was soon filled with eager composers,
hearing each other’s latest works and holding heated discussions of some book
from South America, Hungary, Paris. 19
Walton was known to launch composers’ careers by hosting concerts of their works,
which were attended by prominent critics. She held such an evening for Ruth Crawford,
who recounted in a letter to a friend, “There were over a hundred and twenty people here
. . . Winthrop Tryon said he hadn’t enjoyed an evening so much in years. . . . Also he told
Blanche that he knew no one who could draw the distinguished audience together that
Blanche drew here.” 20 Winthrop Tryon, a champion of Varèse’s music and a critic for the
17 Letter from Henry Cowell to Charles Ives, February 28, 1928, Cowell Papers.
18 The first documented U.S. performance of Ives’s “Emerson” was on September 19, 1928 in San
Francisco, California, by Arthur Hardcastle on a concert of the New Music Society at the Rudolph
Schaeffer Studios. James B. Sinclair, A Descriptive Catalog of the Music of Charles Ives. (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 1999).
19 Quoted in Nancy Eagle Lindley, “Singer Radiana Pazmor and American music: The Performer as
Advocate,” (Dissertation: University of Maryland, 1993), 143.
20 Letter from Ruth Crawford to Alice Lee Burrow, October 17, 1929. Quoted in Lindley, 144.
70

Christian Science Monitor, published an announcement of the PAAC’s founding in
February 1928:
Edgar [sic] Varèse has started something again. This time it is the Pan American
Association of Composers, a militant group that purposes to push the modern
musical cause in the Western Hemisphere. . . . Composers from everywhere on
the continents of North and South America and the West Indies are invited to join;
only, they must exemplify in their works an advanced tendency. They must not be
persons who write in an old-fashioned manner. The test, broadly speaking, will be
craftsmanship. 21
Unfortunately, many of the critics who attended PAAC concerts did not judge the works
presented there based on craftsmanship alone, which would have required understanding
each work on its own terms. Instead, they deemed many of those compositions,
particularly the works by Latin American composers that used indigenous instruments or
popular rhythms, as curiosities of passing interest and little merit.
When it came to changing critics’ and conductors’ minds about the value of new
American music, Cowell and the other PAAC organizers knew the power of having such
works readily at hand. In expectation of orchestral concerts of Pan-American music,
Cowell planned a catalogue to be sent to conductors and ensemble leaders in the
Americas and Europe listing all compositions of every PAAC-affiliated composer and
providing “the length of time of each work, its instrumentation, and a short descriptive
note” about each piece. 22 Cowell never completed the catalogue, but Charles Seeger
produced similar publications in his position as Director of the Pan American Union
Music Section. These included Composers of the Americas: Biographical Data and
Catalogs of their Works (1955-79) as well as Latin American Orchestral Music Available
in the United States (1956).
Financing the concerts was not the only initial challenge for the PAAC. By
September 1928 the nearly complete lack of response from Varèse’s Latin American
colleagues frustrated him. He wrote to Cowell that he had “not received the promised list
21 Winthrop P. Tryon, “A Pan-American Guild,” Christian Science Monitor, February 25, 1928.
22 Letter from Henry Cowell to Charles Ives, March 27, 1928, Cowell Papers.
71

from Fabini – and Cotapos did not even answer my letter.” 23 With prospects for a well
organized performance society dimming, and without having achieved much beyond the
PAAC prospectus, Varèse planned his departure for Europe. He wrote to Cowell, “We
are leaving first week in October for Paris – I will open there ‘The Varèse Laboratory of
Composition and Laboratory of Music.’ European prospects look very encouraging. I
think that during my absence you and [Emerson] Whithorne will be able to work together
for the success of the P[an] A[merican].” 24 Cowell, for his part, was frustrated, as well.
He wrote to Ives in November, “I believe the lack of success of this organization is
because certain composers blocked any action, thru jealousy that other composers’ works
would be presented to conductors! I think some working plan may be found for the
association later, and all the troubles ironed out.” 25
Chávez, who otherwise would have been expected to take an active role in the
organization he helped establish, returned to Mexico City in July 1928 and found himself
busier than ever. In September he accepted an unexpected post as director of the new
Orquesta Sinfónica Mexicana (later renamed the Orquesta Sinfónica de México). In
December he was also named director of the Conservatorio Nacional. His music,
moreover, was being performed in New York at League concerts and with the Copland-
Sessions group. Cowell, nevertheless, wrote to Chávez in August 1929, hoping to
persuade him that the PAAC would still be a worthwhile enterprise. He explained that the
PAAC members planned to hold a meeting to elect new officers “to carry out a broad
policy along the lines you wished, altruistic and as all inclusive as it is possible to make
it.” 26 Cowell requested that Chávez submit his written wishes for the organization to him,
since Varèse still held the original copy. Cowell evidently felt comfortable enough with
Chávez to speak frankly:
My position is that while I have the greatest appreciation of Varèse’s work, and
consider him one of the most interesting of the composers, I feel that he works so
23 Letter from Edgard Varèse to Henry Cowell, Sept. 1, 1928, Cowell Papers.
24 Letter from Varèse to Cowell, Sept. 18, 1928. Cowell Papers.
25 Letter from Henry Cowell to Charles Ives, November 24, 1928. Charles Ives Papers, Beinecke Library,
Yale University.
26 Letter from Henry Cowell to Carlos Chávez, 1929. Cowell Papers.
72

politically in an organization that it is better to try to run it without his immediate
direction. . . . I realize that you have probably lost interest in the Pan American
Association, but I believe that it can still be made a wonderful vehicle, and hope
very much that you will pull with it. Mrs. Walton is backing a concert for the Pan
Americans, to be held in one of the regular halls, and with proper advertising, and
a small chamber group. The plan is to have half of it for the Latin Americans and
half for the North Americans. 27
From 1929 on Chávez did not play an active role in the PAAC, but he did not lose
interest in the Pan-American enterprise altogether. In fact, his attention to Pan-American
collaborations often extended beyond the scope of the PAAC, despite the fact that his
conducting and teaching activities occupied him fully. Almost immediately after
accepting the post as director of the Orquesta Sinfónica Mexicana, Chávez made plans to
play Cowell’s Symphonietta and invited both Cowell and Copland to play their concertos
with his orchestra. He wrote articles about U.S. composers and solicited their
contributions for Mexican cultural journals such as Ulises. In addition to performing
works by U.S. composers, Chávez worked as a tireless liaison for many Mexican
composers to have their works heard in New York. In 1936, two years after the
dissolution of the PAAC, he even started a summer Pan-American chamber series in
Mexico City. Chapter 4 returns to his aforementioned divergence from the political
agenda of the PAAC.
Julian Carrillo, another Mexican composer whose works had been heard in New
York and who had previously been labeled the “herald of a musical Monroe Doctrine,” 28
was a logical choice to participate in the PAAC. Carrillo’s extended stay in New York
between winter 1925 and spring 1928 drew attention to his music and his controversial
theory of microtones called Sonido 13 (the thirteenth sound), in which he divided a whole
tone into sixteen or more intervals. While Carrillo was in New York, his microtonal
works were performed on two widely reviewed concerts. The first, in March 1926, was
27 Ibid.
28 Maria Cristina Mena, “Julian Carrillo: The Herald of a Musical Monroe Doctrine,” The Century 90
March 1915 (753-759). The Monroe Doctrine, as discussed in the Introduction, has been interpreted in a
variety of ways since its inception in 1823. In this instance it refers to the attempt to stop the spread of
European influence in the western hemisphere through Pan-Americanism.
73

sponsored by the League of Composers and included Carrillo’s Sonata casi fantasia for a
chamber ensemble of microtonal instruments. On the second concert Leopold Stokowski
led the Philadelphia Orchestra, which was augmented by a small group of microtonal
instruments, in an orchestrated version of the same work titled Concertino. 29 Why
Carrillo was not involved in the PAAC is not entirely clear. He had poor relations with
other Mexican composers, including Chávez, who rejected his Sonido 13 theories and
denounced him in the Mexican press. In 1923 a large group of students from the national
conservatory revolted against Carrillo’s proposed pedagogical and institutional changes
and requested his removal. 30 His problems escalated further when nine composers
published a series of articles and held radio broadcasts attacking his theories. The young
Chávez wrote an article in August 1924 in Mexico City’s El Universal entitled “El cruti
hindú y el cuarto de tono europeo” (The Hindu cruti and the European quarter tone). The
article amounted to an accusation that Carrillo’s music had nothing new to offer besides a
reiteration of European models. 31 The tensions between Chávez and Carrillo found their
way into the PAAC. Varèse wrote to Chávez on February 3, 1928, “How do you feel
about Carrillo? Would it not be better to have him with us than against?” 32 Chávez’s
response is not extant, but he likely answered in the negative. Cowell knew of Carrillo
but had evidently not heard his music. He wrote to his mother regarding who was to be
included in the PAAC: “possibly Carrillo, the man who uses 16th tones, but I hear from
all over that his actual compositions are very commonplace.” 33 Carrillo requested a
meeting with Cowell on February 18 “regarding our activities,” referring to the PAAC. 34
At this meeting Carrillo proposed that Angel Reyes be nominated as the PAAC’s Cuban
29 For a list of relevant reviews, see Christina Taylor Gibson, “The Music of Manuel M. Ponce, Julian
Carrillo, and Carlos Chávez in New York, 1925-1932.” (Diss., University of Maryland, 2008).
30 See Taylor Gibson’s “Carillo and Sonido 13 in New York, 1925-1932.”
31 Carlos Chávez, “El cruti hindú y el cuarto de tono europeo.” El Universal (August 24, 1924). For a wellreasoned
refutation of this widely held view, see Alejandro Madrid, Sounds of the Modern Nation: Music,
Culture, and Ideas in Post-Revolutionary Mexico. (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2008).
32 Letter from Edgard Varèse to Carlos Chávez, February 3, 1928, Carlos Chávez Papers, JOB 93-4, Music
Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
33 Letter from Henry Cowell to Olive Cowell, February 1928, Cowell Papers.
34 Letter from Carrillo to Henry Cowell, February 18, 1928, Cowell Papers.
74

epresentative. Reyes, a Cuban violinist and composer, was a strong proponent of
Carrillo’s Sonido 13 theory, but he was never associated with the PAAC for reasons
discussed below. Carrillo returned to Mexico shortly after his meeting with Cowell.
With Chávez’s and Carrillo’s departure from New York and Fabini’s and
Cotapos’s silence, Cowell realized that in order to ensure the success of the PAAC he had
to find talent among a new crop of Latin American composers who had not been
affiliated with the I.C.G. In Cuba, Cowell found fertile soil for the development of Pan-
American sentiment. The composers Amadeo Roldán, Alejandro García Caturla, and
Pedro Sanjuán were also eager to shake off the chains of European musical culture,
though both Caturla and Sanjuán had studied in France. Sanjuán began his studies in
Spain under Joaquín Turina and continued at the Schola Cantorum in Paris under Vincent
d’Indy, where he became acquainted with Varèse. Sanjuán moved to Cuba in 1924 and
founded the Orquesta Filarmónica de La Habana. Probably at the suggestion of Varèse,
Cowell nominated Sanjuán as a composer member of the PAAC and initiated an
exchange of scores. In the same letter, Cowell asked Sanjuán to select a Cuban officer for
the PAAC, since Sanjuán was not a Cuban citizen. When Cowell, at Carrillo’s
suggestion, proposed Angel Reyes as an officer, Sanjuán’s response was unequivocal:
Regarding the confidential information you ask on Sr. Angel Reyes I will say
most confidentially too, but with frankness d[u]e all art lovers, that Reyes has no
standing at all as a composer. We are all surprised to hear his nomination as
representation of Carrillo’s Sound 13 Group. Although we consider this being so
as to Carrillo could not find anybody else instead [sic]. 35
In place of Reyes, Sanjuán proposed Roldán and Caturla, both his students. Eventually he
decided to appoint Roldán without consulting Caturla. When Caturla heard of this
development he was furious and wrote a frank letter to Cowell expressing his dismay.
Maria Muñoz de Quevedo, Spanish émigré pianist, patron of new music, and founder of
the Cuban journal Musicalia, pointedly noted in a letter to Cowell “the inconsistency of
Sanjuán in his capacity [as] Cuban elector in a Pan-American association, since he is
35 Letter from Pedro Sanjuán to Henry Cowell, Havana, March 25, 1930, [Original in English] Cowell
Papers.
75

neither Cuban nor American, nor even a naturalized citizen.” 36 Roldán was, nevertheless,
retained as vice-president of the West Indies chapter of the PAAC. In Roldán (1900-
1939), Cowell found a kindred spirit who believed that American music deserved the
attention of European audiences. Roldán had complained to Chávez in 1929 that
orchestras in Europe were not interested in works from the New World. Attempts to
interest the Orquesta Bética de Sevilla in his own works failed, and he concluded, “we,
the youths of the two continents, are incompatible.” 37
Encouraged by increased participation from the Cuban contingent and undeterred
by early financial setbacks, Cowell organized the first PAAC performance. The inaugural
concert consisting of Latin-American chamber works took place on March 12, 1929. It
included representative pieces from Cuba (Caturla and Roldán), Mexico (Chávez), Brazil
(Villa-Lobos), and Guatemala (Raul Paniagua). Cowell’s initial plans included giving the
concert at the New School, but other members wished to have it in a larger hall so that
critics might attend. The venue eventually agreed upon was Birchard Hall in the Steinway
Building at 113 W. 57th Street. Adolph Weiss was charged with hiring performers and
organizing their rehearsals, a role that he fell into naturally; he would later conduct most
of the PAAC’s chamber concerts in New York. His newly formed “Pan American
Chamber Ensemble” also performed in concerts of the League of Composers, Pro
Musica, and Saminsky’s Polyhymnia. Cowell briefly introduced the Latin American
composers whose works were performed, and then the concert proceeded as follows:
Alejandro Caturla, Dos Danzas Cubanas: “Danza del Tambor,” “Danza Lucumí”
Carlos Chávez, Sonatina; 36
Heitor Villa-Lobos, O ginete do pierrozinho; A Prole do Bebe, No. 1
Amadeo Roldán, Dos Canciones populares cubanas: “Punto Criollo,” “Guajira
Vueltabajera”
Raul Paniagua, Mayan Legend (arranged for piano and played by the composer)
Amadeo Roldán, Three Songs
(Repeat of Caturla, Chávez, Villa-Lobos)
36 Letter from de Maria Muñoz de Quevedo to Henry Cowell, June 17, 1930, Cowell Papers.
37 Letter from Amadeo Roldán to Carlos Chávez, July 23, 1929, Archivo General de la Nación de México,
Fondo Carlos Chávez. “Somos incompatibles las juventudes de los dos continentes.”
76

Despite the more promising venue, no music critics reported on the debut concert. The
second PAAC performance, “A Concert of Works by Composers of Mexico, Cuba, and
the United States” occurred on April 21, 1930 in the Carnegie Chamber Hall. The
program was again comprised of chamber works and songs and was more carefully
arranged to encourage comparison between Latin American and U.S. composers when
appropriate, as in the pairings of the Chávez and Cowell works for violin, and songs by
Imre Weisshaus and Caturla (Figure 2.1). Like the previous concert, the April 21 program
went unattended by prominent critics and failed to draw a substantial audience. These
first two performances were, however, indicative of a new awareness of and appreciation
for Latin American concert music that would grow in the next few years and lead to
increased programming of works by Chávez, Caturla, Roldán, and Sanjuán on U.S.
concerts outside the PAAC.
While the PAAC was slow to gain momentum, several other organizations
contributed to its mission of American musical exchange. Cowell’s New Music Society
presented a concert on October 15, 1930, at the Y.W.C.A. Auditorium in San Francisco,
featuring Sanjuán conducting. The program included Sanjuán’s Sones de Castilla and
Roldán’s Rítmica No. 4, as well as Ruggles’s Portals and Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire.
To reciprocate, Sanjuán invited Cowell to Cuba on behalf of the Havana chapter of the
I.S.C.M. to give two recitals of his piano works on December 23 and 26 (see program
cover in Figure 2.2). Sanjuán also conducted the premiere of Cowell’s piano concerto on
December 28 with the Havana Philharmonic. Nicolas Slonimsky’s Chamber Orchestra of
Boston presented two well publicized performances in which he included Caturla’s
Bembé: Afro-Cuban Movement. Though not Slonimsky’s official PAAC debut, these two
concerts, one in Town Hall on January 10, 1931, and the other at the New School on
February 7, served as his auditions as orchestral conductor of the PAAC. Through them
he established the precedent of presenting two concerts in succession in a given location.
Often, the first performance stirred up interest so that the second attracted prominent
music critics. He would later use this tactic in Europe with mixed success. Slonimsky
repeated this formula in Havana in March 1931 when he conducted two concerts of the
Orquesta Filarmónica.
77

Figure 2.1. Concert program, Carnegie Chamber Hall, April 21, 1930.
There he presented Ives’s Three Places in New England, Cowell’s Sinfonietta, Ruggles’
Men and Mountains, Roldán’s Rítmica No. 4 and Caturla’s Bembé in addition to works
by Bach, Mozart, Honegger, Bloch, Bartók and Prokofiev (see program in Figure 2.3).
Though other conductors led PAAC-sponsored concerts, Slonimsky became widely
78

known for his PAAC presentations in Europe, and he retained the position as official
PAAC conductor throughout the life of the organization.
Figure 2.2. Program cover for Henry Cowell’s solo concerts in Havana, December 23, and 26, 1930.
Cowell Papers, NYPL.
79

Figure 2.3. Concert program, Slonimsky’s performances with the Havana Philharmonic, March 18 and 21,
1931. Cowell Papers, NYPL.
80

The Concerts in New York and Cuba, 1931-1934
Sparsely attended concerts presented whenever money could be scraped together
characterized the early life of the PAAC. Adolph Weiss conducted his Pan-American
Chamber Ensemble in a concert at the New School on March 10, 1931. The program
included Sanjuán’s Sones de Castilla, Roldán’s Rítmica No. 4, Rudhyar’s The Surge of
Fire, Riegger’s Three Canons for Woodwinds, and Weiss’s Kammersymphonie. To help
keep the PAAC’s mission alive in Cuba, Sanjuán conducted “An All North American
Concert” with his Havana Philharmonic on August 27. Between 1929 and 1931 the
PAAC offered one New York concert per year. Things began to pick up in 1932 due in
part to the publicity generated by Slonimsky’s Paris concerts in the summer of 1931
(discussed in Chapter 3).
The PAAC offered three concerts in New York in 1932. On January 5 Weiss led
his chamber orchestra in a dance recital with Martha Graham’s and Charles Weidman’s
respective dance troupes at the New School Auditorium. Works by Villa-Lobos,
Honegger, Louis Horst, Debussy, Satie, Riegger, Rudhyar, and Cowell were
choreographed for dance, while Weiss conducted his American Sketches as an interlude
between the two dance companies.
On February 16 the New School again presented Weiss and the Pan-American
Chamber Orchestra in a concert “with chamber and orchestra works by composers of
Mexico, Argentine, and the United States.” 38 At the February 16 concert John J. Becker
conducted his Concerto Arabesque with Georgia Kober as pianist. Other works included
Roy Harris’s String Quartet, performed by the New World String Quartet, Ives’s Set for
Theatre Orchestra, Chávez’s Energía, and songs by Crawford and Alfonso Broqua sung
by Radiana Pazmor. Gustav Davidson, writing for the New York Daily Mirror,
considered, in purple prose, Ives’s Set to be the most significant work on the program:
“though markedly cerebral in structure, the chords being built on a mathematical basis,
the product was a fabric of exquisite sonorescence, the harmonic overtones having been
conceived with utmost skill and the melodic line wrought with sublime latitude.” In
contrast, Davidson considered Roy Harris’s String Quartet “a work obtuse in character,
38 Program, Cowell Papers.
81

and somewhat soporific.” 39 With this performance, however, the PAAC finally registered
with New York’s musical establishment.
It is not coincidental that the PAAC emerged as a musical entity just as the U.S.
economy was hitting rock bottom. 1932 saw the worst of the economic depression, as the
Gross National Product fell a record 13.4 percent, and unemployment rose to 23.6
percent. Cowell noted in his yearly Americana Annual entry:
The result of the financial conditions has been that the plans of nearly all musical
organizations, both large and small, have been greatly curtailed for the season
beginning in the fall of 1932. . . . The San Francisco Symphony Orchestra is
presenting concerts during half the season only. The Philadelphia Orchestra,
finding that the box-office receipts of classical programs are greater than those
from modern programs, publicly announced that this year there will be no
novelties or experimental music on its programs. 40
The difficult economic situation and the cancellation of concerts presented a situation that
the PAAC’s organizers recognized as an opportunity. In October, Wallingford Riegger
wrote an article in which he reintroduced the PAAC, explained its origins and mission,
and recounted its European successes of 1931:
After six years of brave battling, [the International Composers Guild] was
dissolved in 1927. . . . Still the various [compositional] tendencies were so
manifold, the modern movement had grown to such proportions in this country,
that the need was felt for an organization which should specialize in American
works. This function is now filled by the Pan-American Association of
Composers. [The PAAC] is all-embracing in its Americanism, its membership
being about equally divided between the United States and the Latin-American
nations. . . . Now for the first time in history Europe has been enabled to hear to
an appreciable extent the works of her American contemporaries. This is due to
39 Gustav Davidson, “Music,” New York Daily Mirror February 17, 1932 Cowell Papers.
40 Henry Cowell, “Music,” The Americana Annual: An Encyclopedia of Current Events, ed. A.H.
MacDannald (New York: Americana Corporation, 1933), 514.
82

the Pan-American Association, which last season gave nine concerts of American
music in European cities. 41
Riegger also announced the fall PAAC concert at the New School Auditorium, in which
Slonimsky conducted the Pan-American Chamber Orchestra. This program, presented on
November 4, 1932, included many new works, including Revueltas’s Colorines, Cowell’s
Polyphonica, Caturla’s Primera Suite Cubana, and Riegger’s Dichotomy (see program in
Figure 2.4). Unfortunately, the concert took place the same night as one of Paul
Whiteman’s “Experiments in Modern American Music” at Carnegie Hall, a much more
“spirited and fashionable occasion” according to the New York Times critic. An
unsympathetic reviewer of the PAAC concert for the New York Telegram merely noted,
“While Paul Whiteman dispensed the suaver blandishments of jazz at Carnegie Hall, its
less palatable features were brought home quite strongly in the course of a program
provided by the Pan-American Association of Composers.” 42 Paul Rosenfeld, however,
praised many of the individual pieces while noting that the works presented were “quite
dissimilar.” 43 That Rosenfeld picked up on the PAAC’s organizing principle of collective
difference is not surprising at a time when many New York-based modern performance
organizations, particularly the Copland-Sessions concerts, presented music that, in Carol
Oja’s words, “emanated from similar, compatible forces . . . and assumed a definable
shape.” 44
41 Wallingford Riegger, “Pan-American Association Plans Three Concerts for This Season/United States
and Latin America Represented in Group Founded Four Years Ago; Varèse, Cowell and Chávez the
Founders.” Cowell Papers.
42 L.B., “Composers Hit at Evils of Jazz,” New York Telegram November 5, 1932. Cowell Papers. The
work in question is Jerome Moross’s cantata, Those Everlasting Blues.
43 Paul Rosenfeld, “Among the Novelties,” The New Republic (January 25, 1933), 296.
44 Carol J. Oja, “The Copland-Sessions Concerts and their Reception in the Contemporary Press,” Musical
Quarterly 65/2 (April 1979), 226.
83

