Volume 1: Acknowledments

This project owes its existence to the imagination of Barry S. Brook (1918–97), which knew no limits. A distinguished scholar of 18th-century music, he was a futurist who rekindled the spirit of French encyclopedism in vast international projects whose boundaries were set only by the size of the planet. Driven by an insatiable curiosity that defied confinement to “areas of specialization” (in one membership directory he appeared under “interests unlimited”), he wrote as much about his beloved classic period as he did about computer applications to musicology. If the idea was to create a graduate program in music at The City University of New York’s Graduate Center (1966–), he sought the best scholars and established a community of teachers and students ranked fourth in the country at last count; if he saw the need for bibliographic control of literature about music, he envisioned a tool that could serve the needs of scholars worldwide (RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 1966–); if recovering 18th-century French symphonies in a 3-volume dissertation (1962) that earned him the Dent Medal of the Royal Musical Association (1965) was only a start, he set out to capture The Symphony 1720-1840 in a 60-volume set (1979–1986) that made available in modern editions a repertoire we now can hear on the radio; and if music iconography was still a largely unexplored field, he proceeded to centralize it by co-founding the Répertoire International d’Iconographie Musicale (RIdIM) in 1971 and establishing the Research Center for Music Iconography at The Graduate Center, CUNY, in 1972. This he did while working on the critical edition of Pergolesi’s complete works, contributing to Haydn’s critical edition, pursuing a facsimile edition of 17th- and 18th-century French operas, enriching the field of thematic catalogues, venturing into Stravinsky’s Pulcinella, and much more.

After these projects were well under way, the challenge had to be upgraded. The idea of creating a world history of musics, which the Polish musicologist Zofia Lissa had advanced in the 1970s, found fertile soil in Barry Brook’s imagination, and he proposed it to the International Music Council (IMC) during his term as president of this organization (1981–83). A Non-Governmental Organization formally established in 1949 at UNESCO’s request, whose founders include Charles Seeger and Luiz Heitor Corrêa de Azevedo, the International Music Council is committed to furthering cultural understanding among peoples worldwide by spearheading cooperation between its member organizations, supporting the work of its regional and national committees, and promoting scholarship and performance within a unified conception of the field of music. I would like to acknowledge the extraordinary and uninterrupted support received from the International Music Council over the years, and the very generous funding received from UNESCO through the IMC during the planning stages of this project. Special thanks are due to former Directors General of UNESCO Amadou-Mahtar M’Bow and Federico Mayor; to four IMC presidents, Lupwishi Mbuyamba, Jordi Roch, Frans de Ruiter, and Kifah Fakhouri; to former Secretaries General Nils Wallin, Guy Huot, and Damien Pwono; and to Silja Fischer, for the countless ways in which she sustained cooperation between this project and the IMC. Guy Huot, who served as IMC Secretary General between 1987 and 2002, shared with me much of the history of our partnership, which he not infrequently turned into fodder for banter in several languages, preferably Latin.

A generous grant from the Rockefeller Foundation singlehandedly made it possible for us to continue developing the volumes on Latin America and the Caribbean in the early 1990s. I also wish to acknowledge the symbolic but no less significant contribution of the Inter-American Music Council (CIDEM) which, through its indefatigable Secretary General Efraín Paesky, helped us with a small grant.

The authors and/or the editor of this work, however, are responsible for the choice and the representation of facts contained in these volumes, and for the opinions expressed therein, which are not necessarily those of institutions to which they are affiliated, funders, and other partners, and do not commit these organizations. The designations employed and the presentation of the material throughout this publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of funders and partners concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city, or area of its authorities, or the delimitation of their frontiers or boundaries.

I am deeply indebted to the distinguished scholars who served on our Board of Directors, which was chaired by Barry S. Brook until 1996, for the wisdom, experience, and wide-ranging perspectives they brought to our discussions, and for their unfailing support at decisive junctures in the history of this project. Individually and collectively, Israel Adler, Simha Arom, Hans Åstrand, Dorothea Baumann, Kifah Fakhouri, Ludwig Finscher, J. H. Kwabena Nketia, Jordi Roch, Frans de Ruiter, and Trân Van Khê, provided invaluable and indispensable advice over the course of many years.

