Oxford Music Online

« Previous result Results list Next result »

article url: http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com:80/subscriber/article/grove/music/01214

Aretz (de Ramón y Rivera), Isabel(b Buenos Aires, 13 April 1913). Venezuelan-Argentine ethnomusicologist, folklorist and composer,wife of LUIS FELIPE RAMÓN Y RIVERA. She studied the piano under Rafael González (1923–31) andcomposition with Athos Palma (1928–33) at the Buenos Aires National Conservatory of Music,instrumentation with Villa-Lobos in Brazil (1937), anthropology (1938–40) and, with Carlos Vega,folklore and musicology (1938–44) at the Museo de Ciencias Naturales de Buenos Aires. She tookthe doctorate in musicology in 1967 at the Argentine Catholic University with a dissertation onArgentine folk music. She was an associate member of the Instituto Argentino de Musicología from1938 to 1950. After working as the first professor of ethnomusicology at the Escuela Nacional deDanzas de Argentina (1950–52) she moved to Caracas, Venezuela, where she has heldappointments as research fellow in folklore and ethnomusicology at the Instituto Nacional deFolklore de Venezuela (1953–65), head of the folklore department of the Instituto Nacional deCultura y Bellas Artes (1965–70) and founder-director of the Instituto Interamericano deEtnomusicología y Folklore (1971–85). In 1986 she became the president of the FundaciónInternacional de Etnomusicología y Folklore (FINIDEF) and in 1989 the director of the Centro paralas Culturas Populares y Tradicionales (CCPYT), both in Caracas. She also presided over the newlyestablished Fundacíon de Etnomusicologíá y Folklore (FUNDEF), from 1991 to 1995. In 1996 shereturned to Argentina and took over as the director of the Fundación Internacional deEtnomusicología y Folklore de Argentina in Buenos Aires.

Isabel Aretz is a leading authority on South American folk music. With her husband she hastravelled extensively throughout Hispanic America, collecting the folk music of Venezuela,Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Uruguay, Paraguay, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama and Mexico, andhas published numerous important analytical and descriptive accounts of their research. Her manyawards and fellowships, for both scholarly work and composition, include a scholarship from theArgentine National Commission of Culture (1941–3), a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship(1966–7), the Polifonía prize of Buenos Aires (1952) and the first prize in Caracas (1972) forYekuana (Yanoama), a work for orchestra, voices and tape. She won the Robert Stevenson Prize(1990–91) for her book Música de los aborígenes de Venezuela, which also received an HonorDiploma (1993) from the Organization of American States (OAS) and the Inter-American MusicCouncil (CIDEM), and the prestigious international grand prize Gabriel Mistral of the OAS (1992).She has been an active member of many national and international organizations, a board memberand delegate of the IFMC and ICTM and a council member of the Society for Ethnomusicology. As acomposer Aretz has cultivated a highly personal nationalist style, based on a combination ofindigenous or Afro-Hispanic folk traditions with avant-garde European elements, including electronictechniques.

Writings

Música tradicional argentina: Tucumán, historia y folklore (Buenos Aires, 1946)

El folklore musical argentino (Buenos Aires, 1952)

Grove Music OnlineAretz, Isabel

‘Musicas pentatónicas en Sudamerica’, Archivos venezolanos de folklore, i (1952), 283–309

Costumbres tradicionales argentinas (Buenos Aires, 1954)

Manual de folklore venezolano (Caracas, 1957, 6/1980)

with M. Cardona, L.F. Ramón y Rivera and G.L. Carrera: Panorama del folklore venezolano (Caracas, 1959)

ed., with L.F. Ramón y Rivera: Folklore tachirense (Caracas, 1961–3)

with L.F. Ramón y Rivera: Cantos navideños en el folklore venezolano (Caracas, 1962)

ed., with A. Lloyd: Folk Songs of the Americas (London, 1965)

‘Raíces europeas de la música folklórica de Venezuela: el aporte indígena’, Music in the Americas:Bloomington, IN, 1965, 7–17

Instrumentos musicales de Venezuela (Cumaná, 1967)

La artesanía folklórica en Venezuela (Caracas, 1967, 2/1979)

Música tradicional argentina: La Rioja (diss., Catholic U., Buenos Aires, 1967)

‘The Polyphonic Chant in South America’, JIFMC, xix (1967), 49–53

‘El folklore musical de Venezuela’, RMC, nos.104–5 (1968), 53–82

‘Cantos araucanos de mujeres’, Revista venezolana de folklore, 2nd ser., no.3 (1970), 73–104

El tamunangue (Barquisimeto, 1970)

El traje en Venezuela (Caracas, 1972, 2/1977)

ed.: Améŕica Latina en su música (Mexico City, 1977)

Música tradicional de La Rioja (Caracas, 1978)

Instrumentos musicales para una Orquesta Latinoamericana (Caracas, 1983)

Síntesis de la etnomúsica en América Latina (Caracas, 1983)

Historia de la etnomusicología en América Latina: desde la época precolombina hasta nuestros días(Caracas, 1991)

Música de los aborígenes de Venezuela (Caracas, 1991)

La etnomúsica venezolana del siglo XX (Mérida, Venezuela, 1996)

Literatura folklórica tachirense: Cuentos de Pedro Rimales (Caracas, 1996)

Bibliography

GroveW (G. Béhague) [incl. further list of works]

Compositores de América/Composers of the Americas, ed. Pan American Union, xvii (Washington DC,1971), 27

Gerard Béhague

Copyright © OxfordUniversity Press 2007— 2010.