Proceedings of the International Conference on Music Semiotics

In memory of Raymond Monelle University of Edinburgh, 26-28 October 2012, UK

Edited by: Nearchos Panos Vangelis Lympouridis George Athanasopoulos Peter Nelson

Published by: IPMDS – International Project on Music and Dance Semiotics Alison House

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Copyright 2013 ©

Produced and Distributed by: ECA - The University of Edinburgh and IPMDS

ISBN: 978-0-9576548-0-8

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Topic Theory and the Rhetorical Efficacy of Musical Nationalisms: The Argentine Case

Melanie Plesch, The University of Melbourn, AU

ABSTRACT

This paper proposes that topic theory can elucidate the construction of meaning in nationalist idioms. Taking Argentine art music as a case study, I argue that topical analysis could be the musicological pillar in a constructivist theory of musical nationalism. Nationalist repertories, however, present a number of challenges to the topical analyst, among them important ethical dilemmas. Monelle’s model1 (2000; 2006), situated at the intersection between musicology and cultural history, presents itself as an exemplary methodology. Argentine musical nationalism emerged towards the end of the nineteenth century as the result of the larger process of nation building and cultural identity construction that took place in the country at the time. The prevailing preoccupation with defining a national ethos and producing symbolic representations of the nation saw Argentine composers embarking on the construction of a distinctive musical idiom that included references to folk songs and dances, rhythms, harmonic patterns, tonal systems, traditional musical instruments, and other evocations, all immersed in an otherwise European style. This idiom can be conceived of as a conceptual rhetorical system wherein the folk references constitute a topical network. Defining this network or “universe of topics” requires an initial instance of identification and description of the different topoi. However, nationalist topoi are not innocent: each of them evokes a world of meaning which is entangled within a larger, coherent, cultural system. I argue that in order to understand the connection between musical topoi and identity construction it is imperative to move beyond topic labelling and investigate what sets of values, beliefs and rules they endorse, and what social, racial and gender hierarchies they help construe and propagate. In short, nationalist topoi call for “a full cultural study”.2

1 See Monelle, R. 2000. The Sense of Music: Semiotic Essays. Princeton, N.J, Princeton University Press; and 2006, The Musical Topic: Hunt, Military and Pastoral. Bloomington, Indiana UniversityPress. 2 See Monelle, R., 2000, p. 33.

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INTRODUCTION

How do musical nationalisms work? “National” musics are integral to the shaping of collective identities and the expression of sentiments of belonging, and can even be instrumental in eliciting patriotic responses in people. Furthermore, musical nationalisms have become an integral part of Western representations of national identities in music, irrespective of their “authenticity”. While the rhetorical efficacy of national idioms is clear, we know very little about their mechanism of functioning. We do not have clear answers to important questions such as how “national” meaning is conveyed musically and why people recognise it and respond to it, nor do we know how political agendas are realized in the actual music. Another aspect that remains problematic is the relationship of musical nationalisms to traditional musics (folk and indigenous, real or imaginary), especially in the case of works that do not present easily recognisable references to specific folk songs or dances, and yet possess an unequivocal “national” character.

In this paper I propose that topical analysis can help answer some of these questions. Using the Argentine example as a case study, I will outline the main contributions that topic theory can make to the study and understanding of the rhetorical efficacy of musical nationalisms, and present a composite theoretical framework integrating a constructivist theory of nationalism, topical analysis and cultural history.

THE MUSICAL RHETORIC OF THE NATION

I have proposed elsewhere that musical nationalisms function as rhetorical systems in which allusions to traditional musics constitute a topical network [1]. These topoi refer the listener to worlds of meaning that have been historically sanctioned as representative of the national identity and subsequently incorporated into the national consciousness through the ideological state apparatus. I have applied topic theory to the study of what I call the “musical rhetoric of Argentineness”, an idiom construed towards the end of the 19th century by the early generation of Argentine nationalist composers and further expanded by subsequent generations, and whose main traits became naturalised to the point of being accepted as the true “Argentine voice” [2] [3].

