Tucumán’s centenary music. The official program of 1916 through the periodical press

Abstract

Within the framework of musicological studies on periodical publications, this work aims to detect the musical events that were part of the celebrations carried out in the city of San Miguel de Tucumán on the occasion of the Centenary of the Declaration of
Independence of the Argentine Republic. in 1916. As a methodological procedure, an adjustment of the time scale was proposed and the object of study was limited to the musical events included in the official programming of the centenary festivities, which allowed its analysis from a microhistorical approach. For this purpose, the Tucuman general interest newspapers El Orden and La Gaceta
corresponding to the months of January to July 1916 were surveyed. This exploration has a double objective: on the one hand, to contribute to the local history of music in its factual aspects by identifying works, composers and performers that were part of the aforementioned historical event and, on the other, to account for the production processes, their circulation and reception, in a network of mediations that not only involved musicians but also businessmen, institutions —public and private— and the press itself, among others. It is essential to build a history of the music from and in Tucumán that allows a dialogue with the history of metropolitan music assumed as national, ultimate purpose of this article. In this sense, this work throws some reflections that place the capital city of Tucumán in a peripheral position respect to Buenos Aires as regards the production and musical circulation and reveals consumer practices that refer to a cosmopolitan taste.