Visiting Scholars Program

The Foundation for Iberian Music provides research infrastructure for any scholars studying music of the Spanish-speaking world.

Current Visiting Scholars/Research Abstracts:

Antoni Cotanda

Lucrezia Bori was a renowned Spanish opera singer who carried out her professional career in New York City, where she became one of the most significant Prima Donnas of the Metropolitan. There, she was known as the Grande Dame, and after her retirement from singing she was elected to the Board of Directors of the Metropolitan Opera Association and became chairman of the Metropolitan Opera Guild.

The main objective of the Thesis is the analysis of Lucrezia Bori professional-artistic life in New York and her influence on the arrival of new Spanish singers in subsequent years.

The project would be completed with the study of the Spanish sopranos (Elvira de Hidalgo and María Barrientos) who performed at the Opera in New York during the MET Golden Age.

Gonzalo Fernández Monte

My current research deals with the history of ska in Spain, examining the presence and evolution of this music within the Spanish culture and it’s relationship with the ska scene in other countries. Given that this music has not attracted enough attention in the academic field, there is so far a considerable lack of knowledge about its noticeably intrincate and wide development around the World. The evolution of ska since its original form as a national music for the Jamaican people in the 1960s has been substantially rich. During the last four decades, which constitute an intense period in the history of Western popular music, ska has developed in such different contexts as the 60s beat revolution, the British late 70s punk and the recent pop scenes in Europe, Latin and North America or Japan. Through a series of complex sociocultural processes ska has been repeatedly transformed and reshaped into a wide range of stylistic variations and genres, conserving though a distinctive sound identity. The Spanish case constitutes a good sample of the richness in the development of ska. I hope my study will shed light on the relevance of this alleged underground style within the European –and World– popular music scene, as well as the interesting relationship between the history of ska in Spain and in places like America. This last point constitutes my main interest for my temporary stay in the CUNY.

Amparo Porta

Our research topic is concerned with understanding and responding to the dominance of the communicative function of music today that is leading indicator television schedules infnatil. The complexity of the communicative environment is explained through the theory of discourse and qualitative and quantitative analysis of content, through them we can access the understanding of the elements and structure that uses music and its significance. The project is analytical and involves the production of meaning in contemporary cultural discourse, the heritage concept, communicative and educational music, and cultural policies. The research is framed in the Semiotics of Music as that area of knowledge responsible for the construction of the meaning of music, but with an educational look because the content focuses on children and adolescents. In a broad sense, is the musical discourse to investigate everyday as bearer of meaning and therefore its influence on the construction of social and cultural imaginary, readings from the diversity that implies, and the role of diagnosis and influence of mass media as opinion makers, and everyday cultural forms.

Alejandra Pacheco

In 1916, the Spanish composer Enrique Granados arrived to New York, the city which held the premiere of his opera “Goyescas”. This travel was completed with some concerts and recitals in Washington and New York. Shortly after, in the travel back to Spain, Granados and his wife died in La Mancha Channel.

Granados was the first of a group of first-line Spanish musicians who arrived to New York looking for improvement in their careers. This list includes Joaquín Turina, José Iturbi and Alicia de Larrocha, whose first American tour closes our study.

Our research looks for the answer to several questions: What was the role New York City played in these musicians? Was it the image of modernity, the new cultural center of the world? How were they received by the American public? What was the further significance of their visits within their subsequent music careers?

2007-2008 Visiting Scholars/Research Topics:

Leopoldo Neri

Research on the concert and pedagogical activity of Spanish guitarist Sainz de la Maza in America. The first point was carried out through a discharge hemerographic major American newspapers, Emptying other relevant documentation (playbills, musical scores, correspondence, recordings ...) in American Libraries and Archives and developing a catalog of references related with the object of study. On the second point, is to conduct interviews of major American students of Sainz de la Maza.

María Paz López-Pelaez

Ms. López-Pelaez studied the musical iconography in the emblem literature Renaissance and Baroque architecture and relationships between music and architecture religious buildings of the Renaissance. With this aim she mainly visited the New York Public Library and the Metropolitan Museum Library.

José Luis Palacios

The Foundation welcomed me as a Visiting Scholar for a period of four months, from April to July 2008. Directed by Prof. Dr. Antoni Piza, he was my mentor and guide in the world of research in NYC.

And indeed, my stay at the Center allowed me to undertake the following activities:
- know the musical education system in USA,
- investigate on its rich library,
- attend the doctorate course taught by Professor Dr. Peter Manuel: Topics in Caribbean Music,
- collaborate with my tutor in preparing the edition of the cantatas of the Spanish composer Antonio Literes found in the archives of the cathedral Guatemala.

But the main activity of research was undoubtedly to have had the honor of giving a conference entitled The Baroque Villancico in Valencia: An Intercultural Meeting, looking for the historical roots of musical multiculturalism in a genre, as Villancico, who admitted and integrated all kinds of outside musical influences.

Fátima Bethancourt

During my stay at the Foundation for Iberian Music, I worked on my PhD, which focuses on the relationships between different artistic languages (music, literature, scenography, choreography) in the First European Avant-gardes, and their convergence on stage. One of the aspects which define better the way that European interdisciplinary model was implemented in Spain is the dialogue between Spanish tradition and avant-garde, and thus, one purpose of my research was to analyse and explain how this relation was produced. For this reason, I studied some scene projects where we can find this fusion, eg. the ballet La romería de los cornudos, whose Spanish premiere was in 1933 by La Argentinita’s Company and which was performed in New York in 1944 by the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo.

Cristina Menzel - Baroque polyphony