The International Association of Music Libraries, Archives, and Documentation Centers (IAML), represented on our Board of Directors by former IAML president Barry S. Brook until 1996, provided a forum for discussion of our aims and played a significant role in the early development of our project. I would like to thank Maria Calderisi and Catherine Massip in particular, both former IAML presidents, for the countless ways in which they provided support and encouragement.

When the first conversations about shaping a world history of music took place at a meeting co-sponsored by the International Music Council and the Brazilian National Committee in São Paulo (1980), J. H. Kwabena Nketia proposed that I take charge of the coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean. At my request, and following my proposal that the distinguished Chilean musicologist Samuel Claro Valdés (1934–94) share with me the coordinatorship of this coverage, he was invited to join “our cultural adventure” as coordinator for Latin America. Likewise, Olive Lewin, assisted by Maurice Gordon, accepted the responsibility of coordinating the coverage of the Caribbean. We divided our tasks, and Samuel Claro Valdés worked tirelessly on commissioning articles until his failing health made it impossible for him to continue. Revered by Latin Americans, Samuel Claro Valdés left us a legacy of scholarly distinction and unwavering integrity. I shall always treasure the memory of working with a man whose generosity of spirit was legend.

Many institutions lent us their support during the planning stages of this project. I would like to acknowledge first and foremost the generous contribution of The City University of New York’s Graduate Center and its Graduate Program in Music for sustaining our efforts between 1987 and 1996. The Swedish Royal Academy of Music, through its Secrétaire Perpétuel Hans Åstrand, a renowned scholar who made countless contributions to this project, organized a meeting in 1984; CENIDIM, the Centro Nacional de Investigación, Documentación e Información Musical of Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, hosted a planning meeting in Mexico City in 1985; the Brazilian Musicological Society, through the kind efforts of musicologist Antonio Alexandre Bispo, invited us to São Paulo in 1987; the Smithsonian Institution welcomed us in 1988; and CIDMUC, the Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo de la Música Cubana directed at the time by Olavo Alén Rodríguez, arranged an extraordinary display of talent when we traveled to Havana to discuss contributions by Cuban authors in 1992.

While institutional support was vital, we could not have materialized our goals without the talent and knowledge of our authors, who made this work possible. Confining myself only to Volume 1, I remain deeply grateful to the late Carol E. Robertson for contributing a record number of stimulating essays and for our nurturing friendship of many years. I also am grateful for the generosity with which Jonathan D. Hill, Elizabeth Travassos, Rafael José de Menezes Bastos, María Ester Grebe, Irma Ruiz, E. Fernando Nava López, and Ronny Velásquez responded to my relentless questioning during the editorial process.

Words cannot convey my gratitude for the professionalism and personal commitment shown by my production family. David Seham, the head of KP Company whose experience in the art of bookmaking proved invaluable, designed and oversaw the typesetting by the brilliant Gregory Orpilla, and both spared no efforts to decipher my intentions; Linda Strube proofread every page (several times), caught typographical errors in indigenous languages beyond the scope of her mastery of style, and taught me to love the English language; Kenneth Yarmey, a superb music calligrapher, copied all the musical examples included in this volume and stood by me steadfastly during difficult years; sound engineer Seth B. Winner made magic with field tapes to produce the CD masters; Philip Baczewski and Ben Bigby solved technical puzzles and responded instantly to my Angst of malfunctioning equipment; Gregory Straughn and Rebecca Ringer, two former students, facilitated many inquiries and warmed my heart with their intelligent and reliable research assistance; and Fred Leise, the first truly professional indexer I encountered after a long and expensive search, taught me the principles of his art by remote control from Chicago and made it possible for me to produce an index that also benefitted from conversations with anthropologist Erica Hill. Last but not least, I could not have enriched or revised the bibliographies appended to each contribution without the help of the entire staff of the University of North Texas Music Library. Music Librarian Morris Martin not only headed one of the best music libraries in the country, but also set the tone for the high quality of service provided by his dedicated staff. Jean Harden, Susannah Cleveland, and Mark McKnight answered endless inquiries, and multilingual Arturo Ortega solved bibliographic puzzles in three languages. Donna Arnold, Music Reference Librarian, however, bore the brunt of my reluctance to search databases and rely instead on her expertise. Her patience and humor made each query a blast.

