Julio Estrada Velasco (born 10 April 1943) is a composer, theoretician, historian, pedagogue, and interpreter.
Estrada was born in Mexico City, where his family had been exiled from Spain since 1941. He began his musical studies in Mexico from 1953–65, where he studied composition with Julián Orbón. In Paris from 1965-69 he studied with Nadia Boulanger, Olivier Messiaen and attended courses and lectures of Iannis Xenakis. In Germany he studied with Karlheinz Stockhausen in 1968 and with György Ligeti in 1972. He completed a Ph.D. in musicology at Strasbourg University from 1990–1994. [1]
Since 1974 he became researcher in music at the UNAM Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, [2] where he was appointed as the Chair of a project on Mexican Music History and as the head of "Música, Sistema Interactivo de Investigación y Composición", a musical system designed by himself. [3] He is the first music scholar to be honored as member of the Science Academy of Mexico, [4] and by the Mexican Education Ministry as National Researcher since 1984, and since 1985 at the top level (III). He created the Laboratorio de Creación Musical at UNAM, where he has been teaching theory and philosophy of musical creation.
He has written more than a hundred articles based on his research. Some have been translated into English, French, German, Italian, Japanese and Norwegian. He is the General Editor of La Música de México [5] He wrote with Jorge Gil [6] (IIE UNAM, Mexico 1984). He has postulated a General Theory of Intervallic Classes, applicable to macro and microintervallic scales of duration and of pitch. He has developed together with M. Díaz and Víctor Adán the computer music program MUSIIC to generate the combinatory potential of music scales based on the division of the octave.
In the field of the continuum Estrada has developed new methods of multidimensional graphic representation of different components of sound (pitch, dynamics, colour), rhythm (pulse, attack, vibrato) and three-dimensional physical space. His first research on the continuum field was published in 1998 in Darmstadt : Ouvrir l’horizon du son: le continuum.
He has been a visiting professor at Stanford, California, San Diego, New Mexico, Musikwissenschaft Institut, Rostock, Sorbonne and Darmstadt.
His music is associated to compositional research on diverse domaines:
scales:
improvisational processes:
compositional mechanos:
finite Group Algebra and networks theory:
intervallic identities:
discontinuum and continuum macro-timbre and sound spacialization:
continuum and multiparametric polyphony:
continuum topological variation:
continuum-discontinuum modulation:
new conception of the opera:
His works are mainly published by Juliusedimus and Editions Salabert, France.
Musica Y Teoria De Grupos Finitos: 3 Variables Booleanas, with an English resumé, Estrada, Julio, Jorge Gil. UNAM, 1st edition (1984). (Format: Book (Illustrated), 221 pages, ISBN 968-837-005-3, ISBN 978-968-837-005-6)
La música de México, Julio Estrada editor, 10 vols, History, Bibliographcial guide and Music Anthology, UNAM 1984-88
El sonido en Rulfo: el ruido ese, with a CD containing sound examples and "Doloritas", first part of the opera Murmullos del páramo, UNAM, 1st edition 1989, 2nd edition 2006
Canto roto: Silvestre Revueltas, UNAM-FCE 2012
eua'oolin Music system conceived by Estrada was developed by Mario Peña to generate tridimensional trajectories representing 3 different components of sound (pitch, dynamics, colour) to be converted into a musical score with pitch resolutions of 1/3, 1/4, 1/5, 1/6, 1/8 of tone, UNAM 1990-1995.
UPIC-Win Windows version of the UPIC by Xenakis developed by Marino, Fontaliirant and Estrada at the CEMAMu, France, 2000-2001.
Músiic-Win
The techniques and theories I have developed are based on mathematics and acoustics; the more neutral they remain, the better they serve the description of the imaginary: it is my ear---there everything is allowed---that gives birth to my music, which becomes the accurate, almost phonographic representation, of every detail coming from my inner hearing experiences. [7]
Silvestre Revueltas Sánchez was a Mexican classical music composer, a violinist, and conductor.
Inti-Illimani are an instrumental and vocal Latin American folk music ensemble from Chile. The band was formed in 1967 by a group of university students and it acquired widespread popularity in Chile for their song Venceremos, which became the anthem of the Popular Unity government of Salvador Allende. When the 1973 Chilean coup d'état took place, they were on tour in Europe and were unable to return to their country where their music was proscribed by the ruling military junta of Augusto Pinochet. In Europe their music took on a multifarious character, incorporating elements of European baroque and other traditional music forms to their Latin American rhythms, creating a fusion of modern world music. Their name means 'Sun of the Golden Eagle' in Aymara.
Gabriel Pareyon is a polymathic Mexican composer and musicologist, who has published literature on topics of philosophy and semiotics.
Salvador Elizondo Alcalde was a Mexican writer of the 60s Generation of Mexican literature.
UPIC is a computerised musical composition tool, devised by the composer Iannis Xenakis. It was developed at the Centre d'Etudes de Mathématique et Automatique Musicales (CEMAMu) in Paris, and was completed in 1977. Xenakis used it on his subsequent piece Mycènes Alpha (1978) and two other works. It has also been used by composers such as Julio Estrada,, Jean-Claude Risset, Jorge Antunes, François-Bernard Mâche, Takehito Shimazu, Gérard Pape, and Curtis Roads. Aphex Twin implies that he uses UPIC in an interview where he is asked what software he uses and he replies that, "UPIC by Xenakis puts almost everything else to shame [and] it's under 1mb".
Homenaje a Federico García Lorca is a work for chamber orchestra by the Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas.
Mauricio Rodríguez is a Mexican-American composer.
Symphony No. 4, subtitled Sinfonía romántica is an orchestral composition by Carlos Chávez, composed in 1953.
Ignacio de Jerusalem was a composer of Novohispanic Baroque music.
Stefano Scodanibbio was an Italian musician who reached international prominence as a double bassist and composer.
Redes is a film score by Silvestre Revueltas for the 1936 eponymous film directed by Fred Zinnemann and Emilio Gómez Muriel. Redes means "nets" in Spanish. It was the composer's first film score, begun in 1934, when he visited the film crew on location in Alvarado, Veracruz. The film concerns the efforts of exploited fishermen to unite. In the US it was issued as The Wave.
Cuauhnáhuac is an orchestral composition by the Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas. It exists in three versions, the first for string orchestra, the other two for full orchestra with winds and percussion. The first version takes nearly 15 minutes to perform, while the third lasts only about 11 minutes.
Esquinas (Corners) is an orchestral composition by the Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas, written in 1931 and extensively revised in 1933. The first version is in two movements with a duration of about 11 minutes in performance; the second is variously described as being in one or in three (continuous) movements with a total duration of about seven minutes. The scores of both versions are dedicated to Ángela Acevedo.
Música de feria is a composition for string quartet by the Mexican composer and violinist Silvestre Revueltas, written in 1932. Though not so titled by the composer, it is sometimes referred to as his String Quartet No. 4. A performance lasts a little more than nine minutes.
String Quartet No. 1 by the Mexican composer and violinist Silvestre Revueltas was composed in 1930.
String Quartet No. 2 (Magueyes) is a chamber-music work by the Mexican composer and violinist Silvestre Revueltas from 1931. The score is dedicated to Aurora Murguía and a performance of it lasts between ten and eleven minutes.
String Quartet No. 3 is a chamber-music work written in 1931 by the Mexican composer and violinist Silvestre Revueltas.
Alcancías is a composition for small orchestra by the Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas, written in 1932. It is in three movements with a total duration in performance of about eight minutes.