The word rhetoric immediately brings to mind the image of a persuasive discourse that convinces through an artificially constructed eloquence. Indeed, Argentine musical nationalism persuades us of its own argentinidad or Argentineness through the deliberate use of a series of musical commonplaces or loci topici that, although immersed in an unequivocally European idiom, refer the listener to certain worlds of meaning historically sanctioned as representative of the national identity. The idea of topoi, as we know, proceeds from one of the five canons of classical rhetoric, the inventio. From the Latin invenire, to find, the invention is concerned with finding the appropriate things to say, the arguments to demonstrate one’s proposition. In order to find them one searches in places, more specifically “common” places, or topoi [4] [5]. A scrutiny of those topoi, therefore, can offer an insight into the original proposition of the rhetorician. I shall return to the broader implications of this point for the study of the musical rhetoric of the nation below.

What are the topics of Argentine nationalist music? Like those of Classical music, they include “types” and “styles”. Dance and song types present clear expressive associations and carry gender, racial and class connotations. Styles involve more complex

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combinations of musical systems (such as pentatonicism), instruments (guitar, North Western flutes, drums) and textures.3 It is important to keep in mind, though, that a nationalist topos is not a literal quotation of a folk song and that it is not an isolated occurrence: it is a recurrent idea that runs through the entire corpus, at different levels of abstraction.4

As important as what these topics are is where they come from: they belong to the musical world of the gaucho, the legendary horseman of the Pampas who was promoted to the role of national character towards the end of the 19th century. The relationship between Argentine hegemonic culture and the gaucho is long, complex and contradictory. Initially considered by Argentine elites as the epitome of “barbarism”, his music was consistently described in derogatory terms. He was deemed racially inferior, the product of centuries of miscegenation, and his semi-nomadic way of life was seen as an obstacle to progress. This attitude was dramatically reversed around the 1880s when, as a reaction against the mass immigration that took place in the country at the time, he was pronounced the quintessence of all things Argentinean and his cultural universe was used as a source for the construction of a distinctive Argentine high culture including the visual arts, literature, and music. Thus, urban composers, usually belonging to the upper (or at least the middle) classes, incorporated isolated elements—our topoi---from the musical world of the gaucho (a world that was not their own and of which they had but superficial knowledge) into the fabric of their works, which are otherwise in a clear European idiom.

As we can see, issues of class, race and xenophobia are at the heart of the genesis of our topical universe. Nationalist topoi are entangled in dense webs of signification; their expressive connotations articulate musically a series of ideas about Argentineness pervasive in Argentine culture towards the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries.5 Unveiling the meaning of these topoi requires connecting them effectively to other areas of the national imagination such as historical documents, parliamentary debates, the visual arts and literature; topical identification cannot be our ultimate goal.6 This is why, in this theoretical model, we need cultural history; in this regard, Monelle’s interdisciplinary methodology, as presented in The sense of music [10] and developed in The musical topic [11] appears as an exemplary research program.7

TOPIC THEORY MEETS POLITICS

The study of musical nationalisms, particularly—but not exclusively—in the Latin American cases, presents the scholar with a number of challenges. They are summarised below, together with an outline of topic theory’s three main contributions towards surmounting them.

The Romantic view of musical nationalisms proposed the existence of the “spirit” of a people, an essence that would permeate all its cultural manifestations and, of course,

3 Some notable examples are huella, malambo, vidalita and triste/estilo. See [6]. 4 It is also worth mentioning that not all folk dances and songs became topicalised. Topical analysts need to be careful to differentiate between a one-off reference and a “real” topic [7]. 5 For an overview, see [8]. 6 I first attempted such a study in [9], but it was not until the publication of Monelle’s The musical topic that I saw the possibilities of a combined methodology intersecting topic theory and cultural history. 7 An instance of my application of his methodology to Argentine musical nationalism can be found in [12].

