Carlos Vega (Buenos Aires, April 14, 1898; Buenos Aires, February 10, 1966)Author(s): Gilbert ChaseSource: Anuario, Vol. 2 (1966), pp. 160-161Published by: University of Texas PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/779772 .

Accessed: 19/12/2014 14:10

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

University of Texas Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Anuario.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Fri, 19 Dec 2014 14:10:00 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

IN MEMORIAM CARLOS VEGA

(Buenos Aires, April 14, 1898; Buenos Aires,

February 10, 1966)

Carlos Vega died of cancer in his native city of Buenos Aires, where he had lived all of his life. Ever since I first knew him he lived in an apartment in the Calle Cangallo, which was his workshop as well as his home. It was there that I first visited him in 1945, and there that I saw him for the last time in 1964. By that time the small apartment was bursting with books, papers, and an extraordinary collection of photostats of codices, documents, and transcriptions pertaining to European medieval monody, which became his absorbing interest during his later years. He believed he had found a new key to the interpretation and transcription of this music - a key provided by his life- long study of folk music. Of the validity of his theory I am not competent to judge; but I can bear witness to his devotion and industry as a dedicated scholar.

Carlos Vega worked within the broad domain of cultural anthropology: the "sciences of man." This was the department that he entered when he joined the staff of the Argentine Mu- seum of Natural Sciences in 1926, directing his efforts from the beginning to the systematic study of the folk and ethnic music, dances, and musical instruments of South America. In 1931 he was responsible for creating the Institute of Musicology under the auspices of the Ministry of Education, and he became its permanent Director. During the next three decades he made over thirty field trips through Argentina and other South American countries, recording some 5,000 items and interview- ing hundreds of informants. From 1933 to 1947 he was a spe- cialist and lecturer on folklore in the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the University of Buenos Aires. In 1937 he received a research grant from the National Commission for Culture, and in 1947 he was awarded the First National Prize of His- tory and Folklore for his various publications. In 1957 he ob- tained a grant from UNESCO that enabled him to pursue his

160-

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Fri, 19 Dec 2014 14:10:00 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

studies of medieval monody in the libraries of Europe. He lec- tured on this subject in Paris, Brussels, London, and Barcelona. His large work, La misica de los trovadores, remained in MS. at the time of his death.

Vega participated in the First and Second Inter-American Conferences on Ethnomusicology (held, respectively, in Carta- gena, Colombia, and Bloomington, Indiana, in 1963 and 1965), and in the First Inter-American Conference on Musicology (Washington, D.C., 1963). He contributed to the Latin Ameri- can issue of ETHNOMUSICOLOGY (January, 1966) with a paper titled "Mesomusic: An Essay on the Music of the Masses."

Vega's first important publication was his transcription of the anonymous songs collected in Peru during the 17th century by Fray Gregorio de Zuola (La m'isica de un c6dice colonial del siglo XVII, 1931). There followed Danzas y canciones argen- tinas: teorias e investigaciones (1936), Panorama de la misica popular argentina (1944), Los instrumentos musicales aborige- nes y criollos de la Argentina (1944), Mi'sica sudamericana (1946), Las danzas populares argentinas (1952), El origen de las danzas folkl6ricas (1956), La ciencia del folklore (1960), and El himno nacional argentino (1962). To these should be added his basic work on musical phraseology and its application to the study and transcription of folk music: Fraseologia: Pro- posici6n de un nuevo mitodo para la escritura y andlisis de las ideas musicales y su aplicacidn al canto popular (1941; pub- lished as Vol. II of La m'isica popular argentina). He carried out with admirable thoroughness a task of "vulgarization" by publishing a series of booklets on Argentine folk dances (Bailes tradicionales argentinos), each based on a systematic plan cov- ering the history, origin, music, lyrics, and choreography of a particular dance. Finally, he made his contribution to music education with his last published work, Lectura y notaci6n de la m~sica: nuevo metodo abreviado de teoria y solfeo (1965).

G. C.

LAURO AYESTARAN

(Montevideo, July 9, 1913; Montevideo, July 24, 1966)

It is difficult to accept the fact that Lauro Ayestaran, cor- dial friend and exemplary colleague, ideal of the scholar and

- 161 -

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Fri, 19 Dec 2014 14:10:00 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions