CLAS | Latin American Library Collections
Jules Didot
El Templo del León, 1808.
This recent acquisition, housed in the Regenstein Library's Special Collections Research Center, reproduces José Luciano Castañeda's detailed lithographs documenting the remains of ancient Mexican civilizations.
Chicago education is perhaps best known for its emphasis on creative and innovative research. The Chicago library system as earned a reputation as one of the best research facilities in the country, with approximately 6.9 million bound volumes, 190,000 serial titles and 7 million microfilmed pieces. This includes 305,000 bound volumes and 1,500 serial titles on Latin American and the Caribbean, as well as the Latin American Music Collection of 20th-century classical music and an extensive slide collection of Latin American art. To facilitate student and faculty research, bibliographers developed a specialized website for its Latin American resources.
Click here to visit the homepage of the Latin American Studies Library Collection.
Latin American Music Collection
The Latin American Music Collection of the University of Chicago was formally established in 1999, to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the births of Carlos Chávez and Silvestre Revueltas. However, it effectively began with the visit of Mario Lavista, Mexico's premier composer and an internationally renowned teacher of composition, based at the Conservatorio Nacional de Música. In 1998 he was Tinker Visiting Professor of Music at the University of Chicago. For his seminar, Contemporary Music in Latin America, Lavista brought to Chicago a variety of scores, recordings, books, concert/festival programs, biographies, and articles, which he generously donated to the Joseph Regenstein Library. Library staff, the Department of Music, and the Center for Latin American Studies initiated a program to expand this rich collection and make it accessible to scholars, composers, conductors, and performers either through visits to the Regenstein Library or through the Inter-Library Loan program. In July 2000,Ediciones Mexicanas de Música, with support from the U.S.-Mexico Fund for Culture, generously donated more than 180 scores to the collection.
Concentrating on twentieth-century works, the collection represents a broad range of Latin America's leading composers. It includes items from Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Chile, Guatemala, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Uruguay, and Venezuela, and provides music scholars with a richly detailed panoramic view of twentieth-century Latin American music. The collection includes over 320 scores by dozens of composers, among them:
Coriún Aharonián, Francesa Ancarola, Javier Alvarez, Eduardo Bértola, Eduardo Cáceres, Fernando Condon, Gerardo Dirié, Manuel Enríquez, Mariano Etkin, Gerardo Gandini, F. García, Joaquín Gutiérrez Heras, Federico Ibarra, Adina Izarra, Alcides Lanza, Ana Lara, Mario Lavista, Ricardo Lorenz, Armando Luna, Arturo Márquez, Marlui Miranda, Gilberto Mendes, Alfredo del Mónaco, Gerhart Muench, Marlos Nobre, Gabriela Ortiz, Pablo Ortiz, Graciela Paraskevaidis, Hilda Paredes, Cergio Prudencio, Silvestre Revueltas, Carlos Sánchez-Gutiérrez, Claudio Santoro, Roberto Sierra, Antonio Tauriello, Aurelio Tello, Héctor Tosar, and Eugenio Toussaint.
Additionally, nearly 250 recordings not commercially available complement the score collection. Cassette tapes, DATs and CDs contain music by, among many others, Carlos Chávez, Manuel de Elías, Celso Garrido-Lecca, Rodolfo Halffter, Pablo Moncayo, Joaquín Orellana, Astor Piazzolla, Hector Varacel, and Heitor Villa-Lobos. Examples of CD titles include:
- INBA-CENIDIM: Aura, Serie Siglo XX Vol. V, Serie Siglo XX Vol. VIII, Serie Siglo XX Vol. X, Serie Siglo XX Vol. XI, Series Siglo XX Vol. XIX
- INBA-SACM: Manuel Enríquez, The Querétaro Philharmonic, Manuel Enríquez, string quartets, Manuel Enríquez Ponce/ Enríquez/Kuri Aldana
- La Camerata: Sabor Latino (PFCD-1703)
- Coriún Ahorian: Gran Tiempo (Tacuabe T/E 25CD)
- Música Sinfónica Mexicana (URTEXT JBCC 003/4)
Project Coordinators:
- Robert Kendrick, Department of Music
- Ricardo Lorenz, Armonía Program, Chicago Symphony Orchestra
- Jenny Pilling, Center for Latin American Studies