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be embodied in its music. This Herderian view has had an enduring presence in the treatment of musical nationalisms, Latin American as well as European. For instance, in the current entry “nationalism” in the Oxford Dictionary of Music we read that “Liszt expressed the Hungarian spirit in his works, and this spirit was later intensified by Bartók and Kodály”, (my emphasis) [13].

Aligned with this view, traditional research in the area of Argentine musical nationalism has tended to be essentialist, either focusing on the relative success of composers in portraying “the national spirit” or limiting itself to identifying “folk” elements that may be superficially evident in the music. These discussions have also displayed an inclination to fixate on the alleged authenticity of these folk elements.8

Overcoming essentialism, therefore, is one of the main challenges for a critical approach to Latin American musical nationalisms. Recent developments in the field of political science provide an invaluable aid in this regard. Indeed, the Herderian view has been challenged in the past three decades, particularly by authors such as Ernest Gellner, Benedict Anderson and Eric Hobsbawm, whose work constitutes a constructivist view of nationalisms [18] [19] [20]. This perspective proposes—as is known—that a nation is not a primordial essence but an invention or a construct, or even, to use Homi Bhabha’s memorable term, a “narration”, [21]. The idea of the nation-state is considered to be historically specific and closely related to the transition to industrial society and the emergence of modern territorial divisions. In fact, nations themselves are regarded as one of the outstanding discursive formations of Modernity and historians agree on their fictional, imaginary, and discursive nature. The implications of this theory for musicology are significant. If nations, nationalities and nationalisms are constructs, this means that its meaning has to be constituted through discourse, or, in Anderson’s terms, it has to be imagined.

A constructivist view

From a constructivist point of view, nationalist idioms in music are not “natural” but cultural constructions, historically and socially determined. A number of scholars have acknowledged this view in recent years, exploring the connection between nation-building efforts and the emergence of musical nationalisms.9 Little attention has been paid, however, to the musical aspect of these political operations. If we accept the constructivist view of nationalisms, finding the “spirit” of the people in the music is no longer a valid pursuit. This should not prevent us, however, from investigating how and by what means this particular variety of musical meaning has been constructed, or from attempting to explain the dynamics of its communicative efficacy. This is the first contribution that topic theory offers to the study of musical nationalisms: a more objective connection between music and the production of meaning, and a non-essentialist view that allows us to incorporate the constructedness of nationalist idioms. In this sense, it appears as the ideal musicological counterpart to a constructivist theory of nationalism.

8 See, for example [14] [15] [16] [17]. 9 See, for instance, [22] and the individual collaborations in [23].

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Beyond folk labelling

Musical nationalisms are notably characterised by the presence of elements from folk and indigenous songs, dances, instruments and rhythms. This association between traditional musics and art music has been at the centre of the musicological treatment of Latin American nationalisms and is responsible for a methodological eccentricity which could be described as the “folk rhythm spotting” syndrome. Indeed, discussions of Argentine nationalist works, especially those produced by non-Argentine scholars, have tended to focus on “discovering” (sometimes incorrectly) which folk songs and dances are present in a particular piece of music.10 While an awareness of the folk idiom alluded to by the composer might help performers produce a more convincing rendition of these works, the explanatory power of this type of analysis is limited. Topic theory, by incorporating the identification of elements from traditional musics into a more solid and objective conceptual framework, allows us to go beyond “spotting”.

Conceptualising the communicative efficacy

“Spotting” is a relatively simple exercise with works in which the folk element is used as thematic material clearly presented at the beginning of the composition and even alluded to in the title, as in Julián Aguirre’s Hueya op. 49, Alberto Ginastera’s Malambo, and Carlos Guastavino’s Bailecito. It becomes progressively more problematic when references are fragmentary, less literal, occur simultaneously, or are generally more abstract, i.e. when they behave like topoi. A large proportion of the output of Argentine nationalist composers operates within this framework.

