Uccelli [née Pazzini], Carolina Uccellini, Marco

Urucungu.

See Berimbau.

Uruguay, Eastern Republic of

(Sp. República Oriental del Uruguay).

Republic in South America. It is on the east coast of the continent, bounded to the south and east by the estuary of the river Plate and the south Atlantic, to the west by the River Uruguay and Argentina and to the north by Brazil.

I. Art music

II. Traditional and popular music

GERARD BÉHAGUE/LEONARDO MANZINO (I), CORIÚN AHARONIÁN (II)

Uruguay

I. Art music

The colonization of Uruguay began in the 16th century and developed fully from the late 17th, when Spaniards occupied the territory to contain Portuguese expansion towards the river Plate. Few mission settlements had been established, and the capital city, Montevideo, was founded only in 1726; colonial music did not flourish until the late 18th century. The music archives of S Francisco in Montevideo contain about 215 works (some incomplete) by composers active in Uruguay from the colonial period to the late 19th century, including the earliest known Uruguayan polyphony, the four-part Misa para Día de Difuntos (1802) by José Manuel Ubeda (1760–1823). Other composers of religious works include Juan José de Sostoa (c1750–1813); the Italian José Giuffra, who arrived in 1850; and Carmelo Calvo (1842–1922). Juan Cayetano Barros (probably Portuguese) wrote a Constitutional Anthem in 1821; his son Antonio (b 1800) was a skilful composer whose Grand Symphonie (c1830) introduced the Italian style, which predominated from that time, to the Uruguayan public. Antonio Sáenz (b Spain), who settled in Montevideo in 1829, wrote a Misa solemne for the third anniversary of the Uruguayan constitution in 1833. The Hungarian-born Francisco José Debali, who arrived around 1837, headed a new generation of Uruguayan musicians, many of them amateurs, who composed mostly piano pieces and songs; some were women, including Carmen Luna, who published a Minué in 1837, and Jacinta Furriol (b 1806), whose Contradanza de los militares y empelados was performed in 1833.

Dalmiro Costa led a generation of pianist-composers including Pablo Faget (1825–1910), Miguel Hines (1820–63) and Oscar Pfeiffer (1824–1906). Costa's works use Latin American rhythmic and melodic patterns. The first Uruguayan opera, La Parisina by Tomás Giribaldi, had its première in 1878; León Ribeiro wrote the first extant Uruguayan symphony (1877), the first extant Uruguayan string quartet (1879), and the opera Colón (1892) for the 400th anniversary of Columbus's voyage to America. Luis Sambucetti, a dominant figure of this generation, trained in Paris and introduced the French tradition to Uruguayan music with his Suite d'Orchestre (1898). In the early 20th century, nationalist feeling appeared in compositions by Carlos Pedrell and Alfonso Broqua, strikingly in Broqua's Tabaré (1910) and his Quintet in G minor (c1914). Eduardo Fabini was the giant of Uruguayan musical nationalism; notable are his choral work Las flores del campo (1900) and the tone poem Campo (1913). Luis Cluzeau-Mortet developed a fresh nationalist style, handling rural musical idioms with an impressionistic flair. Jaurés Lamarque-Pons quoted Afro-Uruguayan rhythms and the urban music of the river Plate – the milonga and the tango – in his Suite de Ballet (1957) and his opera Marta Gruni (1967). Nationalist composers who cultivated a Romantic idiom included Vicente Ascone and Ramón Rodríguez Socas (1886–1957), whose opera Urunday (1940) calls on the lyricism of the Italian tradition. César Cortinas eschewed nationalism, cultivating eclectic sources of melody and universalist musical forms. Carmen Barradas, in her Fabricación for piano (1922), introduced notation symbols and sound effects that prefigured musique concrète. Guido Santórsola employed atonal expressionism in some of his compositions.

The works of Carlos Estrada, controlled in formal design and harmonically rich, followed neo-classical aesthetics. Héctor Tosar, another neo-classicist, used elements of Uruguayan traditional music in such compositions as Oda a Artigas (1951) and Danza criolla (1940). With Aves errantes (1961–3) he began experimenting with 12 basic groups of three sounds (trifonos); he presented the sound-group concept in the 1992 monograph Los grupos de sonidos, the first Uruguayan venture in composition theory. Composers whose careers developed during the 1960s include Pedro Ipuche Riva (b 1924), Diego Le Grand (b 1928), León Briotti (b 1929), Ricardo Storm (1930–96), Antonio Mastrogiovanni (b 1936), José Serebrier (b 1938), Sergio Cervetti (b 1940) and Alvaro Carlevaro (b 1957), whose La Vía Láctea (1985) and Intramuros (1987) display subtle tone colours and eclectic rhythms.

The Uruguayan broadcasting service, SODRE (Servicio Oficial de Difusión Radioeléctrica), has disseminated the works of many Latin American composers through its radio and television broadcasts, through its orchestra, choir and ballet, and through many festivals of Latin American music. In 1994 the Uruguayan congress created the Fondo Nacional de la Música to sponsor research and projects related to Uruguayan music.

See also Montevideo.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L. Ayestarán: Crónica de una temporada musical en el Montevideo de 1830 (Montevideo, 1943)

L. Ayestarán: La música en el Uruguay (Montevideo, 1953)

L. Ayestarán: ‘El Barroco musical hispano-americano: los manuscritos de la iglesia de San Felipe Neri (Sucre, Bolivia) existentes en el Museo Histórico Nacional del Uruguay’, YIAMR, i, (1965), 55–93

S. Salgado: Breve historia de la música culta en el Uruguay (Montevideo, 1971, 2/1980)

L. Manzino: The Montevideo Collection of South American Baroque Villancicos, 1650–1750 (diss., Catholic U. of America, Washington DC, 1993)

L. Manzino: ‘La música uruguaya en 1982 con motivo del IV centenario del Encuentro de dos Mundos’, Latin American Music Review, xiv/1 (1993), 102–30

Uruguay