Books by Melanie Plesch
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PhD diss, 1998
This study examines the role of the guitar in Argentine culture through an in-depth analysis of h... more This study examines the role of the guitar in Argentine culture through an in-depth analysis of historical, musical, pictorial and literary documentation from nineteenth-century Buenos Aires. Esteemed as an instrument of art music and simultaneously stigmatised by its relationship with the gaucho during the first half of the nineteenth century, the guitar was promoted, towards the 1880s, to the status of "national instrument." However, at the same time that it was celebrated as the musical emblem of the nation, the prestige of the classic guitar diminished, and it was relegated to a peripheral position within mainstream art music. This apparent paradox, it is argued, is deeply entrenched in the process of identity construction and nation-building that took place in Argentina during that period and is the result of discursive practices that present and represent the instrument (as well as Argentine culture) in an endless play of binary oppositions. The monolithic image of a unified "Argentine guitar" is questioned, and it is proposed that the physical object that we call guitar was regarded as at least two different cultural artefacts between which a continual slippage of meaning occurred. Accordingly, the binary opposition "classic guitar/popular guitar," is considered analogous to the forceful antinomy "civilisation/barbarism," a well-known dichotomy that has had a profound influence on Argentine and Latin American thought since it was coined in 1845 by Domingo F. Sarmiento in his influential Civilizacion y Barbarie.
This dissertation is organised in two sections. The first examines the situation of the guitar from the revolution of May 25, 1810 until the end of Juan Manuel de Rosas's government in 1852. Chapter 1 provides a brief overview of the social map and the political history of this period, addresses the ideological agenda of the elite groups that came to power after the May revolution and presents the dichotomy civilisation/barbarism. Chapter 2 focuses on the gaucho guitar. Literary and pictorial representations are scrutinised in three levels, focusing on their role in the elite's construction of the Self and the Other, their importance in the genesis of a dominant discourse on the gaucho, and assessing the actual information about the gaucho's musical practices that they convey. Chapter 3 explores the classic guitar tradition in Buenos Aires during the first half of the nineteenth century in the form of a documentary history, demonstrating the presence of the guitar in the music-making of the upper-classes and its prestige and esteem within the porteno musical world. Critical biographies of the major guitarists and guitarist-composers of the period are provided, and the extant music composed in the area is described and analysed.
The second section of the study is concerned with the guitar from the fall of Rosas up to the centennial of the May revolution in 1910. Chapter 4 sets out the historical and theoretical background for this period, focusing on the nation-building process and the debate on "Argentineness" generated by the unwanted effects of mass immigration and the rapid modernisation of the country. This situation gave rise to the so-called "resurrection" of the gaucho and the appropriation of his cultural universe as the essence of Argentine identity. The role played by representations of the guitar in this process is examined in Chapter 5, drawing attention to their most salient characteristics: distancing and nostalgia. The images of the gaucho guitar in literature, visual arts, advertisements and piano music are analysed and it is argued that the manner in which the guitar was incorporated into these discourses discloses the ideological agenda of the nation-building project. Chapter 6 concentrates on the classic guitar tradition during this period and, in that respect, it can be regarded as a mirror of Chapter 3. Although the instrument was still cultivated by the middle and upper-classes, it experienced a substantial loss of prestige, and it was no longer deemed at the same level as other art music instruments. As in Chapter 3, the spaces for performance are explored, critical biographies of the main guitarists of the period are offered, and the extant repertory is described and analysed. A catalogue of the guitar music composed in Buenos Aires during the nineteenth century is presented in the Appendix, providing a thematic index, publishing data, and location of copies where available.
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Book chapters by Melanie Plesch
Recorridos Diez estudios sobre música culta argentina de los siglos XX y XXI, 2019
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Applying topic theory to the study of rhetorics of identity in Latin-American art music, the auth... more Applying topic theory to the study of rhetorics of identity in Latin-American art music, the author examines the topos of the huella, a dance and song that came to signify the “distance and loneliness” of the Argentinean Pampas. The article traces the “genealogy” of this topos in the 19th and 20th centuries connecting it to a broader cultural trope in literature and the visual arts, and to the ideology of cultural nationalism in Argentina.