Most of the professional translations we commissioned at exorbitant cost to this project had to be rewritten. This is why I remain forever indebted to those whose flair for linguistic transfer of thought made my work on final versions less daunting. | want to thank Robert W. Showman for his extraordinary translations, John P. Murphy for shouldering difficult tasks with characteristic integrity, Victoria Cox and Paula Durbin for their mastery of metaphors, and Martha Ellen Davis for helping me arrive at a final version of Argeliers León’s polysemic and connotative prose.

Robert Stevenson, my mentor at UCLA whose contribution to our knowledge of music in Latin America is unmeasurable, generously accepted to grace our volumes with an article on compositions of the colonial period for which he refused to accept an honorarium, and helped me shape the coverage of national anthems with his uncanny control of the literature. Most of all, I am indebted to him for shaping my own early career, for teaching me so much through the example of his own writings, and for our long friendship.

Many colleagues and friends helped in tangible and intangible ways. Steven Friedson, Bernardo Illari, and John P. Murphy, all of them currently teaching at the University of North Texas, generously came to my rescue in countless ways. Dorothea Baumann applied her brilliant mind to unravel puzzles, especially on acoustics, and Anthony Seeger enriched our sound component by allowing us to reproduce a fragment from one of his extraordinary recordings of Suyá songs. I shared epiphanies and frustrations with Victoria Eli Rodríguez and Benjamín Yépez Chamorro, who, as a natural repentista, often was inclined to reply in verse. Anne Gurvin displayed her diplomatic skills on numerous occasions to ensure the survival of this project, and Electra Yourke never failed to sustain me with her contagious and unflappable belief in practical solutions. My lawyers Norman Solovay and Alan Bomser kept perilous situations at bay, and Chalón Rodríguez Salinas, a physician by profession and an expert in all things pre-Columbian by choice, kept me healthy and put at my disposal any photos I might want from his now famous collection.

In many ways, each new work is an homage to those who came before us. This applies not only to the prolific Robert Stevenson, but also to many pioneers, among them Carlos Vega, Isabel Aretz, Francisco Curt Lange, Domingo Santa Cruz, Juan Orrego-Salas, Lauro Ayestarán, Luiz Heitor Corrêa de Azevedo, Carlos Alberto G. Coba Andrade, José Ignacio Perdomo Escobar, and, for me, the everlasting memory of my close friendship with Charles Seeger. Their legacies live on in our volumes in explicit and implicit ways.

If Barry Brook set the wheels in motion, I owe the gift of completion to my mother, Elenita Kuss-Hieble, and to my son, Peter Sanders, the steady guardians of my dreams who made it possible for me to devote six undisturbed years to reshaping the entire original conception, editing, rewriting, retranslating, indexing, and overseeing the entire production of this trilogy. To them, and to all those who directly or indirectly became a part of this experience, whether I have included their names here or not, I offer my thanks.

A chance encounter with Theresa J. May, Editor-in-Chief and Assistant Director of University of Texas Press, brought this project home. I am deeply grateful to her for renewing my faith in the existence of that knowledgeable and committed editor/publisher who steers the ship home with a human and firm hand. I also would like to thank Joanna Hitchcock, Director of University of Texas Press, for her support of this project, and Allison Faust, Lynne Chapman, David Cavazos, Ellen McKie, David Hamrick, Nancy Bryan, Amy Tharp Nylund, Heather Crist, Lauren Zachry-Reynolds, and Sharon Casteel, for sustaining so efficiently the long tradition of professionalism of this prestigious press.

M.K. – Denton, Texas, 2004; Cold Spring, New York, 2020