Figure 2.4. Concert program, New School Auditorium, November 4, 1932. Cowell Papers, NYPL.
Since the late nineteenth century a widely held view contrasted an industrial,
“masculine” United States with a “feminine,” rural, fertile region south of the Rio
Grande. Carlos Chávez capitalized on this view in his ballet H.P. (Horsepower), in which
the title character, H.P., representing the United States as “machinery with which to
manufacture from the products of the Tropics the necessary material things of life,” 45
penetrates and exploits the beauty and abundance of Mexico and other Latin American
countries. This contrast between a masculine machine aesthetic and a feminine
agricultural one affected how critics received the PAAC’s curious blend of
Americanisms. At the November 4 New School event Rosenfeld had been impressed by
the works of Revueltas, Villa-Lobos, and Caturla, which he said, “left the largest
45 Program notes, H.P.
84

impression of any compositions performed that evening.” Still, he contrasted the U.S. and
Latin American works by observing that the latter were “expressions of musicians deeply
rooted in their soils. One basked in their spontaneousness, animation, and lushness of
feeling, characteristic of much Latin American music while rare in this ‘intellectualizing’
North.” 46 Because PAAC programs tended to blend musical values typically gendered as
either masculine or feminine, some critics interpreted them as a jumbled confusion rather
than as representing an inclusive philosophy of Pan-Americanism. This was the case with
some European critics, as well, whose responses to the PAAC are discussed in Chapter 3.
As a result of the economic depression, 1933 was the PAAC’s least active year in
Europe. It was, however, the organization’s most active year in the western hemisphere,
with five concerts in New York and seven in Cuba. Roldán and Caturla took more active
roles in organizing PAAC concerts in Cuba with their respective orchestras. Roldán
accepted the directorship of the Orquesta Filarmónica Habanera after Sanjuán moved to
San Francisco in 1932. Caturla, who was isolated by his professional duties as a judge
and the stifling lack of appreciation for modern music in Remedios, created and led an
orchestra from a group of musicians in the neighboring town of Caibarién. Caturla’s
biographer Charles White called the Orquesta de Conciertos de Caibarién “one of the
most remarkable accomplishments in Caturla’s life.” 47 He single-handedly organized the
orchestra, which was composed of the town’s municipal band members, into a
“symphony orchestra without strings.” The innovative programs were aligned with
Slonimsky’s PAAC model, integrating standard repertoire and modernist American
pieces including Caturla’s interpretations of Afro-Cuban music in works such as Bembé.
Caturla wrote to Riegger about his intentions to establish his new group as another
chamber orchestra of the PAAC:
I find myself at the moment in front of the Concert Orchestra of Caibarién, an
institution that would be most pleased if you would send your works to perform
them in our concerts. My interest lies in doing my part to help my fellow
46 Rosenfeld, 296.
47 Charles W. White, Alejandro García Caturla: A Cuban Composer in the Twentieth Century, (Lanham,
MD: The Scarecrow Press, 2003), 139.
85

composers of the Pan American, among which you find yourself, and in addition,
to correspond to your attention. 48
Caturla’s inaugural concert took place on December 12, 1932 in the Teatro Cervantes in
Caibarién. In addition to his Bembé, Caturla conducted Stravinsky’s Scherzino from
Pulcinella, the overture to The Magic Flute, Manuel de Falla’s La vida breve, César
Cui’s Oriental, and Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. The concert was played to a full
house, and reviews were unanimously positive. A second concert on January 30, 1933,
was basically the same program as the first, except that Cui’s Oriental was removed; in
its place was an arrangement of Cowell’s Exultation for piano obbligato and band. The
third concert of the Orquesta de Conciertos de Caibarién was given on April 15, 1933,
with a similar program in the smaller town of Vueltas in Santa Clara (shown in Figure 2.5
on page 86; note the striking similarities in visual layout to the New School program on
page 83). This concert was to be the last, however. By the summer of 1933, the upheaval
wrought by extreme poverty, as well as by Gerardo Machado’s bloody responses to
insurgent groups that opposed his administration, ended the short life of Caturla’s efforts
to establish the PAAC in Cuba.
The economic situation in 1933 also made funding the PAAC’s activities in New
York more difficult. Two New York concerts, which had been planned before the
economy took another sharp downward turn, occurred in the early part of the year. On
February 6, George Barrère’s ensemble performed Henry Brant’s Concerto for flute with
an orchestra of ten flutes in the Carnegie Chapter Hall. Richard Donovan’s Sextet for
Woodwind Instruments, Ruggles’s “Toys,” and songs by Ives, Copland, Villa-Lobos, and
P. Humberto Allende comprised the rest of the program. A larger “Concert of North and
Latin American Music” was given on March 6 in the same venue. On this concert
Slonimsky conducted the world premieres of two works for percussion ensemble,
Varèse’s Ionisation and Russell’s Fugue (both discussed in detail in chapter one).
Smaller works included songs by Carlos Pedrell, Roldán, Becker, Villa-Lobos, Crawford,
and William Grant Still, and piano works by Chávez, Weiss, and Gerald Strang. Even
Ionisation failed to draw much critical notice at its premiere. Paul Rosenfeld published
one notable exception in The New Republic of April 26, 1933.
48 Quoted in White, 144.
86

Figure 2.5. Concert Program of Alejandro García Caturla’s Orquesta de Conciertos de Caibarién, April 15,
1933.
Rosenfeld described the work as “wonderful and terrifying. . . it is a complete if singular
piece of music . . . the tones of the 41 percussion and friction pieces for which it is cast . .
. in themselves do suggest the life of the inanimate universe. 49 When Slonimsky took it to
Havana the following month, however, Ionisation created a whirlwind. It was performed
on the second of two concerts with the Orquesta Filarmónica in the Teatro Nacional. The
first concert on April 23 included Roy Harris’s American Overture, and George
Gershwin’s Cuban Overture, which was based on the then popular Cuban song “Echale
Salsita.” Neither work was well received by Francisco Portela, the critic of Havana’s La
49 Paul Rosenfeld, The New Republic (April 26, 1933) Cowell Papers.
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voz, who stated unequivocally of Gershwin’s overture, “The use of popular themes is not
folklore. The composer’s aesthetic indecisiveness shows through the whole work, which
seems rather an ‘international suite.’ At times one noted the unfortunate use of percussion
instruments. In sum, it is a work without musical importance.” 50
If the critic of La voz was unprepared for the unusual use of percussion in
Gershwin’s work, Varèse’s forty-one-piece percussion orchestra in Ionisation must have
made him apoplectic. At least the English-speaking audience had been forewarned about
the April 30 concert by The Habana Post, which published a lengthy article quoting
extensively from Rosenfeld’s review and touting the modernist qualities of Varèse’s
work:
The extraordinary concert scheduled for Sunday morning will unquestionably
elevate many a quizzical eyebrow at the strange new combination of instruments
and sounds. . . . Significant in the new age of mechanization, the dynamism of
music has called for new prophets speaking in quickened accents with the
revivified vocabulary of technicians—terms and expressions too new to have been
annotated. 51
Other works on the program were J.S. Bach’s Suite in B for flute and strings,
Schoenberg’s Begleitmusik zu einer Lichtspielszene, Revueltas’s Colorines, Copland’s
Music for the Theatre and “fanfares by de Falla, Milhaud, Goossens, Stravinsky,
Prokofiev, Satie, Bliss, and others.” 52 A list of these short fanfares can be found in
Appendix A; even Slonimsky composed one for the occasion. The opening of Caturla’s
Fanfarria para despertar espiritus apolillados is shown in Figure 2.6. The concert made
quite an impression on Havana’s public and its composers. Ionisation’s impact on the
young José Ardévol has already been discussed in Chapter 1. To Caturla, Varèse’s use of
Afro-Cuban instruments such as the güiro, bongo, clave, and maraca justified his own
championing of those instruments in art music. After discontinuing his orchestra
50 Francisco V. Portela, “Musicales/Slonimsky en la Filarmónica,” La voz April 24, 1933 Cowell Papers,
(my translation). “El uso de temas populares no es obra folclorica. La indecición estetica del compositor se
adivina en toda la obra, que más bien parece una ‘suite internacional.’ A veces se notaba el uso poco
afortunado de los instrumentos de percusión. En suma, es una obra sin importancia musical.”
51 Unsigned, “Contemporary Composers’ Work Excites Controversy,” The Habana Post April 27, 1933.
52 Program, “Dos conciertos de música nueva bajo la dirección de Nicolas Slonimsky,” Cowell Papers.
88

Figure 2.6. Alejandro García Caturla, “Fanfarria para despertar espiritus apolillados.” The Fleisher
Collection, Free Library of Philadelphia.
concerts, Caturla had founded the journal Atalaya with his brother Othón, the purpose of
which was the “propagation of culture and the elevation of the intellectual plane” of his
native Remedios. In the first issue (July 1933) Caturla wrote an article commending
Varèse for his use of unorthodox percussion in Ionisation:
Varèse has produced in the field of experimental music a new theory about the
determination of sound and has carried it out in the composition of a work for
only percussion instruments, including maracas, guiros, bongos, claves and
others. . . . The score of Ionization seemed to me original and curious . . . an
acoustical essay more than a musical work, lacking a defined aesthetic
foundation, but it is to be considered for the great possibilities that it opens in the
field of instrumental music. 53
53 Alejandro García Caturla, “Realidad de la utilización sinfónica del instrumental cubano,” Atalaya 1/1
(July 15, 1933), 6 (my translation).
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Caturla’s insightful description of Ionisation as an acoustical essay, an understanding of
the work shared by later analysts, is surprisingly prescient.
Depressed economic conditions in 1933 made performance organizations such as
the PAAC and the League even more important to modern composers than they had
previously been. Orchestras and larger musical organizations had either failed in 1932 or
shifted their programming to reflect more conventional and profitable fare. In April,
Aaron Copland joined the executive committee of the League of Composers. 54 When
Cowell heard this he convinced Copland, Walter Piston, and Arthur Berger to join the
PAAC. To Cowell, who operated on the principle of inclusion, any prominent name on
the PAAC’s roster of composer members was welcome. Copland, at least, was a reluctant
participant. As he recounted to Chávez, “It was difficult to refuse. I told [Cowell] in the
end that I could take no active part in the affairs of the Society.” 55 The addition of these
particular new names to the PAAC roster would have far-reaching negative effects for the
PAAC when Varèse returned from Paris the following year.
The fall 1933 season consisted of three concerts in New York and three in
Havana. Faced with considerable economic hurdles, the PAAC’s New York organizers
returned to their original strategy of presenting a pair of chamber performances at the
New School. The first, an “All Latin American” concert, occurred on November 1.
Soprano Judith Litante sang songs by Humberto Allende, Montserrat Campmany,
Caturla, Carlos Pedrell, Roldán, and Villa-Lobos accompanied by pianists Harry
Cumpson and Mabel Schneider. Short pieces for piano or violin solo by Caturla and
Chávez and a trio for violin, cello and piano by Villa-Lobos completed the program. An
“All North American” concert took place on November 13 on which songs by Richard
Donovan, Ives, Ruggles, and Weiss were presented with string quartets by Becker,
Crawford, and Piston. A reviewer for the New York Times noted only that the
performance was “refreshingly free from the blunders of the previous ‘American’
54 Copland had been a member of the League’s advisory board since 1928.
55 Letter from Aaron Copland to Carlos Chávez, April 7, 1933. AGNM, Fondo Carlos Chávez.
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evening at the New School,” 56 presumably referring to the November 1 concert. (It is
unclear from the context to what “blunders” the critic alluded.)
Meanwhile, Roldán was busy preparing a series of three Pan-American events
with the Havana Philharmonic. He wrote to Chávez in June, “I am planning to give a
Pan-American concert, and I wish to dedicate the second part of the program to Latin
American authors. 57 Unfortunately, Roldán’s all Pan-American concert never came to
fruition; instead, he offered a few PAAC works on each of his regular concerts with the
Havana Philharmonic. On December 8, 1933, Roldán conducted Cowell’s Reel and
Hornpipe. On December 24 he included Weiss’s American Life and Caturla’s La Rumba.
The following February 25 Roldán programmed “Andante” from Howard Hanson’s
Nordic Symphony and Riegger’s Dichotomy. Roldán and Caturla, who in their capacity as
orchestra conductors attempted to establish the PAAC in Cuba, proved to be the Latin
American members most dedicated to the organization’s political mission of inclusive
cultural exchange.
As a strategy for significantly impacting New York’s modern music
establishment, the principle of collective difference did not serve the PAAC well. Few
prominent critics attended its New York concerts, and when they did they had very little
to say about the pieces or composers presented there. The Association was less
successful, therefore, than the I.C.G. or the Copland-Sessions group at attracting critical
attention. Only one agenda was evident from these PAAC events: Cowell’s insistence
that the concerts present new American music of all stripes. In New York this was
mounted with confusing results. Across the Atlantic, however, Slonimsky took an active
role in programming and advertising Association concerts. His exuberance and talent for
conducting challenging modern music won him acclaim in the European presses.
Slonimsky, in fact, deserves most of the credit for the PAAC’s success abroad, where
American concert music was just beginning to appear on the radars of European cultural
centers such as Paris and Berlin. He brought the Association’s variegated streaks of
56 H.H. “Living Composers Heard in Recital/Modern North Americans Are Represented in Program at the
New School,” New York Times (November 14, 1933), 22.
57 Letter from Amadeo Roldán to Carlos Chávez, June 21, 1933. AGNM, Fondo Carlos Chávez (my
translation). “Estoy planeando dar un Concierto Pan-Americano, y pienso dedicar la segunda parte del
programa a autores hispanoamericanos.“
91

modern American music to these cities, leaving a storm of colorful criticism in his wake.
These concerts are the subject of Chapter 3.
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CHAPTER 3
COLLECTIVE DIFFERENCE: THE PAN-AMERICAN ASSOCIATION ABROAD
Between May 3 and June 4, 1930, Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini and the
New York Philharmonic descended on Europe in a whirlwind tour of nineteen concerts.
Hailed by the New York Times as “one of the most ambitious musical visits ever planned
from this side of the world,” this tour showcased the talents of what was widely
considered the best orchestra of the United States. Boosted by the relative strength of the
U.S. dollar, Toscanini gave two concerts each in Paris, Milan, Rome, Vienna, and Berlin.
In addition, one concert was presented in each of the following cities: Zurich, Turin,
Florence, Munich, Budapest, Prague, Leipzig, Dresden, and Brussels. Despite the fact
that the conductor and almost two-thirds of the orchestra were of European origin,
Toscanini’s tour was hailed in the New York and European presses as an American
triumph. Parisian critic Henri Prunières attended the inaugural concerts of the tour at the
Paris Opéra on May 3 and 4. He gushed, “I have never heard any orchestral concerts
comparable to these. I do not know whether New York is aware of the crushing
superiority of American orchestras over those of Europe.” 1
Not everyone, however, assessed Toscanini’s efforts an undeniable success.
Cowell, in his 1931 article for Americana Annual, called the tour “a terrible fiasco from
the standpoint of American music.” Toscanini had presented standard works by
Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart, and Rossini and a few newer European pieces such as
Maurice Ravel’s Bolero and Ildebrand Pizzetti’s Rondo Veneziano, but none by an
American composer. Cowell interpreted this as “sure proof, to skeptical Europeans, that
Americans have written nothing worthy of hearing.” 2 In response, Cowell and Ives, as
1 Henri Prunières, “Toscanini Concerts in Paris,” New York Times (May 5, 1930), X7.
2 Henry Cowell, Americana Annual (1931), 514.
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organizer and financier, and Slonimsky, as the PAAC’s official conductor, began
organizing a series of concerts of new American music that they would present in Paris,
Berlin, Madrid, Dessau, Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Copenhagen, and Hamburg between
June 1931 and December 1932.
By February 1931 Cowell had drafted a new letter for distribution among PAAC
supporters. It stated that the organization’s new plans involved the presentation of
concerts of modern American orchestral works in European capitals. The rest of the letter
explains the rationale for this endeavor:
It is unfortunately the case that the few American compositions which have been
performed in Europe have rarely been our most serious or most original works,
with the result that we have gained the reputation in Europe of being able to
produce only [handwritten in Ives’s hand: “jazz or conventional imitation of
European music and”] music of a rather trivial order. We hope to help combat this
false impression, and plan to present concerts of serious American compositions
for orchestra in Paris, Vienna, and perhaps Berlin during the summer and fall of
1931. 3
Presenting concerts of new American music in Europe was not a novel proposition for
Cowell. Charles Seeger had recalled that as early as 1916 he and Cowell had together
planned to present tone clusters and string piano techniques in Europe as uniquely
American innovations. 4 The PAAC organizers were also likely spurred on by a rivalry
with the Copland-Sessions group, who had presented a “Concert of Works By Young
Americans” in June 1929 in Paris’s Salle Chopin. With concerts in Europe, Cowell, Ives,
and Slonimsky intended to prove that American music had more original, native
expression than could be conveyed by jazz or conservative imitations of European styles.
That some of the Latin American works included on the programs were stylistically less
radical than their U.S. counterparts was seemingly of no consequence to Cowell.
3 Form letter written by Henry Cowell with hand-written notations by Ives, February 16, 1931. Henry
Cowell Papers.
4 Michael Hicks, Henry Cowell, Bohemian. (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2002), 109.
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Unlike the Copland-Sessions group, the PAAC did not promote a clearly defined
musical aesthetic. Its programs contained pieces that spanned the gamut of modern music
in the Americas. Not surprisingly, one of the observations made most often by U.S. music
critics concerned the group’s great diversity of musical styles. These critics, notably
Philip Hale, often dismissed that diversity as poor organization or lack of vision. Hale
and others failed to recognize that purposeful diversity, or “collective difference,” was a
strategy for approaching European audiences by collaborative force. As used in the
context of the PAAC, the principle of collective difference describes both the stylistic
diversity present on PAAC concerts and also the ultimate goal of that diversity, which
was to reverse the flow of musical culture from west to east. As was evident in certain
compositions the organization presented in Europe, diversity of musical idioms within a
single work was also a way these composers attempted internationalism. 5 Charles Seeger
summarized the spirit of collective difference in 1932: “The opportunity to contemplate
the unconventional in the full panoply of its latent possibilities is actually more real, more
present, in America—yes, more practical.” 6 The two concerts that took place in Paris in
June 1931 are now the events for which the PAAC is best known. The organizers’
original idea was to take Slonimsky’s Boston Chamber Symphony on tour in Europe, but
they ultimately decided that hiring local orchestras and conductors would cost less and
ensure repeat performances. Unfortunately, many conductors, with the exception of
Anton Webern, were unwilling to participate, and Slonimsky most often took the role
upon himself. As the previous chapter presented a chronology of the concerts in New
York and Cuba, the following discussion follows the sequence of the PAAC’s European
concerts. In addition, it includes brief discussions of many of the works presented on
those concerts to illuminate the degree of stylistic difference present within each
program.
5 See, for example, the discussion of Weiss’s American Life below, or the discussions of Varèse’s
Ionisation and Cowell’s Ostinato Pianissimo in chapter one.
6 Charles Seeger, “Carl Ruggles,” The Musical Quarterly 18/4 (October 1932), 587.
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Paris, June 6 and 11, 1931
Paris in the 1920s and 30s was a sister city to New York in many respects. It was
arguably the musical capital of Europe and a major destination for Americans living and
traveling abroad, since the U.S. dollar remained strong against the franc throughout the
1920s. Paris was a place where artists and entertainers of the Harlem Renaissance, such
as Josephine Baker, Bricktop, and Duke Ellington, felt welcome and where their careers
flourished. Young American composers from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Mexico, the
United States, and Uruguay flocked there to study and have their works performed.
Paris also had a long history of musical spectacle and provocative concert series,
which made it a prime location to launch the PAAC’s European offensive. In the 1910s
alone, concerts of new music and the Ballets Russes created a climate of sensation and
exoticism. After World War I, however, organizations emphasized the performance of
French music. The revived Concerts Pasdeloup (1918) debuted works by Honegger,
Ravel, Roussel, and Saint-Saëns. Serge Koussevitzky and other conductors presented
series of new music concerts, many dedicated to the works of individual French
composers. A new atmosphere of conservatism, in which spirituality and an interest in
Catholicism played a large role, had also settled over Paris. Many French composers
returned to more conservative forms and styles. Wanda Landowska and Nadia Boulanger
both presented concerts of early music. Composers wrote works based on religious
figures, especially those who were examples of French patriotism, such as Jeanne d’Arc. 7
In June 1931 the PAAC concerts forced several French reviewers to reminisce about the
radical concerts of the early 1920s, such as the Concerts Golschmann, which presented
music of Les six, or the earlier Concerts Pasdeloup, which had premiered Schoenberg’s
Five Orchestral Pieces.
For his Parisian debut Slonimsky engaged the for-hire “Orchestre des Concerts
Straram” founded by Walther Straram in 1925. Straram’s orchestra, with which Serge
7 Joan of Arc was a popular subject. Honegger composed his dramatic oratorio Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher
(Joan of Arc at the stake) in 1934. Carl Theodor Dreyer’s film La passion de Jeanne d’Arc (1928) was
based on the novel Jeanne d’Arc by Joseph Delteil, a work that won the Prix femina, an annual French
literary prize, in 1925.
96

Koussevitzky had begun his conducting career, specialized in new music. 8 Both concerts
were held in the 1000-seat Salle Gaveau completed in 1906. Slonimsky included a few
pieces on the June 6 program meant to surprise the Parisian audience. The first work he
presented was Adolph Weiss’s American Life (1929), which represents an unlikely fusion
of jazz elements and an atonal idiom. 9 Though Cowell, Varèse, and others publicly
decried jazz as an abomination and not representative of the best in American music, it
was jazz, albeit infused with a more “serious” harmonic underpinning, that Slonimsky
gave primacy of place on the first program. American Life combines syncopations,
trombone glissandi, saxophones, a brushed snare drum, and a high hat-like suspended
cymbal with a mostly free atonal harmonic structure. The opening theme presents a piano
scotch snap figure that rises tentatively to a forte apex only to suddenly tumble downward
in a series of syncopations. (Example 3.1 shows a reduction of mm. 1-3.) The following
“Foxtrot” section, which returns at the end, creating a loose ABA form, features a
trumpet solo to which an atonal, lurching melody and barline-crossing syncopations lend
a sense of carelessness. A middle “Blues” section contains mournful English horn and
soprano saxophone solos with flute interpolations in call-and-response style. The Native
American presence in the New World is included in the form of an “Indian drum”
relegated to a solemn marching figure in the blues section. With the benefit of historical
perspective, several elements in Weiss’s work now combine to create a cautionary tale, a
timely commentary on the excesses of the 1920s that had proved unsustainable. Parisians
loved the easy good humor of jazz, and they did not understand Weiss’s dour
interpretation of American life. Several critics noted the jazz elements in the work but
were confounded by its atonal severity and “lack of smiling irony.” 10 One notable
exception was Emile Vuillermoz, who wrote that the work possessed “an inherent vitality
that was quite irresistible.” 11
8 Straram was born Walther Marrast (1876-1933). Stravinsky had conducted Straram’s orchestra in the first
recording of his Sacre du printemps in 1929.
9 American Life was the first work published in the New Music Orchestra Series in 1932. For this
publication, either Cowell or Weiss assigned it the subtitle “Scherzo jazzoso.”
10 Paul Dambly, “Musique,” A Paris, June 26, 1931. Unattributed translation found in Cowell Papers.
11 Emile Vuillermoz, Excelsior. June 15, 1931 Cowell Papers.
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Example 3.1. Adolph Weiss, American Life, mm. 1-3.
The second piece on the first Paris program was Ives’s Three Places in New
England (1903-1914; rev. 1929). Slonimsky had premiered the work in a Boston
Chamber Orchestra concert in Town Hall, New York, in January 1931. In the same year
he would go on to conduct it in Boston, Paris, and Havana. 12 The work has since become
so renowned to audiences familiar with American music that it needs little introduction
here. 13 Slonimsky programmed Three Places in New England not only because of its
excellence but also because it demonstrated an independent and specifically American
brand of musical modernism. He emphasized this point in the program notes, writing that
the work had “anticipated the Sacre by about ten years . . . Would you believe he has
never heard nor seen one note of Stravinsky?” 14 Though Henry Prunières concluded
12 Slonimsky had planned to premiere Three Places in New England at the eighth festival of the ISCM in
Liège, Belgium in September 1930, but the international committee rejected the work. Bernard Wagenaar’s
Sinfonietta was chosen instead to represent the United States. Wagenaar (1894-1971) was born in the
Netherlands and had been a U.S. citizen for three years. For a list of works performed at the festival see
Edwin Evans, “The Liège Festival,” The Musical Times (October 1, 1930), 898.
13 For a very brief description of this piece, see James B. Sinclair, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Music of
Charles Ives (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999). A more thorough discussion of Ives’s
“places,” as well as a thoughtful treatment of the third movement, “The Housatonic at Stockbridge,” can be
found in Denise Von Glahn, The Sounds of Place: Music and the American Cultural Landscape (Boston,
MA: Northeastern University Press, 2003), 64-109.
14 Nicolas Slonimsky, Program notes June 6, 1931 (Cowell Collection).
98