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This chapter offers a "cultural biography" of Boletín Musical, a periodical published in Buenos A... more This chapter offers a "cultural biography" of Boletín Musical, a periodical published in Buenos Aires in 1837, which survives in only one, nearly-complete, copy. Following Appadurai’s and Kopytoff's conceptualisation of the "social life of things", which considers that the meanings of an object are intrinsically related to the different cultural values bestowed on it at specific points in its "biography", I explore the many lives of this periodical, how it has been imagined and construed as it passed through various hands from its original publication until the present. Spanning the Boletín's nearly 180 years of history, this exploration reviews its appearance in the complex political context of the government of Juan Manuel de Rosas; its life as a bibliographic rarity and collectors’ item from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries; its role as an elusive source for the history of Argentine music during the second half of the twentieth century, leading to its facsimile edition at the beginning of the twenty-first; and its recent role in commemorations and performances of Argentine history. Undertaking the cultural biography of a periodical, I propose, helps uncover the multiple regimes of value at play at different historical junctures and allows us to perceive the social and cultural dimensions of the meanings it accrued throughout its history. Thus, the periodical illuminates its context (or, more properly, contexts), rather than the other way round.
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Cinco estudios sobre Carlos Guastavino. Homenaje en su Centenario. (Silvina L. Mansilla, compiladora), 2015
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Los caminos de la música (Europa-Argentina). , 2008
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El libro se suma al Festival 2012 realizado por el Instituto Superior de Música de la Universidad... more El libro se suma al Festival 2012 realizado por el Instituto Superior de Música de la Universidad Nacional del Litoral, al conmemorarse el primer centenario del nacimiento del músico.
Puede encontrarse más información en https://sites.google.com/site/cincoestudioscarlosguastavino/
Los cinco estudios (de Bernardo Illari, Romina Dezillio, Melanie Plesch, Carlos Manso y Silvina Luz Mansilla) atienden a aspectos biográficos, documentales archivísticos y analíticos. Destinado a la comunidad musical especializada y al lector interesado en la cultura argentina, el próposito del volumen no es otro que erigirse como un renovado impulso que aliente la concreción de nuevas investigaciones sobre la proudcción de Guastavino, por muchos motivos pofacética y, sin dudas, parte importante del significativo patrimonio musical de la Argentina.
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Analizar, interpretar, hacer música: de las Cantigas de Santa María a la organología. Estudios musicológicos in memoriam Gerardo Huseby. , 2013
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Papers by Melanie Plesch
Latin American Music Review, 1995
... Melanie Plesch, Universidad e Buenos Aires ... 7-8. 4. As I have attempted to do in "El ... more ... Melanie Plesch, Universidad e Buenos Aires ... 7-8. 4. As I have attempted to do in "El nacionalismo en la obra de Jorge G6mez Crespo," paper read at the IV Jornadas Argentinas de Musico-logia, Buenos Aires, 1988 (an abridged version was published as "Aproximaci6n a la ...
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Revista Portuguesa de Musicologia, Oct 2, 2017
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Revista Argentina de Musicología, 2003
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The University of Melbourne eBooks, 2020
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Patterns of Prejudice, Sep 1, 2013
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Revista Argentina de Musicología, 2015
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Books by Melanie Plesch
This dissertation is organised in two sections. The first examines the situation of the guitar from the revolution of May 25, 1810 until the end of Juan Manuel de Rosas's government in 1852. Chapter 1 provides a brief overview of the social map and the political history of this period, addresses the ideological agenda of the elite groups that came to power after the May revolution and presents the dichotomy civilisation/barbarism. Chapter 2 focuses on the gaucho guitar. Literary and pictorial representations are scrutinised in three levels, focusing on their role in the elite's construction of the Self and the Other, their importance in the genesis of a dominant discourse on the gaucho, and assessing the actual information about the gaucho's musical practices that they convey. Chapter 3 explores the classic guitar tradition in Buenos Aires during the first half of the nineteenth century in the form of a documentary history, demonstrating the presence of the guitar in the music-making of the upper-classes and its prestige and esteem within the porteno musical world. Critical biographies of the major guitarists and guitarist-composers of the period are provided, and the extant music composed in the area is described and analysed.
