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(10 Years Ago)

Any review or comment about Chilean art music necessarily mentions composer Gustavo Becerra-Schmidt. This is not the case for his electronic and electroacoustic music, which seemed to be somewhat hidden or overlooked (until the uploading of his «Obra electroacústica» in 2008 by Pueblo Nuevo Netlabel), far from those who have wanted to approach this Becerra realm, where time seems to be standing still. These pieces -the ones played by machines- create a strange, disturbing sound space. Here, silence makes sound disappear, mingling with it, making it mutate. As if muted by a black hole, generating a gravity field absorbing everything around, but, because of this very quality, densifying it, making it murmur.

The release of almost all electronic works by Becerra (including mixed media, electronic, and electroacoustic pieces,) is an important and extremely necessary gesture for Chile, where the commitment for recovering immaterial heritage easily falls into oblivion. Through these works, the fortunate use of technologies around in the 70s, the 80s, and years to come, Becerra seemed to grasp the turn this kind of work would offer to compositional inventiveness as a whole: synthesizers, all kinds of artifacts and computers were used by him to generate other sounds, other forms and structures, other rhythms, weird harmonies.

As expressed by musical environment around him (in no way restricted to scores, for folklore, popular music and pieces for theater and movies were also part of his surroundings), Becerra has left a fundamental legacy, not just as a composer -being this an enormous opus. Cirilo Vila, Gabriel Brncic, and Fernando García -among many outstanding musicians in Chilean scene- were his students, which eloquently proves Becerra’s panache for teaching, even though for him the concepts of «talent» and «teaching» music (confusing matters these two), were profoundly questioned in two acclaimed papers of his: «El mito del talento en música» (1969) and «Crisis de la enseñanza de la composición en occidente» (1958-1959). In the latter, Becerra accounts for a disease that, through the years, seems to have spread out to a fair amount of composers’ brains: «Never as today there is a tiresome insistence in writing music according to a theory, i. e., to a set of mostly intellectual hypotheses. This has taken, as we said, not only to a distance between the composer and the audience, but also between himself and his work.

Juan Pablo Abalo
Compositor. Crítico musical / Composer. Music critic.
(Santiago, Chile. Julio / July 2010)

(10 Years Ago!)

We are proud, pleased and glad to present, at last, this CD release of the electroacoustic work by José Vicente Asuar.

This is a carefully crafted compilation, both a record and a symbol of a unique oeuvre coming from Chile – an aim thoroughly pursued by Comunidad Electroacústica de Chile, Pueblo Nuevo Netlabel, and Escuela de Música de la Universidad Arcis (via Laboratorio de Informática Musical) in this new joint venture.

The strange and anomalous presence of this visionary in our Arts history, fully acknowledged as a creative music pioneer both in Chile and abroad, has generated a slowly growing interest in several realms of our local culture. In order to understand this fully, checking local and foreign literature on Asuar’s releases, prizes and commissions -proof of recognition and value of his work- suffices. During the 90’s, his presence fades, as he turns away from composition, to be rescued and rediscovered by the early 2000s. Harmonic mixture of composer and engineer, Mr. Asuar researched and generated electronic sound technologies, creating with them a deeply expressive and personal music: maybe the first devices created and modified in Chile in the late 50’s; the first fully synthesized work composed in our country and/or Latin America, in 1959; the implementation of Sound Technology career at Universidad de Chile, in 1969; setting up electroacoustic music studios in Germany (1960) and Venezuela (1966), are all consequences of his pursuit, as well as the composition of works that explored sound/ music continuities and discontinuities, ranging from natural to human to synthetic materials; designing a music-making-oriented computer of his own, unique in the world at that time (1978), all landmarks of a paradigmatic local pioneer. His work presents the convergence of certain aspects of musique concrète, linked to an Art Music context, where serialism techniques, computer-assisted composition via heuristic processes, and an exquisite flair for sound synthesis, flow in a particularly free and personal way.

Nowadays, his technical and artistic work is both a direct and indirect catalyst for musicians and artists from all disciplines and generations. In more than one realm he is recognized as an influence: in his electroacoustic music, his pioneer, multidisciplinary approach to computer music; his albums, devoted to teaching and uncovering the potential possibilities of electronic music; his aesthetic-technical writings on electroacoustic music. Even factors superficially addressed by popular culture, such as the longtime mystery concerning his whereabouts, or the retro aesthetic of a couple of his LPs.

History presents Asuar as an precedent, but I would point him out also as a present-day ‘cedent’ (if it’s possible to put it that way), for he’s still signalling, gravitating, and pushing a way of understanding, creating, but, most of all, dreaming. He represents not only the blending of the musician and the engineer, but also the committed scholar and the supportive maestro, who wants technology to put the wonder of Music onto our hands…

All those features, so commonplace nowadays, were dreamt years ago by José Vicente Asuar.

Alejandro Albornoz
Secretario Comunidad Electroacústica de Chile CECh.
Curador / Curator. Co-productor / Co-producer Colección Electrocústica 2010.
(Santiago, Chile. Marzo / March 2011)