The life and career of alcides lanza are a gift to a biographer. Over the course of his fifty-year career as a composer he has produced a major body of work consisting of more than 120 compositions and has achieved international renown, particularly in the domains of experimental music theatre, electroacoustic music, and music for percussion.

lanza has lived and worked in four important world centres. He was born in 1929 in Argentina and raised during a time of political upheaval and artistic ferment. During the 1930s and 1940s South America was overflowing with first-rate European musicians who had fled...

In 1938 Antonio Lanza, a barber in a small town in Argentina, won a modest sum of money by collecting the prize-winning coupons in a contest run by a cigarette company. He asked his two sons what they wanted with their share of the money: the elder boy, Edgardo, wanted a bicycle; the younger, the nine-year-old alcides, without a moment’s hesitation, asked for a piano.¹

alcides lanza was a child who loved music. When he was four years old, a cousin of the family who lived in a neighbouring town purchased a player piano and invited the Lanza family to...

alcides lanza was born on 2 June 1929 in Rosario, the second largest city in Argentina. His mother moved to the city for the birth because there was a good maternity hospital there, but the family lived in Timbúes, a small town some sixty kilometres north of Rosario.¹ lanza’s paternal ancestors came from Europe. His grandfather, Pablo Lanza, had emigrated from Italy to Argentina in the 1880s; his son Antonio, lanza’s father, was a first-generation Argentinean. The Lanza family had musical talent: in his youth Antonio had supported himself by playing guitar and directing a tango band that played for...

When lanza moved to Buenos Aires in 1953, he found himself in one of the most important cultural centres of the Western Hemisphere.¹ Up to this point he had heard practically no contemporary music. In Rosario there was no interest in recent music in the symphony orchestra, the chamber music groups, or any of the schools he attended, and although he had explored a large repertoire of piano music with Arminda Canteros, practically none of it was contemporary.

In Buenos Aires, however, lanza was surrounded by opportunities to hear the most recent music. The city boasted five symphony orchestras, all...

When lanza came to New York in 1965 to study electronic music composition at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, he found a rich and lively but highly fractured artistic scene. Just about any musical style could be found there, practiced at the highest level. There were establishment musical institutions, such as the New York Philharmonic and the Metropolitan Opera, and jazz legends such as Thelonious Monk and Charles Mingus.Hello Dolly,Funny Girl, andFiddler on the Roofhad opened on Broadway the previous year and were still going strong. In addition there were a phenomenal variety of “new music”...

In the late 1960s lanza began to use graphic notation regularly in his compositions, so at this point, I will interrupt the chronological narrative of his life and works to present a brief introduction to the type of graphic notation that lanza uses in his mature works. This will give readers a better understanding of the music examples that appear in the remaining chapters.

For much of the history of western music, beginning in the Middle Ages, innovations in musical notation have been prompted by the desire of composers to express their intentions with greater and greater precision. During the...

By the summer of 1967 it was clear to both lanza and his wife Lydia Tomaíno that, after fifteen years, their marriage was at an end. Tomaíno left New York to return to her job and her life in Buenos Aires, taking their seven-year-old son, Guillermo, with her. lanza remained in New York to continue his work at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center.

Two years later, on a bright September morning in 1969, lanza met the young woman who was to change his life. Meg Sheppard, then eighteen years old, had just come to New York from the small mid-western...

lanza and Sheppard moved to Montreal in the summer of 1971. lanza was delighted; for him the move meant an opportunity to teach electronic music, to be responsible for a major electronic music studio, and to enjoy a considerable increase in income. The move was less welcome for Sheppard, who wanted to pursue a career in music theatre; she felt there would have been more performance opportunities for her in New York. When she first arrived in Montreal she considered the city as something of a backwater because there was hardly any English theatre and few contemporary music concerts. lanza,...

As anyone who has ever lost a loved one knows, our reactions to grief are unpredictable. In some cases the loss can be faced immediately; although our reactions may be intense, we are at least able to react. In other cases, however, the pain may be so unbearable that we become frozen with grief, and cannot even begin the process of healing. It can take a lifetime to come to terms with this kind of grief.

Two of lanza’s works written in the late 1980s are expressions of grief.bour-droneswas an immediate response to the death of his close...

In addition to his achievements as a composer, lanza has also had an extensive career as a performer and an organizer of contemporary music events. This chapter will examine some of the exceptional contributions he made in these areas. As will be seen, the thread that links most of his concerts, recordings, and festivals is his love and single-minded promotion of music of the Americas.

During lanza’s first years at McGill University he repeatedly tried to persuade his colleagues and the administration of the music faculty to allow him to organize a contemporary music festival sponsored by the school. He...

Thus lanza describes an evolution in his thinking. It is always interesting to a biographer when a subject does something wholly unexpected, especially when it is something he has previously opposed. For decades lanza had been determined to write music with an “international” sound, unconnected with his native Argentina, and bearing no trace of folkloric elements or nationalism, but during the late 1970s he broke with this practice and began to create works that have specific connections to Latin American culture. He does this in many ways: he might evoke the atmosphere of a place (such as a café in...