Abstract
Within the world’s current geopolitical configuration, Latin American creative acts tend to have fewer opportunities to become viable cultural models, and easily succumb to models coming from more powerful regions. In this context, the music by Uruguayan composer Coriún Aharonián (Montevideo, b.1940) has remained in the underground of Latin American art music circles, overshadowed by other composers of the region who are more accepting of and compliant to the trends stemming from the centers of power. It is this conscious effort in generating countermodels that do not conform to the prevalent expectations radiating from traditional cultural centers which lends significance to Aharonián’s music. This article examines three features present in Aharonián’s compositions: austerity, non-discursive syntax, and the use of microprocesses. Their particular manifestations are traced in numerous examples taken from several of Aharonián’s acoustic and electroacoustic compositions created between 1966 and 1999. These show an application of the idea of austerity to pitch content, timbre, rhythmic and melodic figures, and notation; two main ways of generating non–discursive syntax (high sectionalization and stratification); and finally the use of microprocesses as means for development of material including the use of microtonalism, microvariations and recontextualization.