Narrative Strategies for an Ars Poetica of Latin American

Electronic Music: Intensidad y Altura (1964) by Csar Bolaos

Hernn Gabriel Vzquez
INMCV - UNR
vazquez70@gamil.com

Abstract: In Latin America, creating music with electronic media began

precariously towards the end of the fifties. In Buenos Aires, the Laboratory of
Electronic Music of Latin American Centre for High Musical Studies (CLAEM) of
the Torcuato Di Tella Institute developed into the most important of the region in the
mid sixties. The first work to emerge from the Laboratory was Intensidad y Altura
(1964) by Cesar Bolaos (Peru). The work was presented as the "electronic version
of the homonymous poem by Csar Vallejo" and it represents a case of concrete
music featuring sounds derived from recordings of objects and musical instruments
(bell plates, bamboo canes and cymbal) and human voice; and electronic sounds
with different electronic signal processing. With fragments of the recited poem and
different sound, Bolaos created a kind of "soundtrack" for the poem. However,
while the original sonnet can be understood as an Ars Poetica, Bolaos's work
combines some avant-garde poetic techniques to offer its musical version. This
paper aims to identify the narrative strategies used by Bolaos to musically
reinterpret Vallejoss poem. The relation between poetry and music is studied
through the classification of Temporal Semiotic Units and the analysis of formal and
semantic aspects of the poem. Together with the use of narrative trajectories, I show
how figurative and even existentialist allusions of the poem are represented by
sounds to develop a relatively autonomous musical form from the original poem.
While there will be an approach to the compositional procedures and material
conditions of construction of the work, this analysis does not address the
technological procedures used by Bolaos.
Keywords: Csar Bolaos, Csa Vallejo, Electronic Music, Latin American Music,
Narrative

Narrative Strategies for an Ars Poetica of Latin American Electronic Music: Intensidad y Altura
(1964) by Csar Bolaos by Hernn Gabriel Vzquez is licensed under a Creative Commons
Reconocimiento-NoComercial-CompartirIgual 4.0 Internacional License.
 2

1 Introduction

In Latin America, the use of electronic media for musical creation emerged towards
the end of the fifties. 1 Having the necessary equipment was a cumbersome challenge and,
above all, an expensive task. Chilean, Argentinian and Brazilian composers made the first
experiences. Since the founding, in Buenos Aires, of the Latin American Centre for
Advanced Musical Studies (CLAEM) of the Torcuato Di Tella Institute, an important number
of composers of the region could have access to a professional electronic music laboratory. 2
The CLAEM acquired the equipment of the first cabinet of electronic music in 1964. The set
was really precarious: one stereo recorder, one monaural recorder, one microphone, one
sinusoidal and square wave oscillator, and one oscilloscope. 3 Most of this equipment was
acquired by a Rockefeller Foundation grant that gave rise to CLAEM. 4 Not until 1967, the
Electronic Music Laboratory of CLAEM had the equipment and the staff that allowed
identifying it as the most advanced one in Latin America.

Image 1: Interconnection Panel and Recorders of the Electronic Music Laboratory in 1967
(Source: Archivos Di Tella)

The Peruvian composer Csar Bolaos (1931-2012) joined CLAEM in 1963 and was
one of the few fellows who had previous knowledge of radio broadcasting and electronics.
1
You can find more information about electroacoustic music in Latin America in Dal Farra (1994, 2006, and
2007).
2
Apparently, from the beginning Ginastera was interested in providing access to an Electronic Music
Laboratory and acoustics classes for the fellows. In addition, creation with electronic media and computers was
present in some of the first visiting professors lectures (as for example Aaron Copland). About this topic you
can see Vzquez (2015: 145).
3
You can find more details in Novoa (2011).
4
About the CLAEM founding you can see King (1985), Herrera (2011, 2013) and Vazquez (2008, 2010, 2011).
 3

This allowed him to elaborate the first work with the electronic mediums of the CLAEMs
laboratory in 1964: Intensidad y altura that, according to the author, is an electronic version
of Csar Vallejos sonnet.
In this occasion I propose an approach to the musical narrative strategies used by
Bolaos in a creation emerged from a poem. First, I present some characteristics of Vallejo's
poem and the musical interests of Bolaos. Then I focus on the study of the work in which I
apply a set of analytical tools. Temporal Semiotic Units, together with the formal functions
and the relationship between the musical and the poetic elements, will allow me to indicate
the narrative trajectory of the work. In this opportunity, I make a partial approach to the
technological procedures used by Bolaos. 5