Listeners encultured in Argentine music find that this repertoire has a strong evocative power. Works like Carlos LópezBuchardo’s Campera and Guastavino’s Jeromita Linares, for instance, are said to possess a clearly recognisable yet indefinable national atmosphere that appeals to some elusive yet accepted notions about the expression of argentinidad or Argentineness in music. Conservative historiography has interpreted this phenomenon as the ultimate triumph of the nationalist project: our composers at last distil the national spirit without referring explicitly to any folk dance or song [26].

Topical analysis allows us to objectivise this otherwise elusive “spirit”. Careful inspection of the repertoire from a topical point of view reveals a plethora of musical figures at different levels of abstraction whose meaningful and expressive associations competent listeners are able to recognise. Thus, topic theory offers a solid methodological ground on which to conceptualise the communicative efficacy of nationalist works.

UNVEILING THE ELUSIVE SPIRIT

Carlos López Buchardo’s Campera (1919) is often described as having “captured” the essence of Argentineness without making use of any specific folk dance or song. Topical scrutiny, however, reveals that two Argentine topoi are subtly embedded in the piece’s post-romantic idiom: milonga and triste.

Originally part of a suite titled Escenas argentinas for orchestra, Campera soon became an independent piece due to its popularity. The title could be loosely translated as

10 See, for instance, [24] [25].

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“From the countryside” [27], immediately referring the listener to the rural landscape, where Argentine Romantic nationalists located the essence of the national spirit. The main melody, played alternately by the violin and the oboe, gives rise to a number of semantic associations with the pastoral world, and undoubtedly participates in this well-known Western topic. The first mark of Argentineness is the hint of a habanera rhythm in the accompaniment: a subtle appearance of the topos of the milonga that tells us that this is no ordinary rural world, but that of the Pampas. We need to wait until the melody’s closing cadence, however, for the deciding moment: a stepwise descent with double auxiliary note over a sustained dominant chord that eventually resolves to the tonic, which clearly alludes to the topos of the triste. (Example 1)11

Example 1. Carlos López Buchardo, Campera (piano reduction) bars 1-12.

This decentering of the topos, is a typical strategy used by Argentine nationalist composers since Alberto Williams’s foundational Elrancho abandonado. Sometimes topoi are presented either at the end of a phrase or at the end of the piece, thus bestowing the “national” meaning retrospectively. The rhetorical effect of this strategy is significant, as works that might evolve in an otherwise unmarked European idiom suddenly acquire new meaning. Indeed, in Campera, the appearance of the topos of the triste is the piece’s coup de grâce: this is the touch that, if you are Argentinean, brings tears to your eyes.

In order to understand the meaning of this reference we would need to examine the history of this topic and ask what element of the external world it represents, what that element means within the culture, why it has been chosen to represent the nation, and explore if it can be related to other elements within the culture. A full discussion of the triste topos is beyond the scope of this paper; I shall outline its main issues here.

This particular turn of phrase is pervasive in Argentine nationalist music, its history as a topos going back to Julián Aguirre’s Aires Nacionales Argentinos, subtitled “Cinco tristes” (1898), regarded as one of the cornerstones of Argentine musical

11 I would like to thank Hernán D. Ramallo for the typesetting of the musical examples and the creative solution found for the formatting of example 1; all musical examples are my own transcriptions.

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nationalism.12 Its characteristic desinence was soon adopted by other composers and became a signifier for Pampean melody; as such it appears in countless works [28].

The triste is a folk song dating back to colonial times. Of grave mood and improvisatory character, it is usually sung in a rhapsodic manner, with guitar chords punctuating the phrase endings in an almost recitative style [29]. The melodies feature a mostly descending profile with “weak” ending, often at a distance of a major second.13 The word triste means “sad” in Spanish and indeed melancholy is pervasive in the lyrics of this song, which usually deal with loneliness and the sorrows of unrequited love.

The topos clearly points to the melancholy pathos associated with the inhabitants of the Pampean region but is also related to a larger dysphoric trope in Argentine culture. Sadness pervades the nationalist movement and is embodied in representations of the gaucho in literature and the visual arts. The gaucho is afflicted by “una pena estrordinaria,” an extraordinary sorrow, as stated in the memorable initial lines of José Hernández’s Martín Fierro, one of the foundational texts of Argentine gauchesca literature.

