By: Tlacaélel Cáceres “Tlaca”
Graduate Student at CUNY Graduate Center
Abstract:
Emil Awad (1963), a Mexican composer and student of Ursula Mamlok, Donald Martino, and Milton Babbitt, earned his doctorate from Harvard and is currently a Professor of Composition and Music Theory at the Universidad Veracruzana. His work Paisaje (2016), written for soprano, flute, B♭ clarinet, cello, and piano, is based on the poetry of Octavio Paz and consists of eight songs.
The fifth song in the cycle, Ante la Puerta, is a brief song that allows to analyze it in its entirety. This analysis employs maps and networks to interpret how the subsets embedded in the soprano row contextualize the relationships with the other instruments, offering a perspective on the compositional qualities of the piece. With this not only the qualities of the work are shown but also Awad’s significance as one of the leading exponents of twelve-tone music in Mexico, through both his musical and pedagogical legacy.
The full work can be heard here.
Selected Bibliography:
Babbitt, M. (2003). Some Aspects of Twelve Tone Composition. In M. Babbitt, S. Peles, S. Dembski, A. Mead, & J. N. Straus
(Eds.), The collected Essays of Milton Babbitt (pp. 53-62). Princeton, New Jersey, United States of America: Princeton
University Press.
Babbitt, M. (2003). Twelve-Tone Invariants as Compositional Determinants. In M. Babbitt, S. Peles, S. Dembski, A. Mead, & J.
N. Straus (Eds.), The Collected Essays of Milton Babbitt (pp. 70-84). Princeton, New Jersey, United States of America:
Princeton University Press.
Martino, D. (1961). The Source Set and Its Aggregate Formations. Journal of Music Theory, 224-273.
Straus, J. N. (2022). The Art of Post-Tonal Analysis. New York: Oxford University Press.
About the Author:
He is a music theorist and singer with degrees from Juarez University of Durango and the University of Veracruz. He studied voice with Nimbe Salgado and music theory with composers Arnoldo Vázquez and Emil Awad.
He has had the opportunity to present lectures in the states of Durango and Veracruz, including at the Festival Internacional Camerata 21 and the Coloquio Internacional de las Artes CECDA-UV. His master's thesis applies Klumpenhouwer Networks and O’Donnell’s Dual Transformation to analyze the relationship between pitch organization and the structure of the first section of Synchronisms No. 6 for piano and electronic sounds by Mario Davidovsky.
He currently resides in New York City, where he is pursuing a Ph.D. in music with a focus on music theory and analysis at The Graduate Center, City University of New York.