2 The sonnet of Vallejo and the composition of Bolaos

Csar Vallejo (Peru, 1892 - Paris, 1938) was a Peruvian poet who developed much of
his production in France, he is considered the most avant-garde Latin American writer of the
beginning of the century, and he was strongly attracted by the musical creation of his
contemporaries. In addition to the fact that the poet and Bolaos were Peruvians, Vallejos
work had a very important presence in Latin America since the mid-fifties. The production of
a large number of critical studies on Vallejo was added to the complete publication of his
work, mainly in Lima, Madrid and Buenos Aires. 6

Intensidad y altura Intensity and height 7

Quiero escribir, pero me sale espuma, I want to write, but out leaps foam,
quiero decir muchsimo y me atollo; I want to say so much and get stuck in mud,
no hay cifra halada que no sea suma, there's no spoken cipher that will not be a sum,
no hay pirmide escrita, sin cogollo. there's no written pyramid, without a heart.

Quiero escribir, pero me siento puma; I want to write but feel myself a puma,
quiero laurearme, pero me encebollo. I want to laurel myself but stew in onions.
No hay toz hablada, que no llegue a bruma, There's no spoken achoo! that doesn't end in mist,
no hay dios ni hijo de dios, sin desarrollo there's no god nor son of god, without unfolding.

Vmonos, pues, por eso, a comer yerba, Let's go, then, this way, to eat grass,
carne de llanto, fruta de gemido, flesh of crying, fruit of moaning,
nuestra alma melanclica en conserva. our melancholic soul in jam.

Vmonos! Vmonos! Estoy herido;
vmonos a beber lo ya bebido,
vmonos, cuervo, a fecundar tu cuerva.
(October 27, 1937)
Let's go! Let's go! I'm wounded.
Let's go to drink what's already drunk.
Let's go, raven [crow], to impregnate your rook
[female crow].

According to Susana Zanetti (2004: 49), Vallejo's sonnet "Intensidad y altura" faces
"writing an Ars poetica from negativity", where "it is only possible to speak about the

5
Novoa (2012) has another approach about Bolaos work. She emphasized the use of voice in electronic works
of the period.
6
A fact to emphasize is the realization of a Symposium about Csar Vallejo organized by the Faculty of
Philosophy and Humanities of the National University of Cordoba in 1959. After this event, Aula Vallejo
journal was published between 1961 and 1971 in Cordoba, Argentina.
7
English version by Rebecca Seiferle.
 4

besieging of the blank page" and to meditate on poetry and its creation. 8 In spite of the
strongly surrealist character, where the little semantic coherence respects the structure of the
sonnet, the poem starts from an initial impossibility to write and arrives to a hopeful
suggestion. It proposes to create from a rereading of what is already used and the final verse
uses the image of animal fecundity to refer to the creative act, the birth of something new. In
addition to the musical connotations in the title of the poem where Vallejo chose to indicate
the musical parameters in acoustic terms, the thematic could have stimulated Bolaos, given
the technical deficiencies of the Laboratory of the CLAEM. Intensidad y altura, as I
indicated, is the first composition created in the CLAEM with the incipient and really
precarious equipment to process sounds by electronic means. 9 In spite of the difficulties that
Bolaos had to overcome, the recording of the work presents a high quality in the
technological control that allowed achieving a clear superposition and distribution of layers
in the texture, as well as the use of the stereophony.
The musical production of Bolaos, mainly those created during the sixties, shows a
strong interest in the relation between sound and image, as well as the use of elements of
musical theatre. Some of his works integrate instrumental performances, electronic sounds
and scenic movements by the performers. We can find in the work studied the use of multiple
resources, a common characteristic to the production of those years and in the CLAEM
environment. The sound sources used by Bolaos in Intensidad y altura are both concrete and
electronic. 10

2.1 Constructive characteristics of the work

According to the documentation preserved in the Di Tella Archive (image 2), the
musical material used by Bolaos in the composition of Intensidad y altura was: the poem
recited by an actor, 11 three additional voices that whispering the same text, small plates,
bamboo chimes bells, a cymbal and filtered white noise. These last instruments and the three
voices were processed with reverberation and various montages. The text was divided into
two parts. For the first stanza a double retrograding was made. Bolaos wrote the text
phonetically in reverse and recorded that pronunciation. Then, he reproduced the tape in
reverse and as a result "the text becomes understandable but with attacks and breaths
reversed". Perceptively, as you will see, this generates a sense of difficulty or impossibility in
speaking that reinforces the meaning of the text. The rest of the poem does not have
electronic treatment; he only used some phrases or words that, in a way, modify the general
sense of the poem.