(without explanation) that Ives “knows his Schoenberg,” 15 other critics acknowledged
Ives as a gifted forerunner of modern developments in Europe. Several singled out the
first movement, “The ‘St. Gaudens’ in Boston Common (Colonel Robert Gould Shaw
and his Colored Regiment),” for special praise for its fusion of Civil War songs such as
the “Battle Cry of Freedom” with folk and popular tunes such as Stephen Foster’s “Old
Black Joe.”
Next, Slonimsky conducted Ruggles’s Men and Mountains (1924). This was the
chamber orchestra version published in 1927 in New Music. Ruggles did not arrange the
modern version, which is scored for a much larger orchestra, until 1936. Like many of
Ruggles’s works, Men and Mountains avoids the repetition of a single pitch until nine or
ten others have sounded. The overall tonal atmosphere, therefore, is one of pervasive
dissonance, though it is not based on a twelve-tone system. Nevertheless, Paul Le Flem
was not alone in judging the work “completely Schoenbergian, in spite of the fact that the
composer seems to want to guard against any such influence.” 16 Vuillermoz was similarly
puzzled about “the almost European banality” 17 of the principal theme of the third
movement.
The following work, Cowell’s Synchrony (1930), was originally conceived as a
multimedia collaborative with Martha Graham. Synchrony was to be an experiment with
the idea that a composition should be a synthesis of the arts, without any one of the
elements (in this case, music, dance, or stylized lighting) taking precedence. For the
work’s premiere in Paris, Cowell created an orchestral version and asserted that the title
referred to the enmeshing of the musical elements contained in the work. In its orchestral
version, Synchrony exhibits a first-movement symphonic form. It opens with a long
statement by a solo trumpet leading to two main themes and a section of development.
Synchrony was apparently successful with the public. After the concert, Slonimsky
15 Henry Prunières, “American Compositions in Paris,” New York Times (July 12, 1931), X6.
16 Paul Le Flem, Comoedia (June 8, 1931) Unattributed translation found in Cowell Papers.
17 Emile Vuillermoz, Excelsior (June 15, 1931) Unattributed translation found in Cowell Papers.
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elated to Cowell, “the final gong was very impressive. I let it sound for about two
minutes and no one budged in the audience.” 18
Roldán’s La rebambaramba, actually a suite from the ballet of the same name,
was among the more favored works by the audience and some critics. Roldán had
conceived La rebambaramba, composed between 1927 and 1928, as a ballet in two acts
with a scenario by Alejo Carpentier. The first movement of the suite, in a lilting 6/8
rhythm, is actually the finale of the first act of the ballet. The second movement is a
“comparsa lucumí,” (Lucumí procession) characterized by driving cinquillo rhythms
throughout. The third is entitled “Comparsa de la culebra” (play of the snake). Slonimsky
repeated the final movement, a vivacious dance that features Afro-Cuban percussion
instruments including the quijada (jawbone of an ass), claves, maracas and güiro.
Reviews of La rebambaramba were varied. Conceding that it was “fresh and rhythmic . .
. sympathetic and very much alive” and evocative of “magic, brutality, and eroticism,” Le
Flem called Roldán’s use of Afro-Cuban percussion “indiscreet and at times detrimental
to the orchestration.” 19 Jules Casadesus considered the work the only original one on the
program, calling Roldán “a more colonial Villa-Lobos [with] a certain talent for the
impressionistic sketch, for the large spots of instrumental color and for the stylization of
the popular idiom.” 20
Critics turned out in droves to the second concert on June 11, due partly to the
success of the June 6 concert and partly to Varèse’s involvement with publicity. In the
seats of the Salle Gaveau were “Prokoffiev [sic], Honegger, the entire brigade of the
press (twenty-five critics, correspondents, etc.), artists, writers, [and] composers.” 21 This
time, the opening work was Pedro Sanjuán’s Sones de Castilla. Dedicated to Manuel de
Falla, this work is in four movements: “Crepúsculo en la meseta” (Twilight on the
plateau), “Baile del pandero” (Tambourine dance), “Paramera” (Woman from Páramo),
18 Nicolas Slonimsky to Henry Cowell (June 23, 1931) Cowell Papers.
19 Paul Le Flem, Comoedia (June 8, 1931) Unattributed translation found in Cowell Papers.
20 Jules Casadesus, “Les Concerts,” L’Oeuvre (June 11, 1931) Unattributed translation found in Cowell
Papers.
21 Slonimsky to Cowell (June 23, 1931) Cowell Papers.
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and “Ronda” (Round). Coincidentally, the tambourine in the Tambourine Dance is
inexplicably stripped of its jingles as in Cowell’s Ostinato Pianissimo (discussed in
chapter one). In contrast to most of the other PAAC members’ works, Sanjuán’s shows
no experimental temperament. He strove above all for the purity of design. Many critics
showed their appreciation since his work most closely resembled French composition. Le
Flem noted approvingly that Sanjuán “only borrows those things from the contemporary
vocabulary that pertain strictly to him.” 22
Chávez’s Energía, on the other hand, was a thoroughly ultramodern work, and
critics did not know quite what to make of it. Chávez had written the work, at Varèse’s
request, for an I.C.G. concert in 1925. He finished it too late for that concert, and Energía
premiered on June 11 in Paris. As the title suggests, constant movement marks this
chamber work, which contains three sections that are played without pause. Like some of
the percussion ensemble works discussed in chapter one, the scoring of Energía is
divided into timbral layers: winds (piccolo, flute, and bassoon), brass (horn, trumpet, and
bass trombone), and strings (viola, cello, and double bass). These layers remain highly
stratified throughout, with very limited interaction between the instrument groups. A
visual representation of this stratification appears in Example 3.2. Counterpoint of
rhythms appears frequently in Energía, especially figures such as two against three, three
against four, and four against five. Accelerated rhythmic figures also appear, as in
Russell’s Fugue and Ardévol’s Fuga (discussed in Chapter 1). Chávez also wrote
extended techniques for the strings, such as glissandos in double stops (m. 18) and whole
passages marked “Scrape” (mm. 46-59, Example 3.2). Though Energía sounds more
futuristic than neo-primitive, critics couldn’t help but conjure images of Aztec ritual.
André Coeuroy colorfully described the work’s composer as “a cruelly refined Mexican
who nails his harmonies to the torture block while he dances a mad scalp dance around
them.” 23 Paul Le Flem conceded that Chávez was unlike his fellow Latin American
composers; one who “does not pitch his tent in some verdant, shady grove.” He still,
22 Paul Le Flem, Comoedia (June 15, 1931) Unattributed translation found in Cowell Papers.
23 André Coeuroy, “Découverte de l’Amerique,” Gringoire (June 12, 1931) Unattributed translation found
in Cowell Papers.
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however, attributed to the work a mystical quality, curiously positing that this very
ultramodern work “possesses a strange power.” 24
Example 3.2. Carlos Chávez, Energía, mm. 35-36. (Melville, NY: Belwin Mills, 1968), 12.
24 Paul Le Flem, Comoedia (June 15, 1931) Unattributed translation found in Cowell Papers.
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Of Carlos Salzedo’s Preambule et Jeux, for harp solo, flute, oboe, bassoon, and
string quintet (1929), several critics noted only that the French Salzedo, though he had
recently become a naturalized U.S. citizen, was not yet Americanized in terms of his
music. Moreover, his Preambule et Jeux had already been heard in Paris three times.
Because of this, most reviewers declined to comment.
The next work on the June 11 program was by Caturla, who had studied with
Nadia Boulanger (1925-27) and returned to Cuba from Paris in 1928 eager to incorporate
Afro-Cuban elements into his compositions. One of his most successful results was the
symphonic work Bembé: Afro-Cuban Movement (1929). By June 1931 Slonimsky had
already conducted Bembé in Boston, New York and Havana. Prior to that, however, it
had premiered at the Salle Gaveau in Paris in December 1929 as part of a concert series
given by French composer Marius-François Gaillard. At its first hearing Bembé’s
combination of syncopations and prominent percussion reminded some Parisian
reviewers of jazz; one surprisingly prescient critic alluded to Langston Hughes’s
collection The Weary Blues, which had been published in 1926. 25 Bembé, which evokes
Lucumí dance ritual, is scored for flute, oboe, English horn, clarinet, bass clarinet,
bassoon, 2 horns, C trumpet, trombone, and a battery of percussion meant to imitate
Afro-Cuban instruments: snare drum, suspended cymbal, bass drum, and tam-tam. In the
Cuban journal Musicalia, Caturla had firmly announced his stance on the use of Afro-
Cuban instruments in concert music: “To mobilize a drum battery in a symphony or to
play maracas or bongos in a symphonic poem . . . constitutes the greatest blasphemy, the
worst affront that can be inflicted on the music of the fatherland.” 26 In this respect he
disagreed with his compatriot Roldán, whose La rebambaramba incorporated maracas,
quijada, bongos, and güiro. Bembé is marked by sesquialtera, a type of hemiola usually
in 6/8 that either alternates or superimposes duple and triple meter within a group of six
eighth notes. Though this metric pattern has a long history in Spain, it has often been seen
as deriving more immediately from the Americas, particularly the Caribbean. As such, it
forms what Peter Manuel called an “iconic Latin-Americanism” that pervaded elements
25 Hughes’s later associations with Caturla and Roldán are discussed in Chapter 4.
26 Translated by and quoted in Charles W. White, Alejandro García Caturla: A Cuban Composer in the
Twentieth Century, (Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press, 2003), 56.
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of American popular culture in the twentieth century. 27 Other types of polyrhythms are
present in the lively percussion writing that captured critics’ attention. In measures 83-85,
for example, Caturla assigned different subdivisions of the beat to the suspended cymbal,
snare drum, and bass drum, which exchanged rhythms in each measure (Example 3.3).
Example 3.3. Alejandro García Caturla, Bembé: An Afro-Cuban Movement, mm. 83-87 (Paris: Senart,
1930), 9.
With its infectious Afro-Cuban charm, Bembé was well received in Paris. Vuillermoz
called it “full of frenzied life and an irresistible magic.” Paul Dambly wrote that it
brought out “the warmth of the Cuban native.” Even Prunières considered it “not wholly
lacking in interest.”
Another work on the June 11 concert that had previously been performed was
Wallingford Riegger’s Three Canons for Woodwinds (1930). Adolph Weiss had
conducted the chamber work on a PAAC concert in New York on March 10, 1931. It was
published in New Music in July 1932, an edition that contained biographical notes in
27 This is evident in such works as Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story: “I like to live in Ame-ri-ca.”
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which Riegger explained his conservative Midwestern musical upbringing and his
subsequent conversion to atonality. He recalled both hissing with youthful intolerance at
the premiere of Scriabin’s Poème de l’extase as well as hearing his own Study in Sonority
hissed at at its Philadelphia debut in 1929. Part of the first graduating class (1907) of the
Institute of Musical Art, Riegger (1885-1961) went on to study at the Berlin Hochschule
für Musik. Three Canons exemplifies Richard Franko Goldman’s description of
Riegger’s music as “clarity without naïveté, force without bombast . . . independence
without rootlessness.” 28 The work is scored for flute, oboe, clarinet, and bassoon. These
are not strict canons but rather loose structures built from gestures playfully exchanged
between instruments, as in Example 3.4. As Slonimsky wrote in the program notes for
June 11, Riegger “never abandon[ed] musical expression in favor of a principle.” Riegger
has described Three Canons and a few of his other works as being based on “dissonant
harmonies of motion and repose” (dominant and tonic in function). Similarly, he
attributed his penchant for contrapuntal writing to a “return to the kinetic origins of
music.” With this he joined Varèse and Cowell in writing music that was either
composed for or adapted to choreography by Martha Graham, Charles Weidman, Hanya
Holm and other pioneers of modern dance. Of the June 11 performance, Slonimsky wrote
to Cowell, “there was a slight demonstration against Riegger’s canons.” Vuillermoz, one
of the few reviewers to comment on the work, wrote that it was “written in such a
harassed and roundabout way that it was hardly a pleasure for their listener to follow the
intricate pattern of the themes.”
28 Richard F. Goldman and Wallingford Riegger, “The Music of Wallingford Riegger,” The Musical
Quarterly 36/1 (January 1950), 50.
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Example 3.4. Wallingford Riegger, Three Canons for Woodwinds, mm. 21-25. (San Francisco, CA: New
Music, 1932), 4.
The final piece performed on the evening of June 11 was Varèse’s Intègrales,
which, according to Slonimsky, “brought down the house.” Intègrales had premiered on
an ICG concert in 1925. The work was different than any other on the two programs.
Consistent with Varèse’s other works of the period, Integrales strictly avoids thematic
development, focusing instead on movement of sound masses. Despite this radically new
concept, the critics’ comments show that they had intimate knowledge of the score and of
Varèse’s aims. Indeed, he was close friends with several of them, and their reviews bear
one striking resemblance to each other: they all stressed the work’s expressive power as
well as its intellectual qualities. Le Flem posited, “One might almost call [Intègrales]
scientific, were it not for the sensitive feeling.” Coeuroy wrote that it “managed to create
an impression both lyrical and cerebral.” Vuillermoz enthused, “In spite of its scientific
title, this composition is not purely cerebral. It is perhaps the most human of all those we
heard.” Schloezer countered claims that Intègrales was “not music” by asserting that the
work “unfolds itself not in time, but exists simply in space. The sounds and noises are
organized and consequently, [the work] is music.”
Overall, the critics shared favorable impressions of these concerts. The most
admiring reviews came from Emile Vuillermoz (1878-1960), French composer and critic
and friend of Varèse. In his youth, Vuillermoz had been a member of Les Apaches, an
informal group of Parisian musicians, painters, and critics who took the name of the
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Native American tribe to symbolize their artistic independence. 29 Of the first concert he
praised the “frankness and real youthful spirit” with which Americans approached
composition, as well as their “primitive instincts, spontaneity, and happy innocence,” 30 he
found lacking in contemporary French music. After the June 11 concert Vuillermoz
enthused that all the works presented “abound with generosity sincerity, [and] vitality.”
He found Ives’s Three Places in New England particularly refreshing, especially the “real
discovery” of polytonality in the clashing village bands of the second movement.
On the differences between American and European composers, Parisian
reviewers also had much to say. Some, such as Le Flem, seemed both delighted to hear
new works from the Americas and was indignant at the PAAC’s motives in presenting
them. He was blunt: “I even suspect them of feeling a little sorry for poor Europe. They
think that its great era will soon be over and that it will then hand its jurisdiction and its
high artistic command to newer countries where tradition bears less weight.” Raymond
Petit echoed this sentiment while simultaneously inveighing against modern European
music. Of the Americans, he wrote, “They claim to turn their backs on Europe, and often
they do nothing but fall into its furrow. I thought more than once during these two
evenings of the eternal history of the cyclist and the gas-burner.” 31
Critics also expressed strong opinions on the similarities and differences between
composers in the Americas as presented in these concerts. Overall, they found the Latin
Americans less shackled to academic modernism than their U.S. counterparts. But some
reviews dared to draw comparisons between these composers of very different
tendencies. Schloezer identified one characteristic common among all the composers: a
love for the quality of sound. “Fundamentally, there is no difference between the
American composer who studies at the Conservatory in Fontainebleau and the one who
follows in the wake of Schoenberg and uses atonality to the last degree. All of these
29 Members of Les Apaches saw indigenous folksong and children’s songs as primary sources of artistic
renewal and considered Debussy a musical prophet. They held meetings in each other’s homes to discuss
aesthetics and work on collaborative projects. Composer members included Maurice Ravel, Maurice
Delage, Igor Stravinsky, and Florent Schmitt.
30 Emile Vuillermoz, Excelsior (June 8, 1931) Unattributed translation found in Cowell Papers.
31 Referring to Stravinsky and Schoenberg.
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musicians seem to turn their invention and ideal towards an orgy of sound!” 32 Several
other critics agreed.
The PAAC’s first attempt to stir up interest in American composition abroad was
successful in surprising ways. In January 1932 Ives received a letter from the Director of
a newly formed Department of American Music in The American Library in Paris,
requesting copies of his works. Her purpose, she wrote to Ives, was to create a collection
of American music in Paris, “where American compositions attract more and more
attention. We are very anxious to have the works of the most important and
representative of American composers, especially of the modern ones.” 33
Paris, February 21 and 25, 1932
Given the success of the 1931 concerts with the public and critics alike, a
comparison between the 1931 and 1932 Paris programs shows stark differences in
repertoire. The 1931 concerts featured, above all, the principle of collective difference.
Almost half of the works performed in the 1931 concerts were Latin American. Though
each work posited its own style, each was unapologetically modern, and, with the
exception of Three Places in New England, all had been composed since 1924. Attention,
good or bad, was the PAAC’s goal, and its organizers courted critical opprobrium.
Slonimsky was pleased that “irrespective of praise or condemnation, we got the attention
of all musical and intellectual Paris.” 34 In 1932 the venue changed as well. Instead of the
smaller Salle Gaveau, the 1932 events were held in the 2,400-seat Salle Pleyel, which had
been completed in 1927.
According to Slonimsky in a 1974 interview with Rita Mead, the 1932 programs
were more conservative because the Pan-American Association did not technically
sponsor them. He said that the 1932 Paris concerts were “Not Pan-American concerts. I
made such a resounding success [in 1931], mostly because critics couldn’t understand
how anyone could conduct those pieces.” The 1932 events, he explained, were
32 Boris de Schloezer, Les Beaux-Arts, June 26, 1931 Unattributed translation found in Cowell Papers.
33 Letter from Claire Huchet to Charles Ives, January 8, 1932. Cowell Papers.
34 Letter from Nicolas Slonimsky to Henry Cowell, Paris, June 23, 1931. Cowell Papers.
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“something commercial. . . . my managers hired the Orchestre Symphonique de Paris. . .
[and] they asked Rubenstein. They wanted some attraction and since my program
contained Varèse and Ives and stuff like that, they realized that wouldn’t bring in any
money, and so they consented to do the Bartók because we had to have it modern.”
Indeed, the program does not mention the PAAC (see Figure 3.1), and the presence of
Brahms, Mussorgsky, and Mozart would preclude any notion of this being a strictly
PAAC-sponsored event. Slonimsky goes on to say, however, “Ives paid for the
rehearsals, and so the concert took place. The same arrangement was made in Berlin.” 35 I
have included a discussion of the 1932 Paris concerts here for three reasons: Ives partially
funded them; six out of the eleven works performed were from the PAAC repertoire; and
critics treated these events as an extension of the previous season’s concerts.
Both 1932 concerts began with Mozart. On February 21, his Serenade No. 3 in D
(1773) was followed by Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain and Béla Bartók’s
performance of his first Piano Concerto. Next, Slonimsky presented a new suite of Ives
pieces, comprised of “In the Cage,” from his Set for Theatre Orchestra, “The Fourth of
July” from his Holidays Symphony, and “Elegy” from his Orchestral Set No. 2. 36 “In the
Cage” is an orchestration of a song Ives wrote in 1906 entitled “The Cage.” In his
Memos, Ives called the original song “a study of how chords of fourths and fifths may
throw melodies away from a set tonality. A drum is supposed to be the leopard’s feet
going pro and con. Technically, the principal thing in this movement is to show that a
song does not necessarily have to be in any one key to make musical sense.” 37
Unfortunately, it did not make much sense to some Parisian critics. A correspondent for
the Chicago Tribune was left wondering “whether it had begun or ended.” 38 The critic for
Le Ménestrel was similarly perplexed: “If it is the ennui of living that the author has
pretended to translate musically, then he has succeeded perfectly.” 39 “The Fourth of
35 Nicolas Slonimsky interview with Rita Mead, October 29, 1974. Cowell Papers. The Berlin concerts, a
month after the Paris concerts in 1932, were clearly presented as PAAC events.
36 Conceived as Elegy for Stephen Foster and later titled Elegy to Our Forefathers.
37 Charles Ives, Memos, ed. John Kirkpatrick (New York: W.W. Norton, 1991), 56.
38 Not signed, “Review” Chicago Tribune (Paris) February 24, 1932 Cowell Papers.
39 Marcel Belvianes, Le menestrel (February 26, 1932) Unattributed translation found in Cowell Papers.
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July,” with its quotations from traditional songs and layering of independent and
contrasting elements, fared better. Belvianes described it as a “musical evocation,
picturesque and amusing, of the sounds of a vast crowd in a joyous celebration.” 40
Cowell’s Appositions, like his Synchrony, represented his experiments with the
respective roles of music and dance. The one-movement version for orchestra that
Slonimsky conducted on this concert is now lost. Two arrangements survive, however:
one for piano and another for two violins, viola, cello, and bass. Both surviving versions
are in two movements. The orchestral work, if it resembles the string reduction, is a play
on rapidly alternating statements of instrument groups. This is apparent in the first two
systems of the string score, shown in Example 3.5.
Figure 3.1. Concert program. Paris, February 21, 1932 (Cowell Papers, New York Public Library for the
Performing Arts).
40 Ibid.
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Example 3.5. Henry Cowell, Two Appositions, first movement, mm. 1-7.
It is a pity the orchestral score is lost, since the reviewers commented only on Cowell’s
unusual orchestration. One wrote that Appositions “discloses this musician’s devotion to
the cause of the new in instrumental combinations.” 41 Another mentioned only that it was
“orchestrated in a very up-to-date manner.” 42 Unfortunately, Slonimsky wrote nothing
about the work in his program notes.
Appositions was followed by the first and third movements of Dane Rudhyar’s To
the Real: Symphonic Triptych (1919-20), “Passion” and “Initiation.” Like Varèse and
Salzedo, Rudhyar was a French expatriate and naturalized American. Also a poet, painter,
theosophist, and aesthetician, Rudhyar was heavily influenced by the work of philosopher
Henri Bergson. Unlike some of his PAAC colleagues, he was decidedly unsystematic in
his approach to dissonance, choosing to view himself not as an intentional composer but
41 Not signed, Chicago Tribune (Paris, February 24, 1932) Cowell Papers.
42 Marcel Belvianes, Le Ménestrel (February 26, 1932) Unattributed translation found in Cowell Papers.
111

