Venezuelan twentieth century guitar music: Antonio Lauro, Alirio Diaz

Abstract

The relevance of the study is a need to fill the shortage of research analytics, permitting to consider the composing and performing art byAntonio Lauro and Alirio Diaz in the context of Venezuelan music culture of 20th century.Main objectives of the study is to research the processes of development of the twentieth century Venezuelan guitar music on example of an analysis of the creativity of guitarist-composer Antonio Lauro and virtuoso Alirio Diaz, their influence on the formation of the Latin American academic guitar repertoire.The methodology involves the use of historical, systemic, structural-functional methods (for a comprehensive analysis of historical events, studying of compositional, genre-stylistic and form-building elements of musical texture), comparative and phenomenological approaches (for comparing Latin American and European genre models, performing versions and extracting meaningful aspects of the studied works). The combination of these methods and approaches provides a wide panorama of the investigation of Antonio Lauro’s creativity, in which major culturological generalizations are combined with genre-style and linguistic specificity of analytical material, as well as Alirio Diaz’s performing contribution to the development of the Venezuelan guitar school.Results and conclusions. The guitar creativity of Antonio Lauro and Alirio Diaz represents one of the brightest pages of Venezuelan music of the twentieth century. Audio recordings of its performance are considered as an important part of the historical foundation. The formation of the first Latin American academic guitar school has influenced a significant expansion of technical arsenal of performance, as well as creation of new music, which was included in concert and competition programs of the modern world culture. The main directions of musicians' creative activity, their role in the formation of the Latin American academic guitar art and the creation of the original repertoire have been determined. In the selected works by A. Lauro “Venezuelan Waltzes”, “Seis por derecho”, “Merengue” hybrid Indian, Creole, African-American rhythm-intonation formulas and genre modes of ethnic origin have been found. Horopo traditions and the art of playing the cuatro were outlined as determining folklore and everyday life factors in the development of culture. The features of the composer's style associated with the intentions of Indigenism and style allusions of romantic European poetics were investigated. The national features of modern Venezuelan guitar academic performance art were determined