8
The poem "Intensity and height" was written in 1937 and published posthumously in 1939 next to the Human
Poems (1923-1938) in Paris. The volume was reprinted in 1959 and 1961 in Lima, and in 1961 in Buenos Aires.
9
The technical equipment used by Bolaos was an Ampex stereo recorder, a Grundig stereo recorder, a Philips
monaural recorder, a white noise generator, a frequency filter and the speed variation was manual (Archivos Di
Tella).
10
The composer used both media and positioned himself outside the dispute between the "concrete music"
(driven from Paris) and "electronic music" (emerged on the radio in Cologne).
11
The speaker was Roberto Villanueva, actor and director of the Audiovisual Experimentation Centre (CEA) of
the Di Tella Institute.
 5

In the graph 1 we can see the distribution of the text and the type of materials or
sounds perceived. We can identify two well-differentiated planes: a background with
concrete and electronic sounds, and voices that murmur quickly; and a foreground with a
human voice that utters the semantically perceptible text. The interrelation between these
sound materials and their manner of presentation gives rise to different units of
signification. 12

Image 2: Selecting and sorting text (Source: Archivos Di Tella)

12
You can heard Intesidad y altura by Bolaos in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRtCD1egYUA.
 6

Graph 1:

Length
Text Sound Material
(seconds)
22 Bamboo Chime Bells (fade in) + (water)

12 Voices + (Water)
11 Voices
25 Qui - e Voices
3 Quiero Plates
15 Plates
8 (Explosion)
Quiero escribir pero me Silence + (water)
17 sale espuma
quiero (quiero) decir Silence
8 muchsimo
2 Plates
5 y me atollo
no hay cifra hablada que (Water)
7 no sea suma
3 Plates
no hay pirmide escrita sin Plates + Silence
5 cogollo
26 Voices + (Low Buzz)
9 (Gong)
9 Voices + (wave)+ Sonic Pulse
11 Quiero, quiero escribir Voices + (wave)+ Sonic Pulse
8 pero me siento puma Voices + (wave)+ Sonic Pulse
3 quiero laurearme Voices
9 Voices + (wave)+ Sonic Pulse
3 Bruma
6 Voices + (wave)
2 No hay Dios! Voices + (wave)
9 Voices + (wave)
2 Vamos, vmonos! Voices + (wave)
7 Sonic Pulse + Voices + (wave)
3 Estoy herido (wave) + Voices
8 (wave) + Voices
3 Cuervo Sonic Pulse
6 (wave) + Sonic Pulse
1 Cuer-
31 vaaah Chime Bells
12 Chime Bells (fade out)
 7

2.2 Temporal Semiotic Units

To study the narrative structure of the work I used the so-called Temporal Semiotic
Units (TSU), which emerged from researches conducted at the Laboratoire de Musique et
Informatique de Marseille (MIM) under the direction of Franoise Dellalande, since 1992.
TSU are an "attempt to categorize sound energy over time" 13 from the theoretical
contributions of Robert Francs, Michel Imberty and Denis Smalley, among others. 14 Xavier
Hautbois describes the TSU as "musical fragments that have a time significance because of
their morphological and kinetic organization" (Hautbois 2010). MIM investigations
determined the delimitation of nineteen TSU and classified them into two groups: the ones
not delimited in time (with a single phase, where the sound action is determined by a process),
and those delimited in time (that have different phases with material continuity between
them). To determine each unit, a "morphological description" and a "semantic description"
were used. The morphological description refers to characterizing the sound elements, and
the semantic description is a set of subjective meanings obtained experimentally during the
perception of qualified listeners. 15
To determine the TSU in Bolaos' work I did not take into account the meaning of the
text, I concentrated on the morphological and semantic characteristics that define each TSU. I
have been able to identify eight TSU (graph 2): 1. Who advance; 2. Obsessive; 3. In
suspension; 4. Who wants to start; 5. In floating; 6. By inertia; 7. Endless trajectory; and 8.
Waves. In turn, these TSU correspond to five "Time modes": Projected to, Mechanical,
Motionless, Back & forth, and Inexorable. As you can see in the table, the distribution of the
TSU and mainly the time modes has an organization that is related to the formal functions
and the musical narrative structure that Bolaos made from the Vallejos sonnet.

