Música de vanguardia en la prensa cultural española: los casos de La Estafeta Literaria y Aulas. Educación y Cultura

At the end of the 1950s, avant-garde music began to draw the attention of cultural institutions such as the Aula de Musica from the Ateneo de Madrid and the Servicio Nacional de Educacion y Cultura. Sharing a common line of action, these and other institutions contributed to legitimize the music of young Spanish composers —namely, the so-called “Generation of 51”— aligning them with the most advanced techniques and trends of international avant-garde music. In the context of Francoism’s economic and political reforms, the promotion of the avant-garde met a wider strategic interest when offering a vision of Spain as a modern country, emphasizing the technical quality of the works and minimizing their possible ideological contents. In this paper we address the analysis of the discourse that composers and music critics built around avant-garde music in Spain. We will focus on two official publications related to the aforementioned institutions: La Estafeta Literaria and Aulas. Educacion y Cultura.