The second section of the study is concerned with the guitar from the fall of Rosas up to the centennial of the May revolution in 1910. Chapter 4 sets out the historical and theoretical background for this period, focusing on the nation-building process and the debate on "Argentineness" generated by the unwanted effects of mass immigration and the rapid modernisation of the country. This situation gave rise to the so-called "resurrection" of the gaucho and the appropriation of his cultural universe as the essence of Argentine identity. The role played by representations of the guitar in this process is examined in Chapter 5, drawing attention to their most salient characteristics: distancing and nostalgia. The images of the gaucho guitar in literature, visual arts, advertisements and piano music are analysed and it is argued that the manner in which the guitar was incorporated into these discourses discloses the ideological agenda of the nation-building project. Chapter 6 concentrates on the classic guitar tradition during this period and, in that respect, it can be regarded as a mirror of Chapter 3. Although the instrument was still cultivated by the middle and upper-classes, it experienced a substantial loss of prestige, and it was no longer deemed at the same level as other art music instruments. As in Chapter 3, the spaces for performance are explored, critical biographies of the main guitarists of the period are offered, and the extant repertory is described and analysed. A catalogue of the guitar music composed in Buenos Aires during the nineteenth century is presented in the Appendix, providing a thematic index, publishing data, and location of copies where available.
Book chapters by Melanie Plesch
Puede encontrarse más información en https://sites.google.com/site/cincoestudioscarlosguastavino/
Los cinco estudios (de Bernardo Illari, Romina Dezillio, Melanie Plesch, Carlos Manso y Silvina Luz Mansilla) atienden a aspectos biográficos, documentales archivísticos y analíticos. Destinado a la comunidad musical especializada y al lector interesado en la cultura argentina, el próposito del volumen no es otro que erigirse como un renovado impulso que aliente la concreción de nuevas investigaciones sobre la proudcción de Guastavino, por muchos motivos pofacética y, sin dudas, parte importante del significativo patrimonio musical de la Argentina.
Papers by Melanie Plesch
This dissertation is organised in two sections. The first examines the situation of the guitar from the revolution of May 25, 1810 until the end of Juan Manuel de Rosas's government in 1852. Chapter 1 provides a brief overview of the social map and the political history of this period, addresses the ideological agenda of the elite groups that came to power after the May revolution and presents the dichotomy civilisation/barbarism. Chapter 2 focuses on the gaucho guitar. Literary and pictorial representations are scrutinised in three levels, focusing on their role in the elite's construction of the Self and the Other, their importance in the genesis of a dominant discourse on the gaucho, and assessing the actual information about the gaucho's musical practices that they convey. Chapter 3 explores the classic guitar tradition in Buenos Aires during the first half of the nineteenth century in the form of a documentary history, demonstrating the presence of the guitar in the music-making of the upper-classes and its prestige and esteem within the porteno musical world. Critical biographies of the major guitarists and guitarist-composers of the period are provided, and the extant music composed in the area is described and analysed.
The second section of the study is concerned with the guitar from the fall of Rosas up to the centennial of the May revolution in 1910. Chapter 4 sets out the historical and theoretical background for this period, focusing on the nation-building process and the debate on "Argentineness" generated by the unwanted effects of mass immigration and the rapid modernisation of the country. This situation gave rise to the so-called "resurrection" of the gaucho and the appropriation of his cultural universe as the essence of Argentine identity. The role played by representations of the guitar in this process is examined in Chapter 5, drawing attention to their most salient characteristics: distancing and nostalgia. The images of the gaucho guitar in literature, visual arts, advertisements and piano music are analysed and it is argued that the manner in which the guitar was incorporated into these discourses discloses the ideological agenda of the nation-building project. Chapter 6 concentrates on the classic guitar tradition during this period and, in that respect, it can be regarded as a mirror of Chapter 3. Although the instrument was still cultivated by the middle and upper-classes, it experienced a substantial loss of prestige, and it was no longer deemed at the same level as other art music instruments. As in Chapter 3, the spaces for performance are explored, critical biographies of the main guitarists of the period are offered, and the extant repertory is described and analysed. A catalogue of the guitar music composed in Buenos Aires during the nineteenth century is presented in the Appendix, providing a thematic index, publishing data, and location of copies where available.
Puede encontrarse más información en https://sites.google.com/site/cincoestudioscarlosguastavino/
Los cinco estudios (de Bernardo Illari, Romina Dezillio, Melanie Plesch, Carlos Manso y Silvina Luz Mansilla) atienden a aspectos biográficos, documentales archivísticos y analíticos. Destinado a la comunidad musical especializada y al lector interesado en la cultura argentina, el próposito del volumen no es otro que erigirse como un renovado impulso que aliente la concreción de nuevas investigaciones sobre la proudcción de Guastavino, por muchos motivos pofacética y, sin dudas, parte importante del significativo patrimonio musical de la Argentina.