13
Alcazar (2014: 11).
14
I can mention Francs (1984), Imberty (1979) and Smalley (1995).
15
For more details about the TSU you can see MIM (2002).
 8

Graph 2:
Formal
Text Sound Material TSU Time Mode
Function
Bamboo Chime Bells Introduction
(fade in) + (water) Who advance Projected to
(Prelude)
Voices + (Water)
Obsessive Mechanical
Voices
Qui - e Voices In suspension (Who Motionless
Exposition
Quiero Plates want to start) (Back & forth)
Plates In floating Motionless
(Explotion) By inertia Inexorable
Quiero escribir pero Silence + (water)
me sale espuma
In floating Motionless
quiero (quiero) Silence
decir muchsimo
Plates By inertia Inexorable
y me atollo Elaboration I In floating
no hay cifra hablada (Water) Motionless
que no sea suma In suspension
Plates By inertia Inexorable
no hay pirmide Plates + Silence
In floating Motionless
escrita sin cogollo
Voices + (Low Buzz) Endless trajectory
Inexorable
(Gong) By inertia
Voices + (wave)+
Obsessive Mechanical
Sonic Pulse
Quiero, quiero Voices + (wave)+
escribir Sonic Pulse
pero me siento Voices + (wave)+ Elaboration II
In suspension Motionless
puma Sonic Pulse
quiero laurearme Voices
Voices + (wave)+
Sonic Pulse Waves Back & forth

Bruma By inertia Inexorable

Voices + (wave) Waves Back & forth
No hay Dios! Voices + (wave) In suspension Motionless
Voices + (wave) Waves Back & forth
Vamos, vmonos! Voices + (wave) In suspension Motionless
Sonic Pulse + Voices
+ (wave) Elaboration III Waves Back & forth

Estoy herido (wave) + Voices In suspension Motionless

(wave) + Voices Waves Back & forth
Cuervo Sonic Pulse In suspension Motionless
(wave) + SonicPulse Waves Back & forth
Cuer- In suspension Motionless
vaaah Chime Bells Conclusive Waves Back & forth
Chime Bells (fade (Postlude)
Who advance Projected to
out)
 9

2.3 Narrative Trajectory

From a strongly interpretive perspective, Byron Almn (2008) has proposed that
narrative is a possibility beyond the literary narrative, the latter is just one more. According to
Almn, narrative is defined as an act of transvaluation [... and] with respect to musical
narrative, transvaluation involves tracking the perceived changes made to an existing
hierarchy of values [...] from the particular interpretive perspective of one or more listeners or
observers (Almn & Hatter 2013:76). I consider that Almn's hermeneutic proposal is very
interesting, appealing and somewhat risky. The problem, as in every analysis, is to fall into
over interpretation. Besides, a requirement is that the interpretive proposals should have a
material and contextual basis as solid as possible.
Another useful contribution of Almn is to indicate the functioning of four "narrative
trajectories" derived from archetypal and mythical qualities: romance, tragedy, irony / satire,
and comedy. Almn and Hatten indicate that these trajectories can be as applicable to the
morphology, syntax, and semantics of twentieth-century musical styles as they are to music
of the common-practice period (2013:74).
As I indicated at the beginning, Vallejo's poem has an end that proposes hope and
encourage to the creation. Bolaos version, on the contrary, emphasizes the inability to
realize the desire to create. The difficulty in the pronunciation of the initial text and the
selection of the final words (No God; Lets go; I am hurt; Crow) produce a transformation of
the ultimate meaning of the sonnet. This transformation is reinforced by the time organization
that gradually stabilizes by alternating between static time modes and the coming and going
of sounds that increasingly interrupt the text of the poem: voices that obsessively hover
around the creator's mind and the desires that, like water in the ocean, constantly come and
go. For this defeat that is imposed on the creative impulse, I propose that the narrative
trajectory of Intensidad y altura is the tragedy.

3. Final words

To conclude, I would like to cite Almn and Hatten again when they indicate that the
narrative "is ultimately a cognitive construction, 16 which means that one may choose to
interpret what might otherwise appear incoherent" (2013: 75). In order that my interpretation
is the least arbitrary possible, I have resorted to Temporal Semiotic Units that, I understand,
they have allowed indicate the time evolution of the kinetic energy of sounds. On the other
hand (in spite of the precarious technical conditions and the traditional framing between a
prelude and postlude) the time organization used by Bolaos starts from an opposition of
tendencies towards an appeasement of tensions. No to an agreement or complementary
meeting, as would happen in a romance, but by the cancellation of the mobilizing desire. The
early twentieth century poet saw hope in creation. The composer who created after World
War II and the Cuban Revolution seems not to have been very optimistic about the future.

16
The underscore is mine.
 10

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