Hall of Composers
Alberto Ginastera (1916-1983)
Alberto Ginastera was the pillar of twentieth-century Argentinean art music. He showed great musical promise at an early age, began his studies at age seven, and graduated from the Williams Conservatory in Argentina in 1935 with a gold medal in composition. He then completed his professional training at the National Conservatory of Music in Buenos Aires. In 1937, while Ginastera was still a student at the Conservatory, conductor Juan José Castro premièred an orchestral suite of music from Ginastera’s ballet Panambí. Lincoln Kirstein, director of the American Ballet Caravan, attended a performance of the full ballet while visiting Argentina. He was so impressed with the brilliant and colorful music that he immediately commissioned Ginastera to write a new ballet and Estancia was completed a year later.
In 1946 Ginastera spent a year in the United States on a Guggenheim fellowship and in 1947 returned home to join the National Conservatory’s teaching staff. Later he served as the Dean of the Faculty of Musical Arts and Sciences at the Catholic University of Argentina. His first opera, Don Rodrigo, premièred in 1966 and was soon followed by Bomarzo (1967) and Beatrix Cenci (1971). In 1969, finding himself out of sympathy with Argentina’s prevailing political climate, Ginastera moved to Geneva, Switzerland.
In the early 1950s the nationalism in his music gradually lost its dominance, and more modernist tendencies began to make their presence felt. He adopted the twelve-tone technique and his works began to incorporate microtones and polytonality. By the time of his death, his modernism had softened and he found himself returning to the tonality his earlier works.
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