Latin American Art Music as European Invention: The Making of Latin American Composers in Paris, 1880-1930

This research explores the musical education of Latin American composers in Paris to reveal the part it played in the construction of nationalist art music between 1880 and 1930.

While studying at the French conservatoires, Latin American composers became aware that to succeed in the realm of Western art music they had paradoxically to embrace the very characteristics that distinguished them from European composers. At the same time they aimed at the ""universality"" enjoyed by their European peers.

By documenting the education of composers from different parts of Latin America in conservatories such as the Conservatoire de Paris, the Schola Cantorum or the École Normale de Musique de Paris, and by analyzing the work and the reception of these composers' music in Europe, I seek to address the prejudices and problems of identity that they had to face.

My work is situated within recent scholarship on canonic discourses and decolonial theories of peripherality and subalternity.