as a medium. Slonimsky described To the Real as being based on “a simple liturgical
melody, which develops and is affirmed in a final apotheosis.” 43 The work went without
critical comment.
Caturla’s Tres danzas cubanas ended the first program. This work was
orchestrated as part of Caturla’s studies with Nadia Boulanger between 1925 and 1927.
Even before he left Paris, it was published by Senart. Tres danzas is composed for a very
large orchestra. Like Bembé, however, it does not utilize Afro-Cuban percussion. Instead,
it uses a battery comprised of timpani, triangle, tenor drum, cymbal, bass drum, and tam-
tam to evoke Afro-Cuban dance. Curiously, critics mainly ignored this work; because of
its striking differences to the Cowell, Rudhyar, and Varèse pieces they likely did not
know how to contextualize it in order to comment on the American works as a whole.
Only two Pan-American works were given on the February 25 concert. Nestled
between Mozart’s Symphony No. 1 and Milhaud’s Seconde suite symphonique
(“Protee”), which Prunières wrote seemed “purely classic by comparison” to the
American works, 44 was Ruggles’s Sun-treader, what Charles Seeger called the magnum
opus of Ruggles’s mature period. This work resembles the late-Romanticism of Strauss
or Wagner without their lushness; it requires a very large orchestra with heavy brass and
is stridently dissonant. In it, Ruggles strove for sustained melodic lines with non-serial
avoidance of repeated tones. As in many methods used by the PAAC’s U.S. contingent,
his technique of avoiding repetition exemplified experimental or quasi-scientific methods
of composition. Seeger explained, however, that Ruggles considered a melody with many
repeated tones “likely to exhibit functional weakness, a lack of melodic momentum.” 45
Despite the scientific veneer and the historical ties evident in its rigorous counterpoint,
the primary objective, as in many works by Cowell and Varèse, was to express movement
in sound. Such a conception was alien to Parisian reviewers, many of whom declined to
comment. One simply wrote, “Of this work I should like to speak neither good nor ill; I
43 Nicolas Slonimsky, Program notes, February 25, 1932. Cowell Papers.
44 Henry Prunières, “Electra in Paris/Concerts and Other Things,” New York Times (March 20, 1932), X7.
45 Charles Seeger, “Carl Ruggles,” 587.
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prefer to admit that it left absolutely no impression with me.” 46 After Sun-treader Artur
Rubinstein played Brahms’s second Piano Concerto. The program ended with a work by
Varèse, who was again hailed as the highlight of the series. While in 1931 critics had
emphasized the emotional qualities of Intègrales, they treated Arcana, with its shrill,
metallic sonorities, as futuristic machine music. Belvianes wrote that Arcana was well
“suited for the translation of the intense machine-life of the modern world. . . . [Varèse’s]
themes are quick and powerful, his orchestration brutal; there is a hardness, a clashing, as
of forces that set a machine into action. The orchestra [gave] this work great power and
movement.” 47
Attempting to find common threads among the American works, Florent Schmitt
concluded, “all of this music of composers who, in the immense United States of
America are probably ignorant of one another’s use of the same procedure; all of this
music, whether called Appositions, Toward the Real, or Cuban Dances . . . has a family
resemblance that appears to be the result of close collaboration.” 48 What Schmitt meant
by this is unclear. He may have decided that these works similarly emphasized the
depiction of movement in sound, whether in abstract gestures or dance. This seems a
stretch. No Parisian commentators, however, would go as far to find similarities between
PAAC works as critics in Berlin.
Berlin, March 5 and 10, 1932
After World War I Berlin became one of the major musical centers of the world
due to the progressive musical policies of politician and music education reformer Leo
Kestenberg during the Weimar Republic. Works by such composers as Bartók,
Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Milhaud and Honegger received important premières in Germany.
Notable musicians who lived in the city between 1927 and 1932 included Schoenberg,
Alexander von Zemlinsky, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Erich Kleiber, Otto Klemperer, Paul
Hindemith, Kurt Weill and Hanns Eisler. Despite the work of such musical progressives,
46 Marcel Belvianes, Le Ménestrel (March 4, 1932) Unattributed translation found in Cowell Papers.
47 Ibid.
48 Florent Schmitt, Le temps (February 27, 1932) Unattributed translation and original found in Cowell
Papers.
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a generation of older composers including Richard Strauss and Hans Pfitzner, sought a
return to Romantic ideals and an emphasis on a specifically German culture as opposed to
internationalism. The younger generation, too, was divided. Schoenberg, who had been
teaching in Berlin since 1925, favored the development of dodecaphony and
expressionism. Proponents of neue Sachlichkeit (new objectivity), on the other hand, such
as Paul Hindemith, turned away from music for art’s sake for a time and focused on
Gebrauchsmusik (music for use), which included composing for the cinema, radio,
amateurs, and children. Into this fray came foreign conductors and artists who were
welcomed by proponents of internationalism and often shunned by more conservative
members of Berlin’s musical life. Joel Sachs has written eloquently on the polarization of
musical ideology in the Weimar Republic. 49 This situation had implications for the
reception of the PAAC’s music in Berlin and Cowell planned accordingly. He asked
Slonimsky to “be careful in the programs not to be too Parisian in Berlin!” 50 Cowell
knew that his own work and that of Ruggles and Weiss would be well received there.
On March 5, 1932, Slonimsky conducted the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra in
Beethoven Hall. On March 10 he led the Michael Taube Chamber Orchestra in the
Bechstein Hall. The bifurcation of musical life in Berlin is evident in the reviews of the
1932 concerts. H. H. Stuckenschmidt and Josef Rufer, both students of Schoenberg and
prominent music critics, reserved their praise for Weiss and Cowell, both among the
composers who had fared worst in Paris. Other Berlin reviewers show a conservative
reluctance to hear the pieces on their own terms, unlike Parisian critics, who were more
willing to accept the works at face value. Ludwig Misch, noted scholar of Beethoven and
Brahms, concluded simply, “Pan-America makes music, but not very nice music.” 51
Decades later Sidney Robertson Cowell explained how the PAAC’s strategy for
presenting two concerts in each location sometimes had unintended consequences:
49 Joel Sachs, “Some Aspects of Musical Politics in Pre-Nazi Germany,” Perspectives of New Music 9/1
(Autumn-Winter 1970), 74-95.
50 Henry Cowell to Slonimsky, Berlin, (November 16, 1931) Cowell Papers.
51 Ives would have taken much pride in this statement. He frequently wrote disparagingly in his Memos
about such “nice music.”
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[Cowell] tried to arrange two concerts in the chief halls of any major musical
center, usually a week or two apart, with the idea that after critics had had their
fun and the initial shock had worn off, a second performance might draw people
who would really hear the music itself. On the continent this was often true, but in
England and the U.S. the sense of outrage had a moral tinge and seemed to
increase in the interval.
Since the PAAC never presented a concert in England, perhaps she was remembering
Cowell’s solo recitals of the 1920s. Regardless, this backfire certainly happened in
Berlin.
The earliest reviews were mixed, but even critics who judged the music
distasteful found something to praise. Many of them expressed appreciation for the
PAAC’s efforts and attempted to explain to their readers that the pieces represented a
new tendency toward “naturalism.” 52 A critic for the Vossische Zeitung suggested the
audience’s noisy protests “might have made Arnold Schoenberg jealous.” He asserted,
“Something is happening in America, while we, here in Europe, must wonder about our
own stagnation.” 53 Another conceded, “One left the hall with demonstrations of laughter,
whistling, applause, but no one was bored.” 54 Others, however, were more dubious. One
critic lambasted the PAAC for their presumption: “Evidently a sort of business
undertaking . . . The society has nothing to do with composers, for nothing more
disagreeable or presumptive than this band of dilettante noise-makers has ever been
experienced in a German concert hall . . . [this is] a music in every respect hideous and
without culture.” 55
As in the first Paris concert of 1931, Slonimsky opened the first Berlin program
with American Life. Heinrich Strobel praised Weiss’s combination of jazz elements with
52 Two different authors used the term Natürlichkeit. One hurled it as an insult: “Does the modern tempo of
American cities serve as a prototype? This leads only to ridiculous naturalism.” Another used it as an
explanation of futuristic sounds: “We see the manifestation of a new naturalism, which attempts to recreate
the sounds of noises, of the naturalism of a metropolis.”
53 M.M., Vossische Zeitung (March 6, 1932) Weiss’s translation found in Cowell Papers.
54 Stuckenschmidt, BZ am Mittag (March 7, 1932) Weiss’s translation found in Cowell Papers.
55 Momus, Das kleine Journal (March 7, 1932) Weiss’s translation found in Cowell Papers.
115

the twelve-tone system. Roldán’s La Rebambaramba was fairly well received, but mostly
because it was such a contrast to the ultramodern works. Strobel wrote, “it might not be
very original, but it has something to do with music.” Sun-treader spurred one reviewer
to write one of the twentieth century’s most colorful pieces of invective: “The Sun-
treader of Ruggles should have been called Latrine-treader.” 56 The more progressive
critics welcomed Cowell’s Synchrony and Varèse’s Arcana, praising their methodic
construction.
As the week wore on, critics became less charitable and more resentful. Reviews
that followed the second concert were unanimously negative. Ruth Crawford’s songs
“Rat Riddles” and “In High Grass” were applauded “in recognition of the soloist rather
than of the eccentricities of the music.” 57 Fritz Ohrmann of Signale wrote that the
program consisted of “non-music of the worst kind. I was soon out of the hall.” 58 Another
indignant reviewer felt justified in commenting on a performance he did not even attend:
“The Pan-American Association is nothing more than a business enterprise that
speculates on the lack of judgment of the public to sell its wares. There was a second
evening in the Bechsteinsaal. It was a matter of honor to remain distant.” 59 Still others,
missing the point of the experimental aspect of Americanism, suggested the composers
remediate themselves: “There is hope that thorough study of the classics will help them to
a higher artistic plane.” 60 Such assessments are clearly loaded with conservative political
ideology. Revealing a hint of the rising German spirit of Kultur, a national, not personal,
body of ideas and attitudes that would be distorted and used to bring the Nazi regime to
power, one author for the Berliner Boersenzeitung had been disappointed to find “not a
single characteristic feature. Nowhere is to be felt a center or common trait that might be
56 Paul Schwers, Allgemeine Musikzeitung, Berlin, March 18, 1932. Weiss’s translation: “The Sun Treader
of Ruggles ought to be rechristened Urinal Treader.” Slonimsky’s version above, found in his Lexicon of
Musical Invective, is most often quoted.
57 Ilse, Berliner Fremdenzeitung (March 14, 1932) Weiss’s translation found in Cowell Papers.
58 Fritz Ohrmann, Signale (March 16, 1932) Weiss’s translation found in Cowell Papers.
59 Paul Zschorlich, Deutsche Zeitung (Berlin; March 18, 1932) Weiss’s translation found in Cowell Papers.
60 Al. Hi., Neue Zeit des Westens (March 19, 1932) Weiss’s translation found in Cowell Papers.
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egarded an artistic mark of the white race in America.” 61 The PAAC’s organizers,
particularly Cowell, regarded their strategy of collective difference to have tremendous
potency. This approach worked decidedly against them, however, in a Germany that in a
few months would elect the National Socialist German Worker’s Party as the leading
party of the Reichstag. German national cultural ideology was directly opposed to the
PAAC’s internationalist mission to seek out and celebrate individual experiment and
innovation in the Americas.
Conservative German critics could neither find threads tying the PAAC works
together nor understand the juxtaposition of seemingly incompatible musical idioms in
the same piece. Walther Hirschberg assessed the whole affair as a miasma of
“Geschmacksverirrung und Geschmacksverwirrung” (error of taste and confusion of
taste). He was likely referring both to the programs as a whole and to works such as
Riegger’s Dichotomy, in which the composer consciously mitigated the rigidity of his
twelve-tone melodies with less rational, more expressive harmonic support. Hirschberg
concluded, “[These works] did not seem to me to possess any artistic value that only one
discussion would justify.” 62 Hugo Leichtentritt echoed this criticism a few months later:
“The orchestral compositions by Weiss, Ives, Roldán, Ruggles, Cowell, and Varèse were
different in style, tendency, and artistic value, proving that these composers had hardly
any aesthetic basis or any feeling for culture in sound.” 63 Whereas just two decades
before, many of Berlin’s critics would have lauded attempts at innovation and approved
of experiment, the conservative musical atmosphere of Gebrauchsmusik and national
socialism between the World Wars prevented them from finding much usefulness or
cohesion on the PAAC’s programs.
Other European Concerts 1931-1932
On November 23, 1931, Pedro Sanjuán conducted members of the Orquesta
Sinfónica de Madrid in a chamber concert at the Teatro de la Comedia. Madrid was not
unaccustomed to hearing contemporary music. The Sociedad Nacional de Música
61 Not signed, Berliner Boersenzeitung (no date), Weiss’s translation found in Cowell Papers.
62 Walther Hirschberg, Signale für die musikalische Welt (March 9, 1932), 212 (my translation).
63 Hugo Leichtentritt, Musical Times 73/1071 (May 1, 1932), 463 (my translation).
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sponsored many concerts of new French and Spanish music throughout the 1920s and
well into the 1930s, making Madrid an important center for new music in Spain. Sanjuán
presented Riegger’s Study in Sonority for ten violins, Ruggles’s Portals, his own Sones
de Castilla, and Cowell’s Symphonietta. According to Sanjuán, the concert was more or
less a success despite various obstacles in its preparation. In October, he had written to
Cowell that he wished to cancel the concert due to the uncertain political situation in
Spain. 64 Sanjuán changed his mind, however, and the performance took place the
following month. Unfortunately, there were other unforeseen problems. The program
originally included a work by Ives (probably Washington’s Birthday) and pieces by
Roldán and Caturla. On rehearsing the Ives, members of the orchestra protested that the
parts were confusing and the notes were too small. Also, the scores by Roldán and
Caturla that Sanjuán had planned to conduct never arrived. The final program consisted
of the four pieces listed above by Riegger, Ruggles, Cowell, and Sanjuán (shown in
Figure 3.2).
The absence of Latin American composers on a concert specifically billed as
“Pan-American” irritated the critics; two of them began their reviews by noting that the
concert seemed “the application of the Monroe Doctrine in the North American manner”;
that is, that “Pan-America is only for North Americans.” 65 Of the American pieces, the
critics liked only Riegger’s Study in Sonority for ten violins (or any multiple of ten). This
work alternates a unison melody with thick chordal textures that are highly dissonant.
This is the same work that had been hissed when Stokowski performed it with the
Philadelphia Orchestra in 1929. One critic found in both Riegger and Sanjuán “an
authentic modernism,” 66 as opposed to the works by Cowell and Ruggles.
64 In 1931 economic troubles rapidly turned Spain upside down. The previous year Dictator Primo de
Rivera lost the support of the military and was forced out of office. In April 1931 King Alfonso XIII, who
had endorsed Rivera’s dictatorship, fled the country after Republicans won local and municipal elections
and declared the Second Spanish Republic. The Republic did not have a constitution or stable leadership
until December. In October, Sanjuán wrote to Cowell, “Political uncertainty completely absorbs the
people’s attention: concert halls are empty.”
65 Adolfo Salazar, “La vida musical/Musica Panamericana y española—Orquesta sinfónica.” El sol
(November 24, 1931) and Juan del Brezo, “Concierto de Música Panamericana,” La voz (November 24,
1931) Cowell Papers (my translation).
66 Adolfo Salazar, El sol (November 24, 1931) Cowell Papers (my translation).
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In December 1931 Imre Weisshaus, who had settled in Dessau, presented two
concerts at the Bauhaus. 67 Both programs follow in Figure 3.3. The first concert on
December 1 featured works by Pan-American composers. Among the PAAC regulars
(Riegger, Chávez, Weiss, Cowell, Ives, and Rudhyar) were newcomers Vivian Fine,
Henry Brant, and Gerald Strang. The piano works are unspecified on the program, but
Cowell wrote to Ives on November 28 to tell him that Weisshaus would be performing
the “Emerson” movement of his Piano Sonata No. 2 “Concord Mass., 1840-1860.”
Cowell wrote to his parents, “The program at the Bauhaus went wonderfully – hall filled
– students roared with delight over my pieces, and demanded encore after encore. I
played six, and then stopped against the will of the audience. Kandinsky was delighted,
and asked to be remembered to you.” 68
67 Imre Weisshaus (1905-1987) was a Hungarian pianist, composer, and ethnomusicologist. He studied with
Bartók from 1921-1924 and was a member of Blanche Walton’s circle in New York. Weisshaus settled in
Germany in 1931 and led musical activities at the Bauhaus in Dessau. He is often known by a pseudonym,
Paul Arma. The Bauhaus was located at Dessau from 1925-1932.
68 Henry Cowell to Harry and Olive Cowell, December 4, 1931. Artist Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944)
taught at the Bauhaus from 1922 until 1933.
119

Figure 3.2. Concert program. Madrid, November 23, 1931 (Cowell Papers).
120

Figure 3.3. Concert program. Bauhaus, Dessau, December 1, 3, and 12, 1931 (Cowell Papers).
The second evening concert, though dedicated to European composers, included a work
by Caturla. Evidently either Weisshaus thought Caturla was Spanish or he deemed the
work a better fit within a European, rather than American, context.
A few days later, on December 8, Cowell gave a performance of piano works at
the offices of the Edition Adler in Berlin, a publishing house that issued American scores
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in collaboration with Cowell’s New Music Society. 69 After an introduction by H. H.
Stuckenschmidt, Cowell lectured on American music and then gave a short recital. He
described the event as “the Berlin repetition of the Dessau concert . . . and there will be
other Pan-Am music,” 70 but he did not mention Weisshaus’s presence or which works,
besides his, were performed.
On February 21, 1932, the same date as Slonimsky’s first Paris concert of the
1932 season, Anton Webern led a group of musicians from the Austrian chapter of the
ISCM in a concert of Pan-American works in the Wiener Konzerthaus. Figure 9 shows
the program. The event was sponsored by the American ambassador to Austria, Gilchrist
Baker Stockton, and included an introductory lecture by Paul Stefan, who later wrote a
review for Musical America. According to Stefan, the evening was “in every respect a
very gratifying program.” 71 Audience favorites were Cowell’s Sinfonietta and Ruggles’
Portals, which was repeated. Webern wrote that Weiss’s chamber symphony “went
perfectly, faultlessly.” 72 Erwin Stein observed, “there is as little uniformity of style
among modern composers in America as there is in Europe.” 73
Though no program is extant in the Slonimsky, Cowell, or Weiss archives, there
is evidence that just over one month later, on March 22, Nicolas Slonimsky conducted a
concert jointly sponsored by the PAAC and the Czech chapter of the ISCM. Cowell’s
correspondence with Slonimsky provides a few planning details. On November 1, 1931,
Cowell wrote:
Prague is today, really more important than Vienna as a modern music center. I
am now negotiating with the International Society Chapter there, and they are
willing to undertake the concert; they hope to be able to get, as a Prague
69 Frederick Charles Adler (1889-1959) was an English-German conductor who studied with Mahler.
According to Cowell, his Edition Adler also held an official European library of PAAC scores meant to
facilitate distribution to conductors. These scores were lost when Adler immigrated to the United States in
1933.
70 Henry Cowell to Olive Cowell, December 13, 1931 Cowell Papers.
71 Paul Stefan, “Works by Pan-American Composers,” Musical America (March 15, 1932) Cowell Papers.
72 Anton Webern to Adolph Weiss, Vienna, May 7, 1932.
73 Erwin Stein, “Modern Music in Vienna,” Christian Science Monitor (April 9, 1932).
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organization, a great reduction in the orchestra price for us, so that it would
amount to their contributing one third of the cost of the program. 74
Figure 3.4. Concert program. Vienna, February 21, 1932 (Cowell Papers).
On December 14 Cowell disclosed more detailed plans:
I have written to Mr. O. Ocadlik, Radio Journal, Korunni Tr. Narondi Dom,
Prague X11 to take the date of March 22nd in the Smetana Hall for the concert, so
this is now fast. It will be under the protection of the International Society for
Contemporary Music, Prague chapter, but given by the Pan Ams. I gave a
tentative program, which I said would be subject to any amount of change, in
74 Cowell to Slonimsky, Berlin, November 1, 1931.
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which I gave the names of Ives, Ruggles, (he will be very well liked in Prague – a
very serious atmosphere) Weiss, myself, Caturla, Roldán, and Chávez. I said you
would write him about the rehearsals, and also that you would send the program
notes in plenty of time to be translated into Czech (send in English). Ocadlik is
the head man of the International in Prague, not a concert manager, and we save a
manager’s fee there. 75
As of January 30 the concert was still underway, according to a report in the Musical
Courier. 76 On March 13 another press release mentioned that the forthcoming concert
was scheduled for March 22. 77 Unfortunately, the trail of evidence ends there. The
concert may or may not have taken place. Slonimsky did, however, lead a concert almost
two weeks later, on April 2, at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest (see Figure 3.5 for
the program). He conducted the Hungarian Symphony Orchestra in a concert that
included American Life, Ives’s Suite, La Rebambaramba, Men and Mountains,
Synchrony, Energía, and Intègrales. The final European concert took place on December
8, 1932, at Hamburg’s Musikhalle. The event, which was conducted by Gerhard Maasz,
was co-sponsored by the Hamburg chapter of the ISCM. (Program in Figure 3.6).
As 1932 drew to a close, so did the European activities of the PAAC. The
concerts they presented there, however, left an indelible mark. As vehemently as Berlin’s
critics had railed against Slonimsky’s presentations there, for the next few seasons every
concert of American music in Berlin was publicly compared to those events. On January
6, 1933, Howard Hanson conducted the Berlin Philharmonic in a program of American
works by Daniel Gregory Mason, Charles Tomlinson Griffes, Robert Russell Bennett,
Leo Sowerby, John Powell, William Grant Still, and Hanson’s own Romantic Symphony.
The Berlin correspondent for the New York Times noted on January 9, “the press
75 Cowell to Slonimsky, Berlin, December 14, 1931.
76 M.S., “Slonimsky Guest Conductor in Europe,” Musical Courier (January 30, 1932). “As representative
of the Pan-American Association of Composers he will present programs of American music in two
concerts with the Paris Symphony Orchestra on February 21 and 26; two concerts in Berlin on March 5 and
12 and a single concert each in Prague and Budapest, on March 22 and April 2.”
77 “New Music Edition Published by Cowell: Modern American Orchestral Works to Be Presented by
Well-Known Composer” Republican (Springfield, MA; March 13, 1932). “In Europe such concerts have
been arranged with . . . the Prague Radio Orchestra (March 22).”
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comments thus far have not been especially favorable to the works performed.” 78 In fact,
several critics wondered what happened to the radical young Americans they had heard
the previous season. A critic for the Berlin Tageblatt concluded, “Nothing was given
which was new or of worth. All such American music as Ives, Ruggles, Antheil,
Sessions, Varèse, and Cowell were left out. Instead was presented a bouquet of prosperity
music.” 79 French musicologist Andre Schaeffner agreed, writing that since Slonimsky’s
concerts, “Berlin’s interest in American modern music has grown considerably. There
had been debates over Ives, Ruggles, Varèse, Cowell, Copland, and Weiss. People were
eager to learn something about works from ‘over there.’” He concluded, “Howard
Hanson does not appear to be thoroughly informed on the status of modern American
production.” 80 In 1932 the PAAC had achieved, if only briefly, its goal of redefining
American music for Parisians and Berliners. This victory was short-lived in Berlin, since
many of the vibrant modern music institutions of Germany would be dismantled the
following year, and hundreds of musicians would be forced to leave their jobs. Many fled
the country, never to return.
78 Not signed, “Berlin Hails Hanson Offering Our Music.” New York Times (January 9, 1933), 22.
79 Not signed, Berlin Tageblatt (February 2, 1933). Translation by Adolph Weiss found in Cowell Papers.
80 Andre Schaeffner, “German Season under the Crisis,” 1932 Cowell Papers.
125

Figure 3.5. Concert program. Budapest, April 2, 1932. (Fleisher Collection, Free Library of Philadelphia,
courtesy of Gary Galván).
126

