Deconstructing the center and the peripheries: A proposal for a ‘4E’ performance practice of the Latin American art song

In the 18th century, human sciences appropriated a physics model to study subjects from an impartial and aseptic point of view. A dialectic was established between the center and the peripheries, the center occupied by Western Europe and the rest of the world, the "peripheries" associated with ”premodern” cultural forms—their ways of knowing de-legitimized and classified on a lower value scale. Through performance analysis of Latin American art song, this talk demonstrates how the center-periphery dialectic is expressed not only in the curricula and the classification of songs but also in the uses of the body and the voice. We will conclude with a proposal for its interpretation anchored in the 4Es of cognition—embedded, enacted, embodied, and extended—that departs from the knowledge of the context of the creation of the works.

Patricia Caicedo is a soprano and musicologist whose scholarship and performances center on Latin American and Iberian art song. She has released eleven albums and published numerous scholarly editions of scores and books, including The Latin American Art Song: Sounds of the Imagined Nations, the definitive history on its subject. She is also an avid performer of these works, having sung around the world in addition to founding and directing the Barcelona Festival of Song, which focuses on the performance and study of Latin American and Iberian art songs in Spanish, Catalan, and Portuguese. She is the host of the podcast Latin American and Iberian Art Song in which she interviews composers and leading experts from across the world. Her interest in exploring the possibilities of technology brought her to create Mundo Arts, a company that developed in to a music publishing house, a record label, and an online store. Patricia has created an international network of contacts with institutions, researchers, and artists worldwide, managing numerous projects in Spain, Latin America, and the US. Patricia holds a Ph.D. in Musicology from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and a Medical Doctor’s degree from the Escuela Colombiana de Medicina.