Graciela Paraskevaídis (1940-2017)
Biography
Since 1975 Graciela resides in Montevidéu and has also adopted the Uruguayan co-citizenship. She has been acting as professor, researcher, musicologist and organizer of courses and festivals focused in diffusing the Latin American contemporary music. She was a master at the Escuela Universitária de Música da Universidad de la Republica, a member of the organizing team to Latin American Contemporary Music courses (1975 and 1989), participated in the Uruguayan Society of Contemporary Music and is currently a member of the Núcleo Música Nueva (New Music Center) of Montevideo. Together with Max Nyffeler she founded the web portal www.latinoamerica-musica.net, to which she is chief-editor and responsible. She has also created the personal web portal www.gp-magma.net, where she publishes her own music scores and texts.
In 1979 she was invited by the DAAD, in Germany, to an artistic residence focused in teaching Latin American music in German universities. She also participated in the Artists Program in Berlin in 1984 and in the Schloss Solitude in 1998. As a recognition to her musical and cultural activities range developed in Germany she was awarded with the Goethe Medal in 1994. Graciela has also received other relevant awards and prizes by the Argentinian Composers Association, by the municipality of Buenos Aires, by the Arts Academy of Berlin and also the Morosoli (in Uruguay, 2006).
Her compositions have been executed - and commissioned - in Germany, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, South Korea, Cuba, Scotland, Spain, USA, France, Great Britain, Greece, Mexico, Rumania, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Uruguay and Venezuela.
It is also noteworthy her musicology works such as the book La obra sinfônica de Eduardo Fabini (Ediciones Trilce y Ediciones Tacuabé, Montevideo, 1992. Revised version with addendum, Montevideo, 2007), articles and essays, that can be accessed through the web portal www.gp-magma.net.
The composer passed away in 2017.
Compositions
Graciela considers the composition Magma 1, from 1966-67, her creative career’s initial milestone. This work was followed by other six pieces that share the same title for different instrumental combinations. Her main interest is the sound as starting point for the creativity process, as the element which models according to the possibilities of containment or liberation of energy and spacial expansion. Her composition uses materials juxtaposition and/or overlapping processes, aiming textural music combinations.
The perceived influence of Greek Orthodox religious music is related by the composer to her childhood and genealogy. Other sources of model and inspiration are the compositions by Edgar Varèse, Luigi Nono and the Latin American Eduardo Fabini and Silvestre Revueltas, among others.
About her work several authors converge the same opinion that it demonstrates a coherence the remains over the years. It is possible to notice her interest towards alternative typing, microtonality, instrumental ambivalence zones and the overlapping of sound layers. There is a preference by the concision of ideas and by the constrained usage of materials, which are handcrafted in order to induce tension and expressiveness with the minimum of resources.
In relation to the structure, Graciela uses the division in short sections and the non-directional speech. The rhythmic, melodic or textural variations occur through subtleties, without progressive character, but marked by sudden changes of intensity.
More information:
- Graciela Paraskevaídis, biografía. Available in: https://www.gpmagma.net/es_bio.html
- Gabriela Paraskevaídis, en diccionários (por Omar Corrado). In: Komponisten der Gegenwart, edition text und kritik, 2006 (original español). Available in: https://www.gp-magma.net/es_testimonio.html.
- Estudios sobre la obra musical de Graciela Paraskevaídis, de Omar Corrado (Compilador). Buenos Aires: Gourmet Musical Ediciones, 2014.
- La música para piano de Graciela Paraskevaídis, de Daniel Áñez García. In: Sonidos y hombres libres: Música nueva de América Latina en los siglos XX y XXI, de Hanns-Werner Heister y Ulrike Mühlschlegel (Compiladores). Frankfurt: Publicaciones del Instituto Ibero-Américano de la Fundación Patrimonio Cultural Prusiano, 2014.
- <agma, disco monográfico. Tacuabé, T/E 26 CD, Uruguay, 1996.
- Libres en el sonido , disco monográfico. Tacuabé, T/E 40 CD, Uruguay, 2003.
- ...a hombros del ruiseñor, by Graciela Paraskevaídis. In: “De Clara Schumann à Rede Sonora, em busca da história das mulheres na música”. Recorded by Eliana Monteiro da Silva, 2016. Available in: https://linda.nmelindo.com/2016/06/de-clara-schumann-a-rede-sonora-em-busca-da-historia-de-mulheres-na-musica-por-eliana-monteiro-da-silva/
- un lado, otro lado, de Graciela Paraskevaídis. In: Beatriz Balzi, Compositores latino-americanos, vol. 4. Echo, 295, Brasil, 1995.
- The Norton/Grove Dictionary of Women Composers. Julie Anne Sadie & Rhian Samuel (Ed.). New York, London: The Macmillan Press Limited, 1995. Pp. 361.
APRIL 30
Born 30 April
ELAINE FINE - USA
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