Figure 3.6. Concert program. Hamburg, December 8, 1932 (Cowell Papers).
Varèse’s Return to New York
By the following fall of 1933 Varèse, too, saw his opportunities in Europe dry up
and the political situation in France worsen. After his application for a Guggenheim grant
was rejected, he returned to the U.S. in August. He had been watching the PAAC’s
activities with rising interest from across the Atlantic, especially the addition of Aaron
Copland, Walter Piston, and Arthur Berger to the member roster. While Cowell was
elated (“You will notice the new additions to the Pans!” he wrote to Weiss), other PAAC
members must have privately expressed their dismay to Varèse. Ruggles, Weiss, and
Salzedo agreed that it was a mistake to have invited composers to whom Ruggles crudely
referred as “that filthy bunch of Juilliard Jews . . . without dignity and with little or no
127

talent.” 81 In January 1933 Varèse wrote to Weiss that he was awaiting details of a
meeting at Carlos Salzedo’s residence. Salzedo, who had never been active in the
planning of PAAC concerts (and who had not attended meetings “for years” according to
Cowell), planned to orchestrate a turn of events for the struggling organization. Upon
Varèse’s return in August, a meeting was held to determine Varèse’s status and to admit
Salzedo as an officer. As Cowell recounted the events to Ives:
It was decided by all of us in perfect agreement that Varèse would remain
Inter[national] Pres[ident], and be a member at large of the U.S. Executive board,
and that Salzedo would become Vice President; Riegger, Weiss, and I retaining
our former positions of President, Secretary, and Treasurer. It was also decided
that Becker would be the director and representative for Western America. 82
Cowell left New York for California shortly after December 10, 1933. No sooner had he
departed for the west than Varèse and Salzedo staged a coup. They called another
meeting “at which all but Varèse were shorn of executive titles, and Becker was thrown
out altogether. They caused the stationery which had just been printed to be scrapped, and
had a new batch made.” 83 By the end of December the new board, which consisted of
Varèse, Salzedo, Weiss, and Riegger, was busy remaking the PAAC according to
Varèse’s instructions. Another meeting was held on January 3, at which the board
discussed whether to renew the PAAC or to revive the International Composers’ Guild.
According to Salzedo:
About a month ago we thought of reviving the Guild. [We] all agreed that by
reorganizing the PAA[C] on the same business and artistic lines as was the ICG,
we would do a far more useful work. So we dropped the ICG in favor of the
PAA[C]. The plan of reorganization consists in having a real working committee
composed of the five of us, with Edgar as chairman, plus [Julian] Mattfeld as
treasurer and a secretary to be selected most carefully. The new stationery would
only mention these seven names. It is unnecessary and, to a certain extent
81 Ruggles to Cowell, June 21, 1933.
82 Cowell to Ives, March 14, 1934.
83 Ibid.
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dangerous to have a selection of names on our stationery which does not entirely
inspire either respect or confidence in prospective backers. 84
Cowell was thereby all but shut out from PAAC activities, and Varèse and Salzedo made
the organization much more exclusive. One notable difference is that while the 1932 flyer
below (Figure 3.7) displayed a varied assortment of Latin American and U.S. composers,
Carlos Chávez, Amadeo Roldán, and Caturla (who had been made an executive member
after the circular was printed) were excluded from the new board under Varèse.
Figure 3.7. PAAC circular from late 1932.
The new PAAC board set about organizing two New York concerts planned for
April 1934. Though Cowell admitted to Ives that having American new music activities
under Varèse’s domination seemed to him “a bit too Frenchy,” he asked Ives to donate
three hundred dollars to make a recording of the April concerts. 85 Varèse secured Town
Hall for the first concert on April 15. He and Salzedo handled the programming and
advertising.
84 Salzedo to Cowell, January 8, 1934.
85 Cowell to Ives, March 14, 1934.
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The evening consisted of Ruggles’s Portals (substituted for Men and Mountains
after the programs were printed), the premiere of Roldán’s Three Son Motives (discussed
in chapter four), Caturla’s Juego santo, Salzedo’s Concerto for Harp and seven wind
instruments, two Ives songs, “The New River” and “December,” arranged for chorus and
instrumental accompaniment, two works by Varèse: Ionisation and the premiere of
Equatorial, Weiss’s Andante from his Chamber Symphony, and Colin McPhee’s
Concerto for Piano and Wind Octet. I list them all here to reinforce the impracticality of
such a long program with so many substantial new works. Varèse had invited a number
of respected music critics, including Lawrence Gilman, Olin Downes, and W. J.
Henderson. All three sent assistants in their stead.
Cowell, who was now staying in California to focus on production of New Music,
was not in attendance. Weiss and Ruggles both sent him uncharacteristically long letters
lambasting everything from Varèse’s egotism (“When you managed the concerts we were
always happy afterwards, but with Varèse everybody must serve his personal ambition,”
Weiss complained) to Slonimsky’s difficulties in conducting the program (“He massacred
Portals and Equatorial,” Ruggles alleged). 86 The new PAAC treasurer, Julian Mattfeld
(who had been ICG treasurer), estimated the concert would cost a whopping $3,500.
According to Weiss, they took in no more than $1,500. They were forced to depend on
the second concert on April 22, with Martha Graham, to make up the difference.
This concert was a collaboration between the PAAC and Graham’s troupe. Music
for chamber orchestra by Cowell, Lehman Engel, Louis Horst, Riegger, Varèse, and Villa
Lobos was choreographed. The program also included instrumental interludes conducted
by Albert Stoessel. These included works by Ives, Silvestre Revueltas, and William Grant
Still (program in Figure 3.8). The performance was evidently not much better than the
concert on April 15. Dance critic John Martin called it “certainly the most hectic dance
event of the season,” marred by “a conversational obbligato hitherto completely unknown
in the world of dance performances hereabouts.” On the instrumental interludes Martin
86 To be fair, Slonimsky was unanimously hailed for his conducting of the PAAC concerts in Europe, New
York, and Havana. If there were difficulties, they likely arose because, according to Ruggles, he had only
had about two hours to rehearse the orchestra the day before the concert. The New York Times reviewer
noted that Slonimsky conducted Equatorial “with vigor and understanding.” H. T., “New Music Given by
Pan-Americans,” New York Times (April 16, 1934), 21.
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merely presumed, “the program-maker was not too familiar with Miss Graham’s
dancing.” 87
Figure 3.8. Concert program. New York City, April 22, 1934 (Cowell Papers).
The 1934 concerts had been a costly failure. With them, the PAAC ceased
activity. Cowell remained in California, teaching and handling activities with New Music.
The economic depression would not improve the concert scene in New York for several
more years. Pan-American musical exchange continued but in different forms. The
League of Composers began programming Latin American works more frequently. In
1936 Chávez, with the financial support of Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, began a summer
festival of Pan-American chamber music in Mexico City. The following chapter focuses
87 John Martin, “Martha Graham in Hectic Recital,” New York Times (April 24, 1934), 24.
131

