Copland in Chile

In Santiago, Copland met composer Domingo Santa Cruz who, both at home and in the United States, advanced the idea that Chilean music was fundamentally “occidental” (i.e., European). For Copland nearly all Chilean composers were too indebted to Europe, especially Pedro Humberto Allende, in whose music Copland sensed little more than a “Parisian veneer” and “lack of … vitality.” In an interview with the journalist and jazz enthusiast Pablo Garrido, Copland learned of the capital city’s thriving jazz scene. (Garrido also reported in the Chilean press on Copland’s left-wing activism of the 1930s.) Copland performed several of his works with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Chile, including his jazz-tinged piano concerto, which prompted one Chilean critic to reflect on jazz and its threat to “occidental” identity.