Gustavo Leguizamón: El Cuchi bien temperado

Guitarist Pablo Márquez celebrates the work of a remarkable figure in Argentinean music: Gustavo “Cuchi” Leguizamón. Leguizamón (1917-2000) was a composer, pianist, guitarist, poet - and also a lawyer and teacher in the city of Salta where Márquez grew up. It was in his teaching capacity that Márquez first encountered him in person: “He was my history teacher at the Collegio Nacional when I was thirteen years old. When I saw Dr Gustavo Leguizamón come into the classroom for the first time, I had no idea that I was in the presence of one of Argentina’s greatest musicians, the composer of famous zambas I’d known and sung since early childhood. Cuchi liked to say that ‘the ultimate accolade for an artist is that people think his work is anonymous’.”

As a composer, Leguizamón was an exceptional melodist and an adventurous traditionalist.  The majority of his work consists of zambas, which Márquez considers Salta’s quintessential musical form. Leguizamón brought a sense of harmonic freedom to these dance pieces, incorporating his melodic and harmonic ideas in Argentine traditional music, “without ever losing its essence or strong sense of rootedness”. A builder of bridges between art music and oral traditions, he was inspired by classical music and by 20th century composers including Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky and Schoenberg; his “Zamba del carnival”, comprised of twelve notes, references Schoenberg’s dodecaphonic series.

For his guitar arrangements of Cuchi, Pablo Marquez alludes to the formal design of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, and its rigorous exploration of all the key signatures . “To provide a wealth of colours I set myself the challenge of never repeating any key. In view of the small number of keys commonly used in solo guitar music it was my way of enriching folk practice.”

The ‘bridge-building’ which Leguizamón proposed is extended in Márquez’s work, although the bridge is perhaps approached from a different direction.  Leguizamón was a traditionalist and a popular artist who examined new music “with an autodidact’s passion”. Márquez on the other hand reflects upon his classical background in this encounter with traditional music. “Although I approach it as a ‘visitor’, this music is nevertheless in my blood.”

El Cuchi bien temperado was recorded at Auditorio Radiotelevisione svizzera, Lugano, and produced by Manfred Eicher.