on four Latin American PAAC members who chose an alternative mode of Pan-
American musical exchange using blues and jazz: two popular music styles that did not
fit into the PAAC agenda.
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CHAPTER 4
ESTA BOCA ES LA MIA: JAZZ, BLUES, AND POPULAR FRONT
PAN-AMERICANISM
Carlos Chávez’s song “North Carolina Blues” (1942) stands out from the rest of
the Mexican composer’s works. The text, written by Chávez’s contemporary and friend,
Mexican poet Xavier Villaurrutia, is a vivid statement against lynching and Jim Crowism
in the United States. Both Chávez’s song and Villaurrutia’s poem have been virtually
ignored by scholars. In a response to the poem in his 1971 study Villaurrutia scholar
Frank Dauster devoted only one sentence to the poem: “‘North Carolina Blues’ seems
strangely out of place; dedicated to Langston Hughes, it is an unfruitful effort to
assimilate Hughes’s jazz-influenced rhythms and is interesting only because of several
unusually sensual images.” 1 Likewise, Chávez’s song startlingly departs from the
narratives of Mexicanness, indigenous and modern, with which scholars often associate
him. It is a distinctly jazzy song, full of seventh, ninth, and borrowed chords, dotted
rhythms, and syncopation. Wandering melodic phrases in D minor never begin or end on
D, and the accompaniment maintains constant forward motion, creating a strong feeling
of restlessness in the work. For its ostensible lack of Mexican markers, it has been
similarly undervalued. Only Robert Parker offered a hint of what lies behind “North
Carolina Blues” when he wrote, “The first episode between choruses is accompanied by a
habanera rhythm, with which the composer gives, inexplicably, a Latin flavor to the
piece.” 2
In fact, the habanera rhythm had long been associated with ragtime and jazz due
to the strong Hispanic presence in the gulf port city of New Orleans. New Orleans,
1 Frank Dauster, Xavier Villaurrutia. (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1971), 52.
2 Robert L. Parker, Carlos Chávez, el Orfeo contemporáneo de México. Tr. Yael Bitrán Goren (Mexico
City: CNCA, 2002), 95.
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having been governed by Spain (1764-1800) and France (1718-64, 1800-1803),
maintained throughout the nineteenth century a culture and economy similar to the
Caribbean territories with which it traded. Furthermore, as Christopher Washburne points
out, though early jazz is most often associated with African-Americans, the musicians
who developed it were from a broad range of ethnic backgrounds including Hispanics,
Germans, Native Americans, and Creoles. As such, it may be considered the only
genuinely Pan-American musical style. In the years following the Louisiana Purchase in
1803, “about half the residents of New Orleans had spent at least a decade in Cuba,”
many of them born in Saint-Domingue, refugees from the Haitian Revolution. 3 The
juxtaposition of the habanera rhythm, a strong Latin signifier, with jazz was not unique to
Chávez. Consider, for example, the earliest recordings of “St. Louis Blues” by The
Original Dixieland Jazz Band (1915) and W.C. Handy (1922) in which the habanera
rhythm figured prominently. In “North Carolina Blues,” however, it served as a potent
signal of the strengthening relationship between African Americans in the U.S. and Latin
Americans.
This alternative version of Pan-Americanism was also political, based on a shared
resistance to U.S. economic dominance in the hemisphere. The works treated here
contextualize the use of blues and jazz idioms in art songs by four Latin American
composers: Alejandro García Caturla, Amadeo Roldán, Silvestre Revueltas, and Carlos
Chávez. This discussion provides a counterpoint to the Pan-American Association’s
activities and agenda. These four composers were all members of the PAAC, but their
levels of participation varied widely. Chávez and Revueltas never fully endorsed the
political agenda of the organization, and both limited their involvement. They
infrequently submitted their own works for PAAC performances, often preferring instead
to suggest works by less established Mexican composers. Though both men were
conductors of prominent orchestras in Mexico City, neither presented any “Pan-
American” concerts in Mexico. Roldán and Caturla, on the other hand, each organized
3 Christopher Washburne, “The Clave of Jazz: A Caribbean Contribution to the Rhythmic Foundation of an
African-American Music,” Black Music Research Journal 17/1 (Spring 1997), 62.
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and conducted at least three such concerts in Cuba with their respective orchestras
between January 1933 and February 1934. 4
All four of the songs discussed here were composed between 1930 and 1942.
Their use of jazz differs greatly from experiments of the 1920s that imported jazz
elements into modernist works. Chávez’s piano solos Blues and Fox, for example, both
composed in 1928, incorporated jazzy syncopated rhythms into a highly dissonant,
ultramodern idiom. The impetus for the composition of these later songs, however, came
directly from literary sources that were inspired by the vernacular music of Black
Americans. The distinctly musical poetry of three authors, Langston Hughes, Nicolás
Guillén, and Xavier Villaurrutia, served as catalysts for the composers’ imaginations.
After the Spanish-American War of 1898 many Latin Americans who had long
admired the wealth and democracy of the United States became disillusioned as they
began to fear a new imperialism from their powerful northern neighbor. Latin American
artists and intellectuals empathized with African Americans in the United States with
whom many of them shared two key experiences: devoutly spiritual Christianity and
economic disenfranchisement at the hands of the U.S. government. Latin American
literary modernismo developed as a theory of a “spiritually oriented Hispanic identity—a
moment emblematically captured by the antithesis proposed by Uruguayan critic José
Enrique Rodó, of the idealistic Ariel and the utilitarian, materialistic Caliban.” 5
Proponents of modernismo contrasted the spiritual nature of their own identity
with the perceived godlessness and materialism of the white Yankee elite. Nicaraguan
poet Rubén Darío’s (1867-1916) scathing ode to Theodore Roosevelt ends with the line,
“Y, pues contáis con todo, falta una cosa: Dios!” 6 (And, as you have everything, only one
thing is missing: God!) Similarly, when Federico García Lorca traveled by ship from
New York to Havana in April 1930, he was relieved to arrive at “the America with roots,
4 Roldán conducted the Orquesta Filarmonica Habanera; Caturla organized and led the Orquesta de
Conciertos de Caibarién. See Appendix B for their PAAC performances.
5 Fernando J. Rosenberg, The Avant-Garde and Geopolitics in Latin America (Pittsburgh: The University
of Pittsburgh Press, 2006).
6 Rubén Darío, “Oda a Roosevelt” (1904), in Poesías completas, ed. Alfonso Méndez Plancarte (Madrid,
1961), 720.
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God’s America, Spanish America.” 7 The Spanish poet, who was studying at Columbia
University in 1929, shared the Latin American perspective of Yankee dominance in the
hemisphere. García Lorca also empathized with the economic plight of the working class
African Americans he encountered in New York. More significantly, however, he sensed
in them, as well as in members of Harlem’s black intelligentsia, a depth of human
emotion and culture he found lacking in the whites he encountered. 8 Upon seeing a nude
black dancer at a cabaret in Harlem, Lorca was affected by her seeming distance from her
socioeconomic position and living conditions:
While everyone shouted as though believing her to be possessed by the rhythm, I
stared into her eyes and, just for a second, felt her reserve, her remoteness, her
inner certainty that she had nothing to do with that admiring audience of
Americans and foreigners. All Harlem was like her. 9
Lorca’s fellow Columbia students, on the other hand, consistently struck him as naive
and uncultured, and he found the Anglo-Saxon Protestant manners of white Americans
frigid. In a lecture he gave in Barcelona in December 1932 about his time in New York,
Lorca compared these two American subcultures, praising the spirituality of African
Americans over the materialism of the white elite, inverting established Western concepts
of “savage” and “cultured”:
The truly savage and frenetic part of New York is not Harlem. In Harlem there is
human warmth and the noise of children, and there are homes and grass, and
sorrow finds consolation and the wound finds its sweet bandage. The terrible,
cold, cruel part is Wall Street. Rivers of gold flow there from all over the earth,
and death comes with it. There, as nowhere else, you feel a total absence of the
spirit . . . scorn for pure science and demoniacal respect for the present. . . . This is
7 Federico García Lorca, Poet in New York, ed. and trans. Christopher Maurer (New York: Noonday Press,
1988), 197.
8 In a letter to his family on July 14, 1929, Lorca mentioned meeting Nella Larsen and enthusiastically
described several parties at her home in Harlem, where he was introduced to some of Harlem’s finest
writers and artists.
9 Ibid, 188.
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what comes of a Protestant morality that I, as a (thank God) typical Spaniard,
found unnerving. 10
The Latin American perception of the United States as representing the cutthroat quest
for material wealth was especially trenchant in Cuba, where the U.S. had intervened
politically and economically since the Spanish-American War in 1898. The Platt
Amendment to the Army Appropriations Act, which passed on March 2, 1901, limited
Cuba’s rights to form its own foreign policy and debt policy and gave the United States
the right to intervene in Cuban affairs. The provisions outlined in the Platt Amendment
were included in Cuba’s new constitution in 1902, and secured the U.S. right of
intervention until Franklin Roosevelt’s administration repealed the amendment in 1934.
Economically, too, the United States began a process of neocolonialism in Cuba. The
Teller Amendment of April 1898 had stated that the U.S. would not annex Cuba after the
Spanish-American War as it would Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. At the
conclusion of the war, however, the McKinley administration installed an occupation
government in Cuba, and annexation was a matter of heated discussion. Meanwhile, the
U.S. government drastically cut tariffs on goods entering Cuba, and the occupation
government granted a series of privileges and concessions to U.S. investors, establishing
a long-lasting North American economic presence on the island. Increasingly
antagonistic relations with the United States shaped the afrocubanismo movement. The
new Cuban republic, established in 1903, as well as a new U.S. occupation in 1906,
represented primarily North American interests. A steep decline in the price of sugar in
1920 forced many Cuban investors into bankruptcy, and by 1927 total U.S. investments
in Cuba reached at least 1.4 billion dollars. 11 The resulting economic crisis and loss of
sovereignty fed anti-imperialist sentiment on the island. The end of the 1920s saw the
formation in Cuba of the first national confederation of Cuban workers (CNOC) and the
Communist Party, which would become instrumental in facilitating a cultural dialogue
between African- and Latin Americans.
10 Ibid, 189.
11 See Jorge I. Domínguez, Cuba: Order and Revolution. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1978), 19-24. Statistic quoted in Antonio Benítez-Rojo, “Nicolás Guillén and Sugar,” Callaloo 31 (Spring
1987), 335. Benítez-Rojo notes that even this is a very conservative estimate.
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Blues and Son: Pan-American Literary and Musical Exchange
In June 1930 Nicolás Guillén Batista (1902-1989), who would become one of the
leading poets of negrismo (blackness) in Cuba, published his poem “Caña” (Sugarcane).
Though it was not the first literary effort to treat anti-U.S. imperialism in Cuba, “Caña” is
one of the most famous poems to demonstrate resentment toward U.S. economic presence
and Cuba’s frustrated nationalist aspirations. 12 It also represents Cuba’s new movement
of poesía negra (black poetry):
El negro The black
junto al cañaveral. in the canefield.
El yanqui The Yankee
sobre el cañaveral. above the canefield.
La tierra The earth
Bajo el cañaveral. below the canefield.
Sangre Blood
que se nos va! 13 that drains from us!
According to Robin Moore, “even in the best negrista poetry (with the exception of
Nicolás Guillén’s), [Black performers] appear devoid of context with no concern shown
for their position within Cuban society, their poverty, their squalid living conditions, or
the discrimination affecting their lives” (my emphasis). 14 Guillén’s social consciousness
set him apart and established him as the leading negrista poet in Cuba. His communist,
anti-imperialist sentiment would become even more focused throughout the 1930s,
resulting in his 1934 book, West Indies, Ltd.
A historic meeting between Guillén and Langston Hughes in spring 1930
cemented the Cuban poet’s dedication to black social issues and resulted in a lifelong
12 José Antonio Ramos’s play Tembladera (1917) and Luis Felipe Rodríguez’s novel La conjura de la
cienaga (1923) first dramatized the sugar/imperialism topic. Poems by Agustín Acosta and Felipe Pichardo
y Moya also predate Guillén’s “Caña.” Guillén, however, is better remembered because his poems achieved
a wider distribution and were aimed at a popular audience. Benítez-Rojo, “Nicolás Guillén and Sugar,”
351.
13 Nicolás Guillén, “Caña,” in Antología Mayor (Havana: Ediciones Unión, 1964), 46.
14 Robin Moore, “Poetic, Visual, and Symphonic Interpretations of the Cuban Rumba: Toward a Model of
Integrated Studies,” Lenox Avenue: A Journal of Interarts Inquiry 4 (1998), 102.
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friendship based on a shared concern for the portrayal of blackness in the Americas. 15
Hughes (1902-1967), whose early life was spent in Mexico and who traveled widely
throughout Latin America, always felt at home there. Due to more fluid racial boundaries
in Mexico and Cuba he was not often considered black; when he traveled to Mexico, for
example, his relatively light skin and oiled hair passed for Mexican. In Havana, however,
Hughes noted with disgust the recent importation of North American racial sensibilities.
He lamented that certain Cuban businesses such as hotels “that formerly were lax in their
application of the color line now discourage even mulatto Cubans, thus seeking the
approval of their American clientele.” 16
Hughes traveled to Cuba in 1930 in search of “a Negro composer to write an
opera for me, using genuinely racial motifs.” His patron, Mrs. Charlotte Osgood Mason,
“thought that Amadeo Roldán might do, or Arturo Cartulo [Alejandro García Caturla]. I
could not find Cartulo, and Roldán said he wasn’t a Negro. I came back to New York
with no Negro composer who could write an opera.” 17 Through journalist José Fernández
de Castro Hughes did, however, meet influential Cuban writers, artists and intellectuals.
He was surprised to learn that he was already well known in Cuban literary circles;
several Latin American writers, including Fernández de Castro, had published Spanish
translations of poems from The Weary Blues (1926) and Fine Clothes to the Jew (1927).
Hughes’s reception in Latin America marks a milestone in the development of
literary Pan-Americanism based on difference from Anglo-American hegemony. Vera
Kutzinski has demonstrated that several Latin Americans who translated Hughes’s
poetry, figures including Jorge Luis Borges and Xavier Villaurrutia, appropriated the
poems for their own nationalist agendas and subtly altered their meaning. 18 The best
15 This friendship is well-documented. See, for example, Arnold Rampersad, The Life of Langston Hughes
or Martha Cobb, Harlem, Haiti, and Havana: A Comparative Critical Study of Langston Hughes, Jacques
Roumain, and Nicolás Guillén (Washington, DC: Three Continents Press, 1979).
16 Langston Hughes, I Wonder as I Wander, The Collected Works of Langston Hughes, Volume 14 ed.
Joseph McLaren (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2003), 46.
17 Langston Hughes, The Big Sea, The Collected Works of Langston Hughes, Volume 13 ed. Joseph
McLaren (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2002), 242.
18 Vera Kutzinsky, “‘Yo también soy América’: Langston Hughes Translated,” American Literary History
18:3 (Fall 2006), 561.
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example is “I, Too, Sing America,” Hughes’s answer to Walt Whitman’s “I Hear
America Singing,” and among Hughes’s first poems to be published in Spanish.
Fernández de Castro translated “I, Too” in the Cuban journal Social in fall 1928. Under
his pen the title was rendered “Yo, También, Honro a América.” Instead of translating
“America” as “Estados unidos” or “norteamérica,” both of which were commonly used to
refer to the United States, Fernández de Castro expanded the concept of America simply
by adding a diacritical mark. “America” became “América”: North, Central, and South.
The poem thus translated spoke for all Americans, not just those of the United States, and
it offered Cubans a commentary on the U.S. neocolonial presence in Cuba. Hughes did
not intend “I, Too” to be read as a comment on U.S. neocolonialism in Cuba. Some of his
later poems, however, reveal his sympathy with this perspective. His poem “To the Little
Fort of San Lazaro on the Ocean Front, Havana,” published in the New Masses in May
1931, echoed the anti-colonial sentiment of Guillén’s “Caña.” 19
Hughes and Guillén recognized that they were two early proponents of a new
blackness movement in the Americas. Their affinity for each other’s work was based on a
shared African diasporic heritage and an antipathy toward the Anglo-American elite who
held their people in economic bondage. This affinity yielded repercussions on both
authors’ poetic voices. Guillén was inspired by Hughes’s use of jazz rhythms and blues
forms in his poetry; Hughes discovered a kindred spirit in the aesthetic of black
populism. As Felicia Miyakawa has noted, Hughes wrote poetry based on jazz and blues
because he “valued the transformative nature of jazz, [which] offers redemption from the
decadence of western civilization [and] gives access to the immediate, the sensual, and
the intuitive.” 20 Hughes believed not only in the redemptive powers of jazz, but of other
African-derived musics of the Americas as well. He searched for a black composer in
Cuba to compose his opera, implicitly acknowledging that African-American music in
the United States and Afro-Cuban music were derived from the same source and
expressed the same or similar qualities. He famously urged Guillén to write poetry using
19 Langston Hughes, “To the Little Fort of San Lazaro on the Ocean Front, Havana,” in The Collected
Works of Langston Hughes, Volume 1: The Poems, 1921-1940, ed. Arnold Rampersad (Columbia, MO:
University of Missouri Press, 2003), 204-205.
20 Felicia Miyakawa, “‘Jazz at Night and the Classics in the Morning’: Musical Double-Consciousness in
Short Fiction by Langston Hughes,” Popular Music 24/2 (June 2005), 275.
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forms based in Cuba’s own African-derived music. Shortly after Hughes’s departure from
Havana in April 1930 Guillén wrote and published a collection of eight poems entitled
Motivos de son (Son Motives) based on the Afro-Cuban musical genre. 21 He published
the collection on April 20, 1930, in a special section of the Havana newspaper Diario de
la Marina devoted to black issues entitled “Ideales de una raza” (Ideals of a race).
Although he had previously published columns against racism and imperialism, he had
not yet written poetry inspired by native Afro-Cuban forms of expression or vernacular.
Shortly after the publication of the Motivos, Guillén related to Hughes that these poems
created “a real scandal.” 22 Unlike the Cuban minorista poets such as Alejo Carpentier and
José Tallet, whose work can be viewed as an extension of European exoticism based on
the novelty of black Cuban culture, Guillén sought to write popular poetry that addressed
issues of racial prejudice and social inequality. Guillén considered son “the only thing left
that is truly ours.” 23 Gustavo Urrutia, editor of the “Ideales de una raza” page, also wrote
to inform Hughes of the poems’ publication and called them “the exact equivalent of your
blues.” 24 On that topic Guillén wrote in a subsequent issue of “Ideales”: “without being
equal to the Blues, [just as no] similarity exists between Cuba and the southern United
States, [the son] is, in my opinion, an adequate method to achieve vernacular [Cuban]
poems, perhaps because it is currently our most representative music.” 25
Though not equivalent, the literary versions of blues and son espoused by Hughes
and Guillén in the 1930s shared several key characteristics that make it easy to define the
poets’ relationship as a Pan-American exchange. Politically, blues and son were both
21 The extent of Hughes’s influence on Guillén in this respect has been widely debated. For the purpose of
this discussion it should suffice to acknowledge that their influence was mutual, since both poets already
had a keen interest in black themes. Guillén has publicly acknowledged that his inspiration in using the
distinctive rhythms of son in his subsequent poetry was Hughes’s use of blues. See Rampersad, The Life of
Langston Hughes, 181.
22 Ibid.
23 Angel Augier, 91.
24 Rampersad, The Life of Langston Hughes, 181.
25 Nicolás Guillén, “Sones y soneros,” Prosa de prisa I (20). “. . . sin ser el son igual al blues ni existir
semejanza entre Cuba y el Sur de los Estados Unidos, es a mi juicio una forma adecuada para lograr
poemas vernáculos, acaso porque ésa es también actualmente nuestra música más representativa” (my
translation).
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cultural expressions that defined an African American diasporic group in opposition to
dominant U.S. economic and cultural models. Stylistically, too, they are similar. They
both employ interjections, repetition, and a similar use of their respective vernaculars.
Exclamations abound in poems by Hughes and Guillén and often serve as a kind of
refrain, or estribillo. Hughes employed this text interruption most often in his spiritual-
based poems, such as “Judgment Day” (Fine Clothes to the Jew, 1927). Another element
common to both is their use of their respective African-derived dialects. Not surprisingly,
these dialects sometimes operate in similar ways. The substitution of “b” for “v” is a
common practice in both Afro-Cuban Spanish and African-American English, as in
“heaben” instead of “heaven” in English or “brabo” for “bravo” in Spanish. That Guillén
and Hughes were aware of their shared African poetic inheritance is evident in Hughes’s
formidable but now almost forgotten English vernacular translations of the Motivos,
begun in 1930. 26 One example is his translation of “Tú no sabe inglé” as “Don’t Know
No English”:
Con tanto inglé que tú sabía, All dat English you used to know,
Bito Manué, Li’l Manuel,
con tanto inglé, no sabe ahora all dat English, now can’t even
desí ye. say: Yes.
La mericana te buca, ‘Merican gal comes lookin’ fo’ you
y tú le tiene que huí: an’ you jes’ runs away.
tu inglé era de etrái guan, Yo’ English is jes’ strike one!
de etrái guan y guan tu tri. strike two and one-two-three.
Bito Manué, tú no sabe inglé, Li’l Manuel, you don’t know no English
tú no sabe inglé, you jes’ don’t know!
tú no sabe inglé. you jes’ don’t know!
No te namore ma nunca, Don’t fall in love no mo’,
Bito Manué, Li’l Manuel,
si no sabe inglé, ‘cause you don’t know no English,
si no sabe inglé. don’t know no English.
26 These were published in book form in 1948 as Cuba Libre, along with his other translations of Guillén’s
poems.
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Among those who immediately recognized the musical potential of Guillén’s new poesía
negra was Alejandro García Caturla; so immediately, in fact, that the composer began
setting the Motivos de son about a week after their publication. Caturla was heavily
invested in the new negrismo movement, in which he included both afrocubanismo and
African-American music from the United States. When it was revealed to Caturla that
Langston Hughes, in his search for a Cuban composer with whom to collaborate on an
opera, had been unable to locate him in Havana, Caturla wrote to Hughes at once. When
Hughes returned to New York, Caturla’s letter was waiting for him. It stated his artistic
intentions in no uncertain terms: “I work principally in the rhythms and melodies of the
black folklore of my country and thus all the serious, mature works I have done and
published until now belong to afrocubanismo.” 27 In response, Hughes sent Caturla copies
of The Weary Blues and Fine Clothes to the Jew. He said he had heard Caturla’s song
“Mari-Sabel” (on a text by Guillén) played for him by Colin McPhee in New York, and
that he had been very impressed. While Caturla never set one of Hughes’s poems, he
dedicated his song “Sabás,” also with a text by Guillén, to Hughes in 1937.
Alejandro García Caturla, “Bito Manué”
In April 1930, shortly after receiving a pamphlet of Motivos de son, Caturla wrote
to Guillén, stating his desire to set the poems as a cycle. He wrote that he wanted to
exclude the poem “Tú no sabe inglé.” Ironically, this was the first poem of two from the
set that he completed. Perhaps his initial reluctance was because “Tú no sabe inglé” was
among the least Afro-Cuban of the set. Caturla’s final version, retitled “Bito Manué,”
contains several textual, formal, and stylistic changes that amplify the original poem’s
Afro-Cubanness. Caturla reorganized the text, adding many more repetitions and
incorporating interjections and jitanjáfora (onomatopoeic Africanisms) that were not in
the original. Vocables “A-a” (mm. 21-23), “Ye-a” (mm. 59-62), and “E-a” (mm. 65-68)
recall similar interjections in other of Guillén’s Motivos, most notably the seventh poem
of the set, “Si tu supiera.” The name “Bito Manué” appears in Guillén’s “Tú no sabe
inglé” three times. Caturla set it as a refrain, pairing it at the beginning of the song with
27 Quoted in Charles W. White, Alejandro García Caturla: A Cuban Composer in the Twentieth Century
(Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 2003), 98.
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the repeated lines “tú no sabe inglé.” A comparison of Guillén’s original text (above with
Hughes’s English translation, “Don’t Know No English”) and Caturla’s reorganized text
below shows their differences.
Bito Manué tú no sab’ inglé
Bito Manué tú no sab’ inglé.
Con tanto inglé que tú sabía,
Bito Manué,
con tanto inglé, no sabe ahora
desí yé.
A-a__, A-a__
La mericana te buca,
y tú le tiene que huí.
tú inglé era de etrái guan,
de etrái guan y guan tu tri.
Bito Manué tú no sab’ inglé
Bito Manué tú no sab’ inglé.
Con tanto inglé que tú sabía,
Bito Manué,
con tanto inglé, no sabe ahora
desí yé.
Ye-a__, Ye-a__
Bito Manué.
E-a__, E-a__
Bito Manué.
No te namore ma nunca,
Bito Manué,
si no sabe inglé.
The added interjections can also be understood as a textual commentary on the title
character Vito (a diminutive form of Victor) Manuel, the stereotype of a flirtatious Afro-
Cuban who uses a few words in English to attract the attention of American female
tourists. In this sense, the interjections sound like the narrator’s mocking laughter. These
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interjections build in intensity, moving higher in the voice later in the piece (Examples
4.1a, 4.1b, and 4.1c).
Example 4.1a. Alejandro García Caturla, “Bito Manue,” mm. 21-24.
Example 4.1b. Alejandro García Caturla, “Bito Manue,” mm. 59-62.
Example 4.1c. Alejandro García Caturla, “Bito Manue,” mm. 65-68.
Scored for voice and piano, “Bito Manué” is notated with three sharps, but the song has
no tonal center. Instead it contains dissonances throughout and several jarring changes of
tonality. The accompaniment maintains a constant forward motion through a combination
of percussive chords and motoric rhythms. The accompaniment also exhibits strongly
accented anticipations of the downbeat, a syncopated barline-blurring device that is
common to African-derived musics. The first such example occurs across the barline of
mm. 7-8. Example 4.2 also shows the preceding measures for context.
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Example 4.2. Alejandro García Caturla, “Bito Manue,” mm. 1-8.
“Bito Manué,” like many of Caturla’s compositions that reflect the negrismo sensibilities
of Cuban art in the 1930s, is analogous to the works of the minorista poets; the
Africanness of the song is reflected through a prism of European exoticism and is not
based on any specific Afro-Caribbean elements such as rhythms from the comparsa, son,
or rumba. Neither Guillén nor Caturla were aware, however, that their compatriot
Roldán, who was more invested in the instruments and rhythms associated with Afro-
Cuban folk musics, was also setting the complete cycle of Motivos de son.
Amadeo Roldán, Motivos de son
Roldán completed his cycle, scored for voice and eleven instruments, in April
1931. When Caturla, who by this time had only completed “Bito Manué,” heard this
news he became discouraged. Though he had mentioned to both Guillén and Alejo
Carpentier that he “[did] not want to leave off without finishing all the Motivos de son,”
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the only other song from Motivos Caturla composed was “Mulata” in 1932. Roldán’s
Motivos de son was published twice by Cowell’s New Music. A piano reduction of three
of the songs appeared in New Music Quarterly in 1934, and the full set for voice and
chamber orchestra was published in 1935 under the New Music Orchestra Series.
While Caturla had made the piano function percussively in “Bito Manué,” Roldán
went a step further and included in his Motivos a battery of percussion including claves,
cowbell, maracas, bongos, güiro, and bombo. Consequently, he was more able (and
willing) to include a broader range of African-derived rhythmic devices. Stratification of
polyrhythms, for example, is present throughout the cycle. In each song, the vocal line
soars above the stratified layers of rhythm, which makes a listener who has the benefit of
historical perspective recall the offbeat phrasing of Billie Holiday. While the stratified
layers are evident in the score of the orchestral version of No. 1, “Negro Bembon”
(Example 4.3 below), the offbeat phrasing is most pronounced in No. 8, “Sigue
(Follow).” The opening of the piano version of “Sigue” is given in Example 4.4.
Polymeter pervades the Motivos. Another Africanism present throughout the cycle
is metric displacement. Cross-rhythms (especially three-against-four) also figure
prominently throughout the set. The most notable occurrence is at the beginning of No. 1,
“Negro Bembón.” Example 4.3 shows the cross-rhythms between the violin and viola in
mm. 1-3.
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Example 4.3. Amadeo Roldán, “Negro Bembón” (Motivos de son), mm. 1-6.
Example 4.4. Amadeo Roldán, “Sigue” (Motivos de son), mm. 1-16.
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The vocal line in Roldán’s Motivos carefully preserves the rhythm of the text. See, for
example, “Sigue” (I have also included Hughes’s translation, “Travel on, traveler”):
Camina, caminante, Travel on, traveler,
sigue; pass on by,
camina y no te pare, Travel and don’t linger,
sigue. pass on by.
Cuando pase po su casa When you pass front o’ her house
no le diga que me bite; don’t say you saw me.
camina, caminante, Travel on, traveler,
sigue. pass on by.
Sigue y no te pare, Pass an’ don’t stop,
sigue; pass on by.
no la mire si te llama, Don’t look if she calls you.
sigue; Pass on by.
acuéddate que ella e mala, Remember, she’s evil.
sigue. Pass on by.
In “Sigue” the vocal line is in 2/4, and each accented syllable of Guillén’s very rhythmic
poem falls either on a downbeat or on the second beat of a measure. In mm. 17-21, for
example, the lines “Cuando pase po su casa / no le diga que me bite” follow the original
accents of the poem, as shown in Example 4.5.
Example 4.5. Amadeo Roldán, “Sigue,” mm. 17-21.
As in the above figure, Roldán set the vocal melody syllabically throughout. The refrain,
“sigue,” always appears with a portamento slide between two notes and is always
syncopated, creating an avoidance of the downbeat (Example 4.6) common to many
African-derived musics.
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Example 4.6. Amadeo Roldán, “Sigue,” mm. 4-13.
The accompaniment of “Sigue” includes pseudo-improvised son rhythms throughout.
Three basic rhythms that are used in son as well as in other Afro-Caribbean genres are the
tresillo, cinquillo, and lundu rhythms, shown in Examples 4.7a, b, and c. The bass range
of the piano at the beginning of “Sigue,” for example, exhibits the basic tresillo. Example
4.8 shows the tresillo in measure 1 and its subsequent elaborations, meant to sound like a
sonero’s improvisation.
Example 4.7a. Rhythm for the tresillo
Example 4.7b. Rhythm for the cinquillo
Example 4.7c. Rhythm for the lundu
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Example 4.8. Amadeo Roldán, “Sigue,” mm. 1-6. Tresillo and its elaborations in the accompaniment.
Roldán builds to a climax in the second half of the song by using the middle range of the
keyboard percussively, with chords beating out elaborations of the lundu, tresillo, and
cinquillo independently from the piano’s bass, which continues its own improvisatory
“drumming” (Example 4.9).
Example 4.9. Amadeo Roldán, “Sigue,” mm. 28-31. “Drumming” rhythms.
The listener accustomed to jazz may notice that all three, but especially the lundu rhythm,
have been present in jazz since ragtime. In fact, these Afro-Caribbean rhythms may be
said to create a ready-made Pan-American idiom. Centuries of musical exchange between
New Orleans and other Caribbean ports makes it nearly impossible to distinguish whether
they function as markers of Afro-Cubanism or of U.S. jazz.
Both Roldán and Caturla were eager to make musical connections in the United
States. They participated actively in the Pan-American Association of Composers,
offering Pan-American concerts with their respective orchestras, maintaining lengthy
correspondences with Cowell and Slonimsky, and inviting Slonimsky to conduct concerts
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in Havana. Mexican composers Chávez and Revueltas, by contrast, felt relatively
established in their comfortable posts in Mexico City, and while it pleased them to learn
when one of their works was played on a PAAC concert they had other channels through
which to reach U.S. and European audiences. The distance between the two Mexican
composers and the PAAC’s political mission grew throughout the 1930s. The present
discussion focuses on their respective songs that express a connection with African-
American culture.
Mexico Sings the Blues
In the late 1930s jazz underwent a process of acceptance within mainstream
Anglo-American society. In January 1938 Benny Goodman presented the first concert of
Swing in Carnegie Hall. The following spring the first outdoor swing festival occurred on
Randall’s Island, New York, drawing an audience of over 23,000. In December the
opening of Café Society, one of the first New York nightclubs to welcome a racially
integrated audience, promoted among its performers Billie Holiday, who would
popularize the anti-lynching anthem “Strange Fruit” the following year. The cumulative
effect of these events and others was to promote a more open discourse about racism in
the Americas. Consequently, though the lynching of blacks had steadily declined since
the turn of the century, each occurrence was met with increasing resistance.
As Popular Front activities swept through the Western hemisphere in the 1930s,
they intensified the connections between African- and Latin Americans. The Communist
party in the United States emphasized issues pertaining to black workers while
denouncing Jim Crow laws and violence against Blacks in the South. Between 1936 and
1939 it also helped organize soldiers for the International Brigades to fight the
Nationalists in Spain. Langston Hughes and Nicolás Guillén were traveling companions
during a tour of Republican Spain in 1937, at the height of the Spanish Civil War.
Hughes served as a foreign correspondent for the Baltimore Afro-American and Guillén
represented the League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists (LEAR in Spanish).
Silvestre Revueltas also traveled to Spain that summer as a Mexican delegate for the
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LEAR. 28 Hughes and Guillén arrived in Paris in July and traveled by train to Barcelona.
On September 19 they attended a concert in Madrid in which Revueltas led the Madrid
Symphony Orchestra in his works Colorines and Janitzio. Hughes found Revueltas “a
likeable man, very simple in manner, and almost as stout as Diego Rivera” and recalled
several of Revueltas’s wry jokes in his autobiography, I Wonder as I Wander. 29
Among Revueltas’s and Hughes’s shared interests was the poetry of Federico
García Lorca. Hughes had discovered and had begun translating Lorca’s poetry on his
trip to Spain. 30 Had they met before Lorca’s execution in 1936, Hughes and Lorca would
have found they had several interests in common. Both had attended Columbia
University, found it depressing and unwelcoming, and departed after a single academic
year. 31 Though both poets traveled to Havana in the spring of 1930, their visits
overlapped by only one day; Lorca arrived there by ship from New York on March 6, and
Hughes departed for New York on March 7. 32
Silvestre Revueltas, “Canto de una muchacha negra”
On the return trip from Europe to Mexico, Revueltas was not allowed into the port
cities of Lisbon and Havana because his passport showed that he had visited Republican
Spain. 33 Carlos Pellicer, a Mexican poet who was part of the LEAR delegation, later
recalled that Revueltas had requested a volume of Pellicer’s poetry to read aboard ship
while the other passengers walked about the port cities.
28 For details concerning Revueltas’s trip, see Carol Hess, “Silvestre Revueltas in Republican Spain: Music
as Political Utterance,” Latin American Music Review 18/2 (Fall-Winter 1997), 278-96.
29 Hughes, I Wonder as I Wander, 372.
30 Lorca’s Romancero Gitano became Gypsy Ballads under his pen. Five of these poems were first
published in the pages of New Masses in January 1938, and then in book form in 1951.
31 Hughes attended in 1921-22, Lorca in 1929-30.
32 Lorca also gained a great respect for blues while in New York; he had taken a keen interest in African
Americans and had left the city with blues holographs. In his characteristic hyperbole Lorca claims to have
been given these “by the New Jersey shoreline” along with some “British stamp greens.” Untitled lecture
delivered in Madrid in March 1932. Reprinted in Poet in New York, 197.
33 According to the diary of his friend Sebastián Rossi. Luis Jaime Cortez, Favor de no disparar sobre el
pianista: Una vida de Silvestre Revueltas, (Mexico: CNCA/INBA, 2000), 203. Pellicer had changed his
passport so as not to attract attention that he had been to “red Spain.” Ibid, 202.
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Revueltas . . . asked me if I had one of my books at hand. Yes, I had one. It was a
recently published copy of Hora de junio; I gave it to him, and a short time after
our return [to Mexico] he telephoned me to say that he had composed a work for
chamber orchestra inspired by three sonnets from that book that had given him
much pleasure. 34
In view of their similar politics and affinity for Lorca, it is possible that upon meeting
Hughes, Revueltas requested a book of his poetry. Shortly after his return to Mexico,
Revueltas also set Hughes’s poem “Song for a Dark Girl” from Fine Clothes to the Jew,
which was not among his poems that had been translated into Spanish. 35 Revueltas
translated “Song for a Dark Girl” himself and composed “Canto de una muchacha negra”
for voice and piano in late July or early August 1938. The original text of the poem and
Revueltas’s translation follow:
Way Down South in Dixie Allá lejos, en el sur
(Break the heart of me) (Se me parte el corazón)
They hung my black young lover Colgaron a mi amante moreno
To a cross roads tree. De una rama del camino.
Way Down South in Dixie Allá lejos, en el sur
(Bruised body high in air) (Cadaver balanceante)
I asked the white Lord Jesus Pregunté al blanco señor Jesús
What was the use of prayer. De qué servía la oración.
Way Down South in Dixie Allá lejos, en el sur
(Break the heart of me) (Se me parte el corazón)
Love is a naked shadow El amor es una sombra desnuda
On a gnarled and naked tree. 36 Suspensa en un arbol desnudo y
154
retorcido.
34 Carlos Pellicer, “Recordando al maestro,” in Silvestre Revueltas Mexico: FCE, 1975), 25. Passage
reprinted in Peter Garland, Silvestre Revueltas (Mexico: Alianza Editorial, 1994), 75 (my translation).
35 For an exhaustive treatment of Hughes’s poetry translated into Spanish see Edward Mullen, Langston
Hughes in the Hispanic World and Haiti. (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1977).
36 Hughes, The Collected Works, vol. 1, 106-7.