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Aquí me pongo a cantar al compás de la vihuela, que el hombre que lo desvela una pena estrordinaria, como la ave solitaria con el cantar se consuela [30].

Here I come to sing to the beat of my guitar: because the man who is kept from sleep by an uncommon sorrow comforts himself with singing like a solitary bird.

Nationalist paintings also display an unequivocal melancholy. Art historian Diana Wechsler describes them as “… set in a homogeneous and empty time, where nostalgia appears to be the only common trait, a perverse nostalgia of a past rendered mythical and a present that is no longer” [31]. This nostalgia articulates in the aesthetic sphere the modernist nostalgia triggered in Argentina by the unforeseen effects of mass immigration and the rapid modernisation that took place in the country towards the end of the 19th century. In the cultural production of the period there is a clear longing for a vanished past, an old order (associated with the image of the gaucho and the rural world) in which the lower classes knew their place and did not question their betters, and where ideals and spiritual achievements were more important than material gain. While this is sometimes expressed explicitly, it is mostly (and perhaps more successfully) articulated at an abstract level, through representations of landscape, situations, characters and emotions that convey an intense melancholic pathos. It is in this context that the topos of the triste makes full sense.

CONCLUSION

While topic theory has much to contribute to the study of musical nationalism, the repertoire posits a number of ethical challenges. I contend that these challenges can only

12 See Appendix image No. 1. 13 See Appendix image No. 2.

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be overcome by an interdisciplinary methodology combining topical analysis with an in-depth historical exegesis.

Accepting the constructedness of national idioms forces us to contend with the connection between poetics and politics. If nations are narrations, traditions are invented and communities are imagined, it is important to investigate who is doing the story-telling, the inventing, and the imagining. While topic theory allows us to successfully connect musicology with a constructivist theory of nationalism, our work cannot be exhausted by topical labelling. We need to ask what sort of story is being told and what type of “us” is being imagined through these topoi. Returning to the issue of the invention mentioned above, it is important to keep in mind that, within the world of rhetoric, topoi are more than just commonplaces: as collections of possible themes, they effectively establish the boundaries of what can be said about something. In this regard it is crucial to take into account that musical rhetorics of nationalisms are not inclusive systems but selective ones and that they exclude more than they include. When analysing nationalist musical topoi it is revealing to observe whose voices were incorporated into the fabric of the music of the nation and whose were excluded.

The provenance of the topoi marks the main difference between the original incarnation of topic theory and its application to nationalist repertoires. While most of the topoi of Classical music (with perhaps the exception of the Turkish topos) proceed from the same culture that forged them, the topoi of Argentine musical nationalism were taken, as we saw, from the musical world of the gaucho.14 They are, therefore, acts of cultural appropriation. The fact that power imbalance is at the heart of the construction of this topical universe needs to be constantly borne in mind.15 Nationalist topoi, therefore, are not innocent: we need to examine what set of values, beliefs and rules of conduct they support and what social, racial and gender hierarchies they help construct. In this regard, topoi are enmeshed in larger “worlds of meaning” that can be detected in other areas of the cultural imagination, such as literature and the visual arts, and it is in this context that their deepest signification within the culture is made evident. Nationalist topoi require, in Monelle’s words, “a full cultural study”, [32].

REFERENCES

[1] Plesch, M., 1996. “La música en la construcción de la identidad cultural argentina: el topos de la guitarra en la producción del primer nacionalismo.” Revista Argentina de Musicología, 1(1), pp. 57–68. [2] Plesch, M. 2008. “La lógica sonora de la generación del ’80: Una aproximación a la retórica del nacionalismo musical argentino.” In Los caminos de la música (Europa-Argentina). Jujuy, Editorial de la Universidad Nacional de Jujuy, pp. 55–111. [3] Plesch, M. 2009. “The Topos of the Guitar in Late Nineteenth-and Early Twentieth-Century Argentina.” The Musical Quarterly, 92(3-4), pp. 242–278. [4] Lausberg, H. 1975. Elementos de retórica literaria. Madrid, Gredos, p. 32 ff. [5] Barthes, R. 1974. La antigua retórica. Buenos Aires, Tiempo Contemporáneo. [6] See Plesch, M., 2008, p. 82 ff.