In his translation of Hughes’s poem Revueltas merits praise for striving to preserve the
number of accents per line of the original. Compare, for example, “Love is a naked
shadow” to “El amor es una sombra desnuda” or “They hung my black young lover” to
“Colgaron a mi amante moreno.”
Revueltas’s song recalls blues without directly imitating a blues style. The
accompaniment contains several gestures that recall the piano blues of popular recording
artists such as James P. Johnson and Leroy Carr, whom Revueltas may have heard as a
student in Chicago and later while he served as conductor of theater orchestras in San
Antonio and Mobile. The first half of the second stanza, mm. 12-15, exhibits the “stride”
technique, in which the piano contributes a four-beat pulse with a low bass note on the
first and third beats and a chord on the second and fourth beats. This style was common
to ragtime and early jazz and is exemplified in recordings by Thomas “Fats” Waller such
as “I’m Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter” (1930). In “Canto,” however,
Revueltas reverses the beats on which the chords and bass notes occur; instead, we hear
the chords on the first and third beats and the bass on the second and fourth beats
(Example 4.10).
Example 4.10. Silvestre Revueltas, “Canto de una muchacha negra,” mm. 12-13. Inverted “stride” based on
gesture similar to James P. Johnson’s in “I’m Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter,” 1930.
In the following measures (shown in Example 4.11) the inverted stride gesture gives way
to a plodding series of four chords per bar that is reminiscent of the casual style of pianist
Leroy Carr in his most famous recording, “How Long, How Long Blues” (1928).
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Example 4.11. Silvestre Revueltas, “Canto de una muchacha negra,” mm. 16-17. “Plodding” chords, as in
Leroy Carr’s “How Long, How Long Blues,” 1928.
The vocal line, marked “Quasi recitando,” is recitation-like throughout. As in some blues
songs, the melody of each line of text is comprised of a reciting tone and the neighbor
tones and thirds that surround it, as in Bessie Smith’s “Blue Spirit Blues.” Unlike actual
blues songs, however, Revueltas does not employ a blues scale. Instead, the vocal melody
is comprised mostly of minor thirds, as in mm. 16-17 shown in Example 4.12.
Example 4.12. Silvestre Revueltas, “Canto de una muchacha negra,” mm. 16-17. Improvisatory vocal line
with reciting tone (C) and surrounding thirds.
Perhaps the element most reminiscent of blues is the piano’s highly dissonant opening
sighing gesture (Example 4.13).
Example 4.13. Silvestre Revueltas, “Canto de una muchacha negra,” m. 1. Piano’s sighing gesture.
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Revueltas iterates this motive twice for every line of text until the end of the first stanza
(mm. 1-11). The chord on beat 1 is built from an E-flat octave in the right hand and a
major sixth between B-natural and D-natural in the left hand. A minor second is also
present in beat 1 between D-natural and E-flat. In beat 2, however, the A-natural in the
left hand creates both a minor second with the B-flat and a tritone with the E-flats in the
right hand. The D-natural is held over, so the minor second it forms with the E-flats is
still present. Though one expects some sort of resolution on beat 3, since the right hand
makes a “resolving” gesture by falling a half-step, instead the A-natural reinforces the
tritone with E-flat. The final two beats of this heavily dissonant gesture include a tritone,
a major second, and a minor second. This motive returns in the final measures of the
piece. The effect is one of hopelessness, of resolution that never arrives, as when
Hughes’s narrator “asks the white lord Jesus what is the use of prayer.” With this motive
Revueltas captures a blues feeling without using the interval patterns associated with
blues.
“Canto de una muchacha negra,” like Hughes’s poem on which it is based,
criticizes the treatment of African-Americans in the United States. It may also offer a
criticism of U.S. capitalism. In March 1938, a few months before Revueltas composed
“Canto,” Mexican president Lazaro Cardenas had nationalized the country’s oil industry,
which led to a boycott of Mexican oil by Anglo-American companies. In addition, these
companies successfully lobbied for a U.S. embargo on sending oil drilling and refining
technology to Mexico. The lynching depicted in the song, therefore, may also be
understood as a metaphor of U.S. economic constraints in Latin America. Both as a
Mexican citizen and a cosmopolitan progressive, Revueltas was keenly aware of the
United States’s economic stranglehold on the region. In light of this interpretation it is
not surprising that Carlos Chávez also wrote an anti-lynching song, “North Carolina
Blues,” in 1942.
Carlos Chávez, “North Carolina Blues”
Leonora Saavedra has written about Chávez’s involvement in Popular Front
activities and his desire to affiliate his work with a progressive force he defined as the
working class. Chávez, like Charles Seeger in the United States, concerned himself with
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applying Marxist social theory to the role of the composer from at least 1934. In that year
he published a series of articles in the Mexican newspaper El universal entitled “El arte
en la sociedad” (Art in society), “El arte occidental” (Western art), and “El arte
proletario” (Proletarian art). These articles, according to Saavedra, were “intended to
prepare his audience for the performance of Llamadas, his proletarian symphony for
workers’ chorus and orchestra,” at the opening of Mexico’s Palacio de Bellas Artes in
Mexico City on September 29, 1934. 37 In addition to these essays, many of Chávez’s
subsequent writings demonstrate his commitment to socialist values and their application
to music. In 1962 he asserted, for example, “among the ancient Mexicans music was not
an individual expression indispensable to the life of the spirit but a concern of an entire
state organization.” 38
Xavier Villaurrutia (1903-1950), the author of “North Carolina Blues,” found
initial success as a poet among Mexico City’s modern literary circles. His earliest known
poems were published in 1919, and in 1922 he founded the review La Falange (1922-23)
with friends and fellow poets Salvador Novo, Jaime Torres Bodet and Bernardo Ortiz de
Montellano. Villaurrutia’s first collection of poetry, Reflejos (Reflections), was published
in 1926, the same year as Langston Hughes’s first collection, The Weary Blues. In 1928
Villaurrutia co-founded the Mexican literary magazine Contemporáneos. For this
endeavor he joined forces with several other young writers, key members of the group
who would come to be known as the “contemporáneos” or contemporaries, after their
journal. 39 Villaurrutia’s translation of Hughes’s “I, Too” appeared in Contemporáneos in
the fall of 1931 along with “Poem” and “Suicide Note” from The Weary Blues (1926) and
“Prayer” from Fine Clothes to the Jew (1927). 40 His “I, Too” has more in common with
37 Leonora Saavedra, “The American Composer in the 1930s: The Social Thought of Seeger and Chávez,”
in Understanding Charles Seeger, Pioneer in American Musicology, eds. Bell Yung and Helen Rees
(Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 29.
38 Ibid., 41.
39 These included Falange collaborators Torres Bodet and Ortiz de Montellano as well as Enrique González
Rojo, José Gorostiza, Jorge Cuesta and Gilberto Owen.
40 Xavier Villaurrutia, “Yo también”; “Poema”; “Plegaria”; “Nota de un Suicida,” Contemporáneos 11
(September-October 1931), 157-59.
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Borges’s translation 41 than the two of Fernández de Castro, who translated the first line as
“Yo, también, honro a América” (I, too, honor América”). Instead of “honor,”
Villaurrutia and Borges both preferred Hughes’s original verb: “sing.” Borges’ version
most closely conforms to the grammar of the original: “Yo también canto América.”
Villaurrutia’s “Yo también canto a América,” however, both preserves the original verb
and personifies the grammatical object (América). 42 Vera Kutzinski posits that
Villaurrutia’s choice of “canto a América” better “invokes Whitman’s multitudes.” 43
“North Carolina Blues” was first published in Villaurrutia’s collection Nostalgia
de la muerte (Nostalgia of death) in 1938. It was third in a group of six poems under the
heading “Nostalgias.” 44 The poem’s speaker is clearly neither Anglo- nor African-
American, commenting detachedly on “los pasajeros de color / y los blancos, de primera”
(the colored passengers and the first-class whites). The speaker is not “in North
Carolina,” but outside it looking in, retrospectively and with first-hand knowledge, as
after a journey. The speaker is Mexican, or perhaps more generally, Latin American. He
informs his audience (also Latin American) about the treatment of blacks in North
Carolina.
The repeated estribillo (refrain), “En North Carolina,” vaguely recalls the
spiritual-inspired repetitions in Hughes’s poems “Fire” and “Moan,” but “North Carolina
Blues” does not contain the AAB form of the blues poems from Fine Clothes to the Jew,
with which Villaurrutia must have been familiar (though he never translated them). 45 Nor
does the poem exhibit the fine-tuned rhythmic sense shared by Hughes and Guillén. Each
occurrence of the refrain “En North Carolina” interrupts what little rhythmic flow is
41 Borges, Jorge Luis, “Tres Poemas de Langston Hughes,” Sur (Buenos Aires) 1.2 (Fall 1931), 164-69.
42 This version should not be translated back into English as “I, too, sing to América,” but rather as “I, too,
sing América [personified].”
43 Kutzinski, “Yo también soy América,” 561.
44 The surrounding poems are titled “Nostalgia de la nieve” (Nostalgia of the snow); “Cementerio en la
nieve” (Cemetery in the snow); “Muerte en el frío” (Death in the cold); “Paradoja del miedo” (Paradox of
fear); and “Décima muerte” (Death in Tenths).
45 Such as “Lament over Love” or “Bound No’th Blues”—there are nine blues poems in Fine Clothes to the
Jew.
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present in the preceding stanza, leading Frank Dauster to judge this poem an “unfruitful
effort.” 46 More charitably put, while very lyrical, it is not a “jazz poem”:
46 Dauster, 52.
En North Carolina In North Carolina
el aire nocturno the night air
es de piel humana. is of human skin.
Cuando lo acaricio When I embrace it
me deja, de pronto, it suddenly leaves,
en los dedos, on my fingers,
el sudor de una gota de agua. a drop of perspiration.
En North Carolina In North Carolina
Meciendo el tronco vertical, Shaking his vertical torso,
desde las plantas de los pies from the soles of his feet
hasta las palmas de las manos to the palms of his hands
el hombre es árbol otra vez. the man is tree again.
En North Carolina In North Carolina
Si el negro ríe, If the black man laughs,
enseña granadas encías he shows gums of pomegranate
y frutas nevadas. and snow-covered fruits.
Mas si el negro calla, But if the black man is silent,
su boca es una roja entraña. his mouth is a red entrail.
En North Carolina In North Carolina
¿Cómo decir How do you say
que la cara de un negro se ensombrece? that the face of a black man darkens?
En North Carolina In North Carolina
Habla un negro: A black man speaks:
--Nadie me entendería “No one would understand me
si dijera que hay sombras blancas if I said there were white shadows
en pleno día. in plain day.”
En North Carolina In North Carolina
En diversas salas de espera In different waiting rooms
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aguardan la misma muerte they await the same death
los pasajeros de color the passengers of color
y los blancos, de primera. and the first-class whites.
En North Carolina In North Carolina
Nocturnos hoteles: Night-time hotels:
llegan parejas invisibles, invisible couples arrive,
las escaleras suben solas, climbing the steps alone,
fluyen los corredores, the corridors oozing,
retroceden las puertas, the doors receding,
cierran los ojos las ventanas. the windows closing their eyes.
Una mano sin cuerpo A bodyless hand
escribe y borra negros writes and erases black
nombres en la pizarra. names on the chalkboard.
En North Carolina In North Carolina
Confundidos Confused
cuerpos y labios, bodies and lips,
yo no me atrevería I wouldn’t dare
a decir en la sombra: say in the shadows:
Esta boca es la mía. This mouth is mine.
En North Carolina 47 In North Carolina
The interruption of rhythmic flow caused by the repeated text “in North Carolina” is
likely the reason Chávez set the entire first stanza as the refrain while preserving the
overall idea of the poem’s estribillo. Chávez’s refrain occurs six times, but only the first
two contain the full text of the first stanza. Shortening or omission of text, or change of
key alters the following four appearances. The sixth (m. 105) sets new text to the musical
refrain (see form diagram with text, Figure 4.1).
47 Xavier Villaurrutia, “North Carolina Blues.” in Nostalgia de la muerte. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Sur,
1938 (2nd ed. Mexico: Mictlán, 1946). Unattributed translation in Kathleen L. Wilson, The Art Song in
Latin America: Selected Works by Twentieth-Century Composers (New York: Pendragon, 1998), 96. I have
slightly altered the translation.
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Figure 4.1. Carlos Chávez, “North Carolina Blues,” form diagram with text.
Villaurrutia may not have emulated Hughes’s jazzy verbal rhythms, but he
successfully incorporated several of Hughes’s most powerful poetic themes in “North
Carolina Blues.” The centrality of laughter to the Black American experience as a method
of enduring hardship is a recurring theme in Hughes’s poetry and fiction. In “I, Too,” the
narrator claims that even though “they send me to eat in the kitchen” because “I am the
162

darker brother,” “I laugh, / And eat well, / And grow strong.” 48 In “Laughers,” Hughes
calls “my people”:
Singers and dancers.
Dancers and laughers.
Laughers?
Yes, laughers . . . laughers . . . laughers—
Loud-mouthed laughers in the hands
Of Fate. 49
In Hughes’s first novel, Not Without Laughter (1930), he contrasts the laughter of white
Americans with that of Black Americans when the principal character, a southern Black
boy named Sandy, attends his first carnival and sees a man with a banjo playing and
singing the blues: “To Sandy it seemed like the saddest music in the world—but the
white people around him laughed.” 50 Similarly, Hughes’s dramatic monologue titled
“The Black Clown” (c. 1940) shows a contrast between white laughter, which ridicules,
and black laughter, which fortifies and allows the black man to cope with living as a
second-class citizen:
You laugh
Because I’m poor and black and funny—
Not the same as you—
Because my mind is dull
And dice instead of books will do
For me to play with
When the day is through.
I am the fool of the whole world.
Laugh and push me down.
Only in song and laughter
I rise again—a black clown . . .
48 Langston Hughes, The Collected Works of Langston Hughes. The Poems: 1921-1940, 61.
49 Ibid, 107.
50 Langston Hughes, Not Without Laughter (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1969).
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A slave—under the whip,
Beaten and sore.
God! Give me laughter
That I can stand more . . . 51
Due to its distinctly jazzy style, Chávez’s setting of “North Carolina Blues”
departs from the rest of his oeuvre. Wandering syncopated melodic phrases over an
accompaniment in D minor maintain constant forward motion, creating a strong feeling
of restlessness in the work. The vocal line contains interval patterns that resemble (but do
not actually comprise) a blues scale in B-flat. The B section, which forms a curiously
early emotional climax to the poem, gruesomely portrays the hanging of a Black man:
“Meciendo el tronco vertical / desde las plantas de los pies / hasta las palmas de las
manos / el hombre es árbol otra vez” (Shaking his vertical torso / from the soles of his
feet / to the palms of his hands / the man is tree again.) To highlight the grotesque dance
of death depicted in the poem, Chávez employed a habanera rhythm in the bass. Each
measure ascends chromatically, creating movement and suspense, and reaching a climax
in m. 25. As if in answer to the horrified listener’s question, “Where could such a thing
happen?” the full refrain returns immediately to remind us: “En North Carolina” The B
section and the subsequent return of the refrain are shown in Example 4.14).
51 Langston Hughes, The Collected Works of Langston Hughes. The Poems: 1921-1940. Ed. Arnold
Rampersad (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2001), 216.
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Example 4.14. Carlos Chávez, “North Carolina Blues,” mm. 18-27.
Lynching of Blacks for even the most minor offenses was a shocking reality of African-
American life in the southern United States in the first half of the twentieth century. The
placement of the lynching at the beginning of “North Carolina Blues,” however, suggests
that what is depicted in later episodes, the subjugation of Blacks under Jim Crow laws, is
even more unconscionable (or more dangerous to Latin Americans who travel there and
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may be mistaken for Blacks). Each successive episode is a vignette of African American
life in the United States under Jim Crow.
The defiant laughter of the Black man appears in “North Carolina Blues” in
episode C at the text: “Si el negro ríe / enseña granadas encías / y frutas nevadas. / Mas si
el negro calla, / su boca es una roja entraña.” (If the Black man laughs, / he shows gums
of pomegranate / and snow-covered fruits. / But if the Black man is silent, / his mouth is a
red entrail.) Chávez paints this laughter literally with a disjunct vocal line at “enseña
granadas encías” and an abrupt meter change to 6/8 (both at m. 46, Example 4.15).
Example 4.15. Carlos Chávez, “North Carolina Blues,” mm. 43-48.
CONCLUSION
U.S. professions of utopian Pan-Americanism marked the years leading up to
World War II. Many Latin Americans, however, were wary, still reeling from U.S.
interventions in Cuba (1906-10), Nicaragua (1909-11, 1912-25, and 1926-33), Haiti
(1915-34) and the Dominican Republic (1916-24). Silvestre Revueltas’ and Carlos
Chávez’s vivid anti-lynching songs can be understood as statements acknowledging the
intimate connections between their own experience and that of Black Americans. The
crucial point here is that these connections were forged by African-Americans and Latin
Americans themselves—not on their behalf—in an alternative Pan-American sphere that
circumvented the somewhat forced Anglo-American interpretation of a transnational
America. In that sense, the works discussed here offered a more organic form of Pan-
Americanism than that espoused by the Pan-American Association of Composers.
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EPILOGUE
This study makes clear that many variations existed in the intentions of composers
who engaged in interwar Pan-Americanism. Each, however, dealt with the artist’s
relationship to his or her experience concerning an early form of transnationalism in the
Americas within contemporary notions of national musical identity. At the end of the
1930s a new crop of Pan-American enterprises filled the void left by the Pan-American
Association of Composers.
Francisco Curt Lange founded the Instituto Interamericano de Musicología, based
in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1935. A year earlier, in a pamphlet entitled Americanismo
musical, Lange had urged Latin Americans to develop their own unified musical style
independent of European influence. Because Lange published articles and musical scores
in his serial bulletin, the Boletín Latino-Americano de Música (1935-41), his Instituto
Interamericano can be considered the Latin American counterpart to Cowell’s New
Music Society. Lange published Volume I of the Boletín in April 1935. Over the next
twelve years five more volumes followed, four of which had musical supplements, which
made a total of almost 4,000 pages of text and over five hundred pages of music. Due to
this accomplishment, Gilbert Chase credited Lange in 1965 with establishing “inter-
American musicology.” 1 Lange’s doctrine of americanismo musical shared certain ideals
with the PAAC, primarily a focus on developing indigenous musical resources
independent of European influence. It did not, however, include the United States until
the fifth volume of the Boletín in 1941, a change that is evident in the altered cover art.
Between 1935 and 1940, the cover showed a wave and two eighth notes radiating upward
from an outline of South America, as shown in the 1938 cover below. For the 1941 cover,
1 Gilbert Chase, “An Anniversary and a New Start.” Anuario 1 (1965): 1-10.

however, the logo was changed to reflect the volume’s focus on North America with the
addition of its outline below the eighth notes (Figure E.1).
Figure E.1. Covers from the 1938 and 1941 Boletín Latino-Americano de Música.
To give the reader an idea of the impressive size of the 1941 Boletín, it presented
forty-four articles by U.S. composers, musicologists, and critics in 637 pages. The variety
of topics included music education, jazz, folk music, the role of the composer, music
libraries, opera, serial music, the study of African-American music in the western
hemisphere, and radio music. Among the authors represented were Copland, Cowell,
Charles Seeger, Daniel Gregory Mason, Frances Densmore, George Herzog, Warren D.
Allen, and Otto Kinkeldey. The Boletín’s 167-page musical supplement was also
impressively vast in scope. It included works for piano solo, voice and piano, and
chamber orchestra by over thirty U.S. composers including Charles Ives, Aaron Copland,
Otto Luening, Norman Cazden, David Diamond, Elliott Carter, Paul Bowles, George
Perle, Ross Lee Finney, Wallingford Riegger, Paul Creston, Seeger, Ruth Crawford,
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Quincy Porter, Walter Piston, Vivian Fine, Mary Howe, Marion Bauer, Adolph Weiss,
William Schuman, and Henry Brant.
During the Eighth Conference of American States at Lima in 1938 a resolution
was passed to form a Music Division at the Pan-American Union in Washington.
Although funds were not available at the time, this division was finally created in 1941
with a grant from the Carnegie Corporation. In February of that year Charles Seeger was
appointed chief of the Music Division of the Pan-American Union. His main tasks were
to secure monographs on the history of music in each country of the Pan-American Union
and to coordinate efforts with the Music Educators’ National Conference. His efforts
resulted in a number of compositions from Latin American countries being listed in the
Conference’s manual of approved works for competitions. Under Seeger’s direction the
Music Division also developed a list of Latin American music obtainable in the United
States. After World War II the Inter-American Music Festival and other organizations
kept alive the spirit of Pan-Americanism. These efforts have recently been addressed in
Jennifer Campbell’s dissertation, “Shaping Solidarity: Music, Diplomacy, and Inter-
American Relations, 1936-1946.” (University of Connecticut, 2009). The present study
should serve as a companion volume to Campbell’s work, as it addresses some of the
same issues associated with burgeoning transnationalism in the Americas.
The efforts described in both this work and Campbell’s were but a small part of
the Pan-American social/political milieu that thrived until the Cold War. A few Pan-
American associations established in the early part of the century remain active today,
from the Organization of American States to the women’s clubs in Texas and the
southwestern U.S. Concerted and government-sponsored efforts at mutual cultural
exchange on the same scale as those of the 1920s-40s, however, are no longer part of our
experience. In the modern U.S. Hispanics/Latinos make up 14.8 percent of the
population, 2 and in the past decade Hispanic cultural presence has become increasingly
conspicuous. At the same time, however, U.S. political discourse has focused more on
building physical barriers along the U.S.-Mexican border than on breaking down the
cultural walls that separate us. Nevertheless, the globalism that defines our current
musical culture is a result of the blending of Anglo, Latin, and African American musics
2 According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2006 American Community Survey.
169

as well as other musical heritages. This amalgam is a natural product of the long and
fruitful musical exchange between Latin and African Americans. It also owes much,
however, to more concerted efforts at cultural understanding in the Pan-American era.
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APPENDIX A.
CONCERTS OF THE PAN-AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF COMPOSERS
MARCH 12, 1929 Birchard Hall, 113 W, 57th St., New York City
Stephanie Schehatowitsch and Raul Paniagua, piano; Martha Whittemore, and Crystal
Waters, voice
Alejandro Caturla, Dos Danzas Cubanas (I. Danza del Tambor; II. Danza Lucumi)
Carlos Chávez, Sonatina, 36
Heitor Villa-Lobos, O ginete do pierrozinho; A Prole do Bebe (No. 1)
Played by Miss Schehatowitsch
Amadeo Roldan, Dos Canciones populares cubanas (I. Punto Criollo; II. Gaujira
Vueltabajera)
Played by Miss Whittemore
Raul Paniagua, Mayan Legend (Symphonic score, arranged for piano by the composer)
Paniagua, piano
Amadeo Roldan, Three Songs
Sung by Miss Waters
(Repeat of Caturla, Chávez, Villa-Lobos)
APRIL 21, 1930 Carnegie Chamber Hall, New York City, “A Concert of Works by
Composers of Mexico, Cuba, and the United States.” Radiana Pazmor, contralto; Imre
Weisshaus and Stephanie Schehatowitsch, piano; D. Desarno, oboe; Harry Freistadt,
trumpet; Jerome Goldstein, violin
I.
Carlos Chávez, Sonatina para violin y piano
Henry Cowell, Solo for Violin
II.
Imre Weisshaus, Suite for Piano, in three movements (Weisshaus, piano)
III.
Vivian Fine, Solo for Oboe
Charles Ives, “New River”; “The Indians”; “Ann Street”
IV.
Imre Weisshaus, Six Pieces for Solo Voice
Alejandro Caturla, Two Afro-Cuban Songs
V.
Dane Rudhyar, Two “Moments”
Gerald Strang, Two Pieces for Piano
171

Henry Brant, Two Sarabandes
Adolph Weiss, Prelude
George Antheil, Second Piano Sonata
VI.
Ruth Crawford, “Rat Riddles” (contralto, piano, oboe, percussion)
MARCH 10, 1931 New School for Social Research, PAAC Chamber Orchestra, Adolph
Weiss, conductor
North American:
Dane Rudhyar, The Surge of Fire
Wallingford Riegger, 3 Canons for Woodwinds
Adolph Weiss, Kammersymphonie
Latin American:
Pedro Sanjuán, Sones de Castilla
Amadeo Roldán, Ritmicas [IV]
MARCH 18, 1931 Salon of the Ambassador Hotel, Havana, “Conciertos de Cámara
dirigidos por Nicolas Slonimsky,” Co-sponsored by I.S.C.M. Havana
W. A. Mozart, Symphony in Eb
Charles Ives, Three Places in New England
Carl Ruggles, Men and Mountains
Arthur Honegger, Napoleon Suite
Ernest Bloch, Four Episodes for Chamber Orchestra
MARCH 21, 1931 Salon of the Ambassador Hotel, Havana, “Conciertos de Cámara
dirigidos por Nicolas Slonimsky,” Co-sponsored by I.S.C.M. Havana
J.S. Bach, Concerto in G (“Brandenburg”)
Henry Cowell, Sinfonietta
Béla Bartók, Three Romanian Dances
Amadeo Roldan, Ritmica No. 4
Alejandro García Caturla, Bembé: Afro-Cuban Movement
Sergei Prokofiev, Overture on Hebrew Themes
JUNE 6, 1931 Salle Gaveau, Paris, “Deux concerts de musique Américaine, Cubaine et
Mexicaine sous la direction de Nicolas Slonimsky,” with the Walther Straram Orchestra
Adolph Weiss, American Life
Charles Ives, Three Places in New England
Carl Ruggles, Men and Mountains
Henry Cowell, Synchrony
Amadeo Roldán, La Rebambaramba
172

JUNE 11, 1931 Salle Gaveau, Paris, “Deux concerts de musique Américaine, Cubaine et
Mexicaine sous la direction de Nicolas Slonimsky,” with the Walther Straram Orchestra
Pedro Sanjuán, Sones de Castilla
Carlos Chávez, Energia
Carlos Salzedo, Preambule et Jeux, for harp and nine instruments
Mlle Lily Laskine, soloist
Alejandro García Caturla, Bembé
Wallingford Riegger, Three Canons
Edgard Varèse, Intégrales
NOVEMBER 23, 1931 Asociación de Cultura Musical, Madrid, “Concierto de Música de
Cámara” with members of the Orquesta Sinfonica de Madrid, Pedro Sanjuán, conductor
Wallingford Riegger, Study in Sonority
Carl Ruggles, Portals
Pedro Sanjuán, Sones de Castilla
Henry Cowell, Sinfonietta
DECEMBER 1, 1931 Bauhaus, Dessau, “Werke der Komponisten der ‘Pan-American
Association of Composers’”
Wallingford Riegger, Solo for Flute
Carlos Chávez, Sonatina for violin and piano
Vivian Fine, Piece for violin and flute
Piano music by Henry Brant, Gerald Strang, Dane Rudhyar, Charles E. Ives, George
Antheil
performed by Imre Weisshaus
Adolph Weiss, Duo for flute and viola
Henry Cowell, Sinister Resonance; Dynamic Motion
performed by Henry Cowell
JANUARY 5, 1932 New School Auditorum, New York City, “Dance Recitals by Martha
Graham and Charles Weidman,” with the Pan-American Chamber Orchestra, Adolph
Weiss, conductor
Martha Graham and Dance Troupe
Heitor Villa-Lobos, Incantation
Artur Honegger, Prelude to a Dance
Heitor Villa-Lobos, Dolorosa
Wallingford Riegger, Bacchanale
Heitor Villa-Lobos, Primitive Canticles
Louis Horst, Primitive Mysteries
Pan-American Chamber Orchestra
Adolph Weiss, American Sketches
173

Charles Weidman assisted by José Limon and Group
Henry Cowell, Dance of Work; Dance of Sports
Claude Debussy, Danzon; Danse profane
Erik Satie, Two Gymnopédies
Dane Rudhyar, Studies in Conflict
February 16, 1932 New School Auditorium, New York City “Chamber and Orchestra
Works by Composers of Mexico, Argentine, and the United States.” Pan-American
Chamber Orchestra, Adolph Weiss and John J. Becker, conductors. The New World
String Quartet, Georgia Kober, piano, Radiana Pazmor, mezzo-soprano
Alfonso Broqua, Cantos del Parana Guazu (I. Parana Guazu, II. Biti-Bio)
Radiana Pazmor
Roy Harris, String Quartet (Andante, Scherzo, Finale Maestoso)
The New World String Quartet
John J. Becker, Concerto Arabesque
Georgia Kober, piano (conducted by the composer)
Ives, Set for Theatre Orchestra (“In the Cage,” “In the Inn,” “In the Night”)
Chávez, Energia
Ruth Crawford, “Rat Riddles”; “The Bee”
Radiana Pazmor
FEBRUARY 21, 1932, Konzerthaus, Vienna, “Konzert der Pan-American Association of
Composers,” Anton Webern, conductor
Introductory lecture by Paul Stefan
Carl Ruggles, Portals
Songs by Charles Ives, Aaron Copland, and Alejandro García Caturla
Adolph Weiss, Kammersymphonie (second movement)
Wallingford Riegger, Three Canons for Woodwinds
Carlos Chávez, Sonatina for Violin and Piano
Henry Cowell, Sinfonietta (second movement)
FEBRUARY 21, 1932 Salle Pleyel, Paris, Artists associated with the Paris Symphonic
Orchestra, under the direction of Nicolas Slonimsky, Bela Bartok, piano
W. A. Mozart, Serenade No. 3
Modest Musorgsky, Night on Bald Mountain
Béla Bartók, Concerto for piano and orchestra
Charles Ives, Suite
I. In the Cage
II. The Fourth of July
III. Elegy
Henry Cowell, Appositions
174

Dane Rudhyar, Vers le Reel
Alejandro Caturla, Three Cuban Dances
FEBRUARY 25, 1932 Salle Pleyel, Paris, “Soirée de Gala, Les Artistes associés de
l’Orchestre Symphonique de Paris, sous la direction de Nicolas Slonimsky avec la
concours de Arthur Rubenstein [sic], pianiste”
W. A. Mozart Symphony No. 1 in Eb
Carl Ruggles, Sun-treader
Darius Milhaud, Seconde Suite symphonique (“Protée”)
Johannes Brahms, Piano Concerto No. 2 in Eb
Artur Rubenstein, piano
Edgard Varèse, Arcana
MARCH 5, 1932 Beethovensaal, Berlin, “Musik Amerikas, Mexikos und der Antillen,”
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Nicolas Slonimsky, conductor.
Adolph Weiss, American Life
Charles Ives, 2nd Suite (“In the Cage”; “The 4th of July”; “Elegy”)
Amadeo Roldán, La Rebambaramba
Carl Ruggles, Sun-treader
Henry Cowell, Synchrony
Edgard Varèse, Arcana
MARCH 10, 1932 Bechsteinsaal, Berlin, Michael Taube Chamber Orchestra, Nicolas
Slonimsky, conductor
Pedro Sanjuán, Sones de Castilla
Wallingford Riegger, Dichotomy
Ruth Crawford, “Rat Riddles,” “In High Grass”
Ottilie Metzger-Lattermann, voice
Roy Harris, Andante
Carlos Chávez, Energía
Alejandro Caturla, Bembé
MARCH 22, 1932 Smetana Hall, Prague, Concert jointly sponsored by Prague Chapter of
ISCM and PAAC, Prague Radio Orchestra, Nicolas Slonimsky, conductor
APRIL 2, 1932 Franz Liszt Academy, Budapest, A Concert of America, Mexico and the
Antilles,” Hungarian Symphony Orchestra, Nicolas Slonimsky, conductor
Adolph Weiss, American Life
Charles Ives, Suite
Amadeo Roldan, La Rebambaramba
Carl Ruggles, Men and Mountains
Henry Cowell, Synchrony
Carlos Chávez, Energía
Edgard Varèse, Intégrales
175

JUNE 6, 1932 Hause des Rundfunks, Berlin-Charlottenburg, “Deutsch-Ibero-
Amerikanische Kundgebung” concert, Berlin Radio Orchestra and Radio Choir, Bruno
Seidler-Winkler and Guillermo Espinosa, conductors
Julio Bacmeister, Obertura Romántica
Jose Rolon, Cuautémoc
Carlos Pedrell, Four songs
Heitor Villa-Lobos, Dansas dos mestiços do Brasil
Reynaldo Hahn, From the ballet “Fiesta en casa de Teresa”
Alfonso Broqua, Noche Campera
JULY 1932 Teatro Nacional, Havana, Concert of the Orquesta Filarmonica de la Habana,
Pedro Sanjuán, conductor
NOVEMBER 4, 1932 New School Auditorium, New York City, Pan-American Chamber
Orchestra, Nicolas Slonimsky, conductor
Silvestre Revueltas, Colorines
Henry Cowell, Polyphonica
Heitor Villa-Lobos, Choros No. 7
Charles Ives, Washington’s Birthday
Jerome Moross, Cantata: Those Everlasting Blues
Alejandro García Caturla, Primera Suite Cubana
Wallingford Riegger, Dichotomy
DECEMBER 8, 1932 Musikhalle, Hamburg, “Kammerkonzert Amerikanische
Komponisten,” Co-sponsored by the ISCM, Hamburg and the PAAC, Gerhard Maasz,
conductor
Wallingford Riegger, Three Canons for Woodwinds
Henry Cowell, Five Pieces for Piano
Aaron Copland, “As It Fell upon a Day”
Charles Ives, Three Songs: “Evening,” “Indians,” “The New River”
Carl Ruggles, “Toys”
Dane Rudhyar, Two Paeans for piano
Walter Piston, Three Pieces for Flute, Clarinet and Bassoon
Adolph Weiss, Seven Songs for soprano and instruments
January 30, 1933 Teatro Cervantes, Caibarién, Cuba, “Concierto Extraordinario
dedicado a José Martí,” Orquesta de Conciertos de Caibarién, Alejandro García Caturla,
conductor
W.A. Mozart, Overture, The Magic Flute
Maurice Ravel, Ma mère l’oye
Manuel de Falla, La vida breve (Danza Española No. 1)
176

Igor Stravinsky, Scherzino (from Pulcinella)
Henry Cowell, Exultation (Poem)
Alejandro García Caturla, Bembé (Afro-Cuban movement)
George Gershwin, Rhapsody in Blue
Santos Ojeda Valdés, piano
FEBRUARY 6, 1933 Carnegie Chapter Hall, New York City, The George Barrere
Ensemble, Henry Brant and Richard Donovan, conductors
Richard Donovan, Sextet for Woodwind Instruments
Ives, “Afterglow”; “Ann Street”; “Like a Sick Eagle”
Ruggles, Toys
P. Humberto Allende, “Manana es Domingo”; “Coton Colorado”; “Comadre Rana”
Heitor Villa-Lobos, Cancao do carreiro
José Rolón, “In Color”; “El Sembrador”
Aaron Copland, “As It Fell upon a Day”
Henry Brant, Concerto for flute with orchestra of ten flutes
MARCH 6, 1933 Carnegie Chapter Hall, New York City, “A Concert of North and Latin
American music” Radiana Pazmor, contralto; Judith Litante, soprano; Vivian Fine,
composer-pianist; Jerome Moross, Composer-pianist; Clara Freedman, pianist; Fifteen
percussionists; Nicolas Slonimsky, conductor
Carlos Chávez, Sonata for piano
Gerald Strang, Piano Study
Vivian Fine, piano
Carlos Pedrell, “Alla Vienen las carretas”; “En la manana azul”
William Grant Still, “Winter’s Approach”; “The Breath of a Rose”
Radiana Pazmor and Vivian Fine
Edgard Varèse, Ionisation
Percussion Ensemble, Nicolas Slonimsky, conductor
Adolph Weiss, Sonata for Piano
Jerome Moross, piano
Amadeo Roldan, “Mulata” No. 3
Heitor Villa-Lobos, “Makoce-ce-Maka” (Lullaby) ; “Ua la loce” (Hunting Festival Song)
John J. Becker, Four Poems from the Japanese
Ruth Crawford, “Sacco-Vanzetti”
Judith Litante and Clara Freedmann
William Russell, Fugue (for 8 percussion instruments)
Percussion Ensemble, Nicolas Slonimsky, conductor
APRIL 15, 1933 Teatro Niza, Vueltas, Santa Clara, Cuba. Orquesta de Conciertos de
Caibarién, Alejandro García Caturla, conductor
W.A. Mozart, Overture, The Magic Flute
Maurice Ravel, Ma mère l’oye
177

Claude Debussy, La fille aux cheveux de lin
Henry Cowell, Exultation (Poem)
Manuel de Falla, La vida breve (Danza Española No. 1)
Abelardo Cuevas, Kid Chocolate (Poema Negro)
Alejandro García Caturla, Bembé (Afro-Cuban movement)
George Gershwin, Rhapsody in Blue
Santos Ojeda Valdés, piano
APRIL 23, 1933 Teatro Nacional, Havana, Cuba. “Dos Conciertos de Musica Nueva bajo
la direccion de Nicolas Slonimsky”
W.A. Mozart, Serenade No. 3 in D Major
Jan Sibelius, En Saga
George Gershwin, Cuban Overture
Roy Harris, American Overture
Modest Musorgsky/Maurice Ravel, Pictures at an Exhibition
APRIL 30, 1933 Teatro Nacional, Havana, Cuba. “Dos Conciertos de Musica Nueva bajo
la direccion de Nicolas Slonimsky”
J.S. Bach, Suite in B minor for flute and strings
Arnold Schoenberg, Begleitmusik zu einer Lichtspielszene
Edgard Varèse, Octandre
Arthur Bliss, Three Movements from Conversations
Silvestre Revueltas, Colorines
Aaron Copland, Music for the Theatre
“Fanfares by de Falla, Milhaud, Goossens, Igor Stravinsky, Prokofieff, Satie, Bliss and
others”
Arthur Bliss, Fanfare for a Political Address
Alejandro García Caturla, Fanfarria para despertar espiritus apolillados
Manuel de Falla: Fanfare pour une fête
Darius Milhaud: Fanfare
Francis Poulenc, Esquisse d’une fanfare/ouverture pour le V e acte de “Romeo et
Juliette”
Sergei Prokofiev: Fanfare pour une spectacle
Amadeo Roldán: Llamada
Erik Satie, [title not found]
Nicolas Slonimsky, Fanfarria habanera para despertar a los trasnochadores
Igor Stravinsky: Fanfare for a Liturgy
Jose Ardevol, Fanfarria para despertar a un romantico cordial
NOVEMBER 1, 1933 New School Auditorium, New York City. “An All Latin-American
Concert of the Pan American Association of Composers”
Carlos Chávez, Sonatina for Violin
Alejandro García Caturla, 2 short pieces for piano (Sonata Corta, Preludio Corta, No. 1)
178

2 Cuban dances for piano (Danza del Tambor, Danza Lucumi)
(Repeat of Chávez)
Carlos Pedrell, “En amore fueron criadas,” “Oracion por las novias tristes”
Alejandro García Caturla, “Mari-Sabel” (Poemas Afro-Cubanas)
Humberto Allende, “El Surtidor” (Mistral)
Montserrat Campmany, Tonada
Amadeo Roldan, Dos Canciones Cubanas
Intermission
Carlos Chávez, Sonatina for Piano
Heitor Villa-Lobos, Six songs
(Repeat of Chávez)
Heitor Villa-Lobos, Trio No. 3 for violin, cello and piano
Allegro con moto
Assai moderato
Allegretto Spirituoso
Finale, Allegro Animato
NOVEMBER 13, 1933 New School Auditorium, New York City. “An All North American
Concert of the Pan American Association of Composers”
John J. Becker, Soundpiece, for string quartet and piano
Richard Donovan, Four Songs for string quartet and voice
Walter Piston, String Quartet
Adolph Weiss, Seven Songs for string quartet and voice
Charles Ives, Seven Songs
Carl Ruggles, “Toys”
Ruth Crawford, String Quartet
DECEMBER 8, 1933 Teatro Nacional, Havana, Cuba. Orquesta Filarmonica de la Habana,
Amadeo Roldan, conductor
Henry Cowell, Reel; Hornpipe
DECEMBER 11, 1933 New School Auditorium, New York City. Fritz Reiner, conducting
Isador Freed, Sonata for piano
Carl Ruggles, Angels
Wallingford Riegger, Trio
Carlos Salzedo, Sonata
Henry Brant, Concerto for flute
DECEMBER 24, 1933 Teatro Nacional, Havana, Cuba. Orquesta Filarmonica de la
Habana, Amadeo Roldan, conductor
E. E. Fabini, La isla de los ceibos
Adolph Weiss, American Life
179

Alejandro García Caturla, La Rumba
FEBRUARY 25, 1934 Teatro Nacional, Havana, Cuba. Orquesta Filarmonica de la
Habana, Amadeo Roldan, conductor
Howard Hanson, “Andante” from Nordic Symphony
APRIL 15, 1934 Town Hall, New York City. Nicolas Slonimsky, conductor
Carl Ruggles, Men and Mountains, for chamber orchestra [Portals was scheduled]
Amadeo Roldan, Three Son Motives
Alejandro García Caturla, Juego Santo, for soprano, instrumental ensemble and
percussion (Lydia de Rivera)
Carlos Salzedo, Concerto for Harp and seven wind instruments
Charles Ives, Two Songs “The New River”; “December,” for instrumental ensemble and
chorus
Night, for chamber orchestra
Edgard Varèse, Ionisation; Equatorial
Adolph Weiss, “Andante” from Chamber Symphony
Colin McPhee, Concerto for piano and wind octet (Josef Wissow)
APRIL 22, 1934 Alvin Theatre, New York City. Albert Stoessel, conductor; Martha
Graham and group, with orchestral interludes for chamber orchestra
Henry Cowell, Four Casual Developments
Dorothy Bird, Sophie Maslow, Anna Sokolow
A. Lehman Engel, Ekstasis (Two Lyric Fragments)
Martha Graham
William Grant Still, Three Dances from “La Guiablesse”
Chamber Orchestra
Louis Horst, Primitive Mysteries
Martha Graham and Group
Villa-Lobos, Primitive Canticles
Martha Graham
Soprano solo, Judith Litante
Charles Ives, Hallowe’en, The Pond, Allegro Moderato
Chamber Orchestra
Riegger, Frenetic Rhythms
Martha Graham
Voice, Simon Rady
Silvestre Revueltas, 8 X Radio
Chamber Orchestra
Varèse, Intégrales: Shapes of Ancestral Wonder
Martha Graham and Group
180

APPENDIX B
EXTANT CONCERT PROGRAMS AND REVIEWS OF THE PAN-AMERICAN
ASSOCIATION OF COMPOSERS
(Unless noted otherwise, all materials are located in the Henry Cowell Papers of the New
York Public Library for the Performing Arts.)
Program, March 12, 1929, Birchard Hall, NYC
Program, April 21, 1930, Carnegie Chapter Hall, NYC
Program, October 15, 1930, YWCA, San Francisco
Henry Cowell, “The New Music Society.” The Argonaut October 18, 1930.
Programs, December 23 and 26, 1930, Havana
Gallardo, Conchita. “Music,” El pais (Havana) December 27, 1930.
Not signed, “Habaneras/Henry Cowell.” Diario de la Marina (Havana) Dec. 27,
1930.
Program, December 28, 1930, Havana
Program, January 10, 1931, Town Hall, NYC
Program, February 7, 1931, New School, NYC
Program, March 10, 1931, New School, NYC
Programs, March 18 and 21, 1931, Havana
Programs, June 6 and 11, 1931, Salle Gaveau, Paris
Carlos Salzedo, “The American Left Wing.” Eolus 11 (April 1932), 9-29.
Boris de Schloezer, “Musical Life in Paris.” Les Beaux Arts June 26, 1931.
Paul Le Flem, “Mr. Slonimsky Conducts . . .” Comoedia June 8, 1931.
Paul Le Flem, “Mr. Slonimsky. . .” Comoedia June 15, 1931.
André Coeuroy, “The Discovery of America.” Gringoire June 20, 1931.
Emile Vuillermoz, “La musique.” Excelsior June 8, 1931.
Arthur Hoerée, Schweizer Musikzeitung Und Sängerblatt (Zurich) Sept. 1, 1931.
181

Paul Dambly, A Paris June 26, 1931.
Emile Vuillermoz, “La musique.” Excelsior June 15, 1931.
Alexei Remisoff, “Intégrales—Géométrie Sonore” June 1931.
Philip Hale, “Mr. Slonimsky in Paris.” Boston Herald July 7, 1931.
Henry Prunières, “American Compositions in Paris.” New York Times July 12,
1931.
Adolph Weiss, “In Defense of Native Composers.” New York Times July 26,
1931.
Raymond Petit, “Concerts de Musique Americaine.” La Revue Musicale 12/119,
(October 1931), 245-6.
Jules Casadesus, “Les Concerts.” L’Oeuvre June 11, 1931.
Not signed, “Boston Chamber Orchestra.” Musical America February 25, 1931.
Program, November 23, 1931, Madrid
Ad. S. “La vida musical: Musica panamericana.” El sol (Madrid) November 24,
1931.
Juan del Brezo, "Concierto de Música Pan-Americana." La voz (Madrid)
November 24, 1931.
Program, December 1, 1931, Bauhaus, Dessau
Program, January 5, 1932, New School, NYC
Program, February 16, 1932, New School, NYC
Not signed, “North American Composers and Others.” 1932.
Gustav Davidson, “Music.” New York Daily Mirror February 17, 1932.
Programs, February 21 and 25, 1932, Salle Pleyel, Paris
Emile Vuillermoz, Excelsior February 23, 1932.
Not signed, Chicago Tribune (Paris) February 24, 1932.
Marcel Belvianes, Menestrel February 26, 1932.
Florent Schmitt, Le temps February 27, 1932.
Not signed, Chicago Tribune (Paris) February 27, 1932.
Tristan Klingsor, Le monde musical February 29, 1932.
Marcel Belvianes, Menestrel March 4, 1932.
Henry Prunières, “Concerts and Other Things.” New York Times March 5, 1932.
182

Not signed, “Paris Musical Critics Speak Highly of Music by Redding
Composer.” 1932.
Not signed, “Mr. Slonimsky Abroad.” Boston Evening Transcript March 9, 1932.
Irving Schwerke, “Aus Amerika,” Musical Courier March 12, 1932.
G.H. Archambault, “Paris News/American Music.” New York Sun March 14,
1932.
Not signed, “Mr. Slonimsky in Paris.” Boston Evening Transcript March 16,
1932.
Program, February 21, 1932, Konzerthaus, Vienna
Paul Stefan, “Works by Modern Pan-American Composers.” Musical America
March 15, 1932.
Henry A. Diez, “Pan-American Program Given in Viennese Hall.” New York
Herald Tribune April 3, 1932.
Program, March 5, 1932, Beethovensaal, Berlin
Heinrich Strobel, Boersen-Courier March 6, 1932.
Heinrich Strobel, Boersen-Courier March 7, 1932.
M.M. Vossische Zeitung March 6, 1932.
M.M. Vossische Zeitung March 7, 1932.
H.H. Stuckenschmidt, BZ am Mittag March 7, 1932.
A. E. Berliner Tageblatt March 7, 1932.
Ludwig Misch, Berlin Anzeiger March 7, 1932.
Momus, Das Kleine Journal March 7, 1932.
Dr. Hofer, Neue Berliner 12-Uhr Zeitung March 8, 1932.
Herbert Connor, Berliner Boersenzeitung March 9, 1932.
Herman Springer, Deutsche Tageszeitung March 10, 1932.
Josef Rufer, Berlin Morgenpost March 10, 1932.
Schliepe, Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung March 11, 1932.
Dr. Gerigk, Rheinisch-Westphaelschezeitung (Essen) March 11, 1932.
S----z. Berliner Westen March 13, 1932.
Program, March 10, 1932, Bechsteinsaal, Berlin
Ilse, Berliner Fremdenzeitung March 14, 1932.
183

Oscar Bie, Stuttgarter Neues Tageblatt March 15, 1932.
Fritz Brust, Germania March 16, 1932.
Fritz Ohrmann, Signale March 16, 1932.
Paul Zschorlich, Deutsche Zeitung, Berlin March 18, 1932.
Paul Schwers, Allgemeine Musikzeitung, Berlin, March 18, 1932.
Hamel, Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, Berlin March 18, 1932.
Al. Hi. Neue Zeit des Westens, Berlin, March 19, 1932.
Not signed, Potsdamer Tageszeitung, n.d.
Walter Abendrot, Allgemeine Musikzeitung, Berlin, n.d.
Not signed, Berliner Tageblatt, n.d.
Karl Westermeyer, Die Musik (Stuttgart), n.d.
Not signed, Berliner Boersenzeitung, n.d.
Hugo Leichtentritt, "Berlin" Musical Times 73/1071 (May 1, 1932), 463.
Walther Hirschberg, “Nicolas Slonimsky,” Signale fur die Musikalische Welt
90/10 (March 9, 1932), 212.
Not signed, “Pan-Amerikanische Komponistenvereinigung” Deutsche Allgemeine
Zeitung March 11, 1932 (see partial translation above).
Herbert F. Peyser, “Music in Berlin.” New York Times April 17, 1932.
AP, “Applause and Hisses Mingled: Berlin Hears Modernist American Music.”
Boston Globe March 6, 1932.
AP, “Berlin Cheers Slonimsky Music: Boston Conductor’s Program Greeted with
Wild Applause and Hisses.” Boston Herald March 6, 1932.
Program, March 22, 1932, Smetana Hall, Prague
Not signed, “Pan-American Composers Heard on Continent.” Musical America
March 25, 1932.
Program, April 2, 1932, Franz Liszt Academy, Budapest (Fleisher Collection of Free
Library of Philadelphia)
Program, November 4, 1932, New School, NYC
L.B. “Composers Hit at Evil of Jazz.” NY Telegram November 5, 1932.
Program, December 8, 1932, Musikhalle, Hamburg
184

E.W.-M. “Hamburg Holds All-American Concert.” Musical Courier February
18, 1933.
Program, December 30, 1932, Escuela de Musica y Declamacion, Caracas
Program, January 30, 1933, Teatro Cervantes, Caibarien, Cuba
Program, February 6, 1933, Carnegie Chapter Hall, NYC
Program, March 6, 1933, Carnegie Chapter Hall, NYC
Program, March 18, 1933, Teatro “Niza,” Vueltas, Santa Clara, Cuba
Program, April 15, 1933, Teatro “Niza,” Vueltas, Santa Clara, Cuba
Program, April 23, 1933, Teatro Nacional, Havana
Francisco V. Portales, “Musicales.” La voz (Havana) April 24, 1933.
Not signed, “Contemporary Composers’ Work Excites Controversy.” The Habana
Post [English] April 27, 1933.
Program, April 30, 1933, Teatro Nacional, Havana
Alejandro García Caturla, “Realidad de la utilizacion sinfonica del instrumental
cubano.” Atalaya 1/1 July 15, 1933.
Program, May 25, 1933, College of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minnesota
Program, July 20, 1933, Hollywood Bowl, Los Angeles
Moses Smith, “Modern Sound and Fury in Musical Composition.” Boston Sunday
Advertiser February 25, 1934.
Program, November 1, 1933, New School, NYC
Program, November 13, 1933, New School, NYC
H.H., “Living Composers Heard in Recital.” New York Times November 14,
1933.
Program, November 19, 26; December 3, 10, 1933 Radio Station WEVD, NYC
Program, December 8, 1933, Havana
Program, December 11, 1933, New School, NYC
Program, December 24, 1933, Havana
Program, February 25, 1934, Havana
Program, April 15, 1934, Town Hall, NYC
Program, April 22, 1934, Alvin Theatre, NYC
John Martin, “Martha Graham in Hectic Recital.” New York Times 1934.
185

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Aharonián, Coriún. “Un extraño señor llamado Acario Cotapos,” Revista musical
chilena, 44/173 (January-June, 1990): 114-117.
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198

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Stephanie Stallings graduated from Furman University with a Bachelor of Music
degree in Piano Performance in 2002. At The Florida State University she earned the
Master of Music degree in Musicology (2005) and the Doctor of Philosophy degree in
Musicology (2009). Her principal research interests involve geopolitical relations and
music in the Americas focusing on connections between U.S. modernists and the Latin
American avant-garde. For her dissertation research she was awarded grants from the
Curtis Mayes Fund and the Presser Foundation. While at Florida State, Stallings taught
courses in music history, world music, music literature, and music appreciation. She has
contributed articles to Musicians and Composers of the Twentieth Century (Salem Press,
2008) and the Grove Dictionary of American Music. She has also presented several
papers at national meetings of the Society for American Music and is a member of the
American Musicological Society, the Society for Ethnomusicology, and Pi Kappa
Lambda.
199