14 And, to a lesser extent, from some of the indigenous cultures from the Andean region. 15 While it could be argued that there is no ethnic difference between gauchos and urban dwellers, there is a significant class distinction between the intelligentsia and the peasant population.

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[7] Ibid, p. 102. [8] Ibid, p. 82 ff. [9] Plesch, M. 1998. The Guitar in Nineteenth-Century Buenos Aires: Towards a Cultural History of an Argentine Musical Emblem. PhD diss. Melbourne, The University of Melbourne, chapter 5. [10] Monelle, R. 2000. The Sense of Music: Semiotic Essays. Princeton, N.J, Princeton University Press. [11] Monelle, R. 2006. The Musical Topic: Hunt, Military and Pastoral. Bloomington, Indiana UniversityPress. [12] Plesch, M. 2009. [13] Kennedy, M., “Nationalism in Music.” The Oxford Dictionary of Music.2nd ed. rev., edited by Michael Kennedy. Oxford Music Online. [14] García Morillo, R. 1984. Estudios sobre música argentina. Buenos Aires, Ediciones Culturales Argentinas. [15] Arizaga, R. and Camps, P., 1990. Historia de la música argentina. Buenos Aires, Ricordi Americana. [16] Veniard, J. M., 1986. La música nacional argentina. Buenos Aires, Instituto Nacional de Musicología “Carlos Vega”. [17] Veniard, J. M., 2000. Aproximación a la música académica argentina. Buenos Aires, Ediciones de la Universidad Católica Argentina. [18] Gellner, E. 1983.Nations and Nationalism. London, Basil Blackwell. [19] Anderson, B. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London, Verso. [20] Hobsbawm, E. J., and T. O. Ranger. 1983. The Invention of Tradition. New York, Cambridge University Press. [21] Bhabha, H. K. 1990. Nation and Narration. London and New York, Routledge. [22] Bohlman, P. 2004. The Music of European Nationalism: Cultural Identity and Modern History. Santa Barbara, CA, ABC-CLIO. [23] White, H. and Michael M., eds. 2001. Musical Constructions of Nationalism: Essays on the History and Ideology of European Musical Culture 1800-1945. Cork, Cork University Press. [24] Wylie, R. 1986. Argentine Folk Elements in the Solo Piano Works of Alberto Ginastera. DMA thesis, University of Texas at Austin. [25] Hammond, S. 2007. An Analysis of Carlos Guastavino’s Tres Sonatinas Para Piano and the Influence of Argentine Dances Bailecito, Zamba, and Chacarera. Master thesis, The University of Texas at El Paso, 2007. [26] Veniard, J. M. 2000, p. 295-296. [27] Real Academia Espanola, 2001. Diccionario de la lengua espanola. Madrid, Espasa, s.v. campero, ra: Meaning §1. “belonging to or relative to the countryside”. [28] Plesch, M. 2008, p. 97 ff. [29] Vega, C., 1964. “Las canciones folklóricas argentinas.” In Gran manual de folklore. Buenos Aires, Honegger, pp. 193–320. [30] Hernández, J. Martín Fierro. 1967 (1872). Bilingual edition.English version by C. E. Ward, New York, State University of New York Press, p. 2. [31] Wechsler, D., 1990. “Salón Nacional de Bellas Artes, promotor de vocaciones nacionalistas,” In Articulación del discurso escrito con la producción artística en Argentina y Latinoamérica, siglos XIX-XX. Buenos Aires, CAIA-Contrapunto, p. 96. [32] Monelle, R. 2000, p. 33.

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APPENDIX

Image No. 1. Julián Aguirre, Triste No. 3, bars 1-2

Image No. 2: Characteristic cadential figure of the folk triste