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<jats:p>Any survey of music in the area that we are accustomed to call Latin America should begin with certain basic distinctions intended to dissipate the superficial notion of cultural homogeneity. Let us agree at the outset to regard the term “Latin America” as a loose geographical designation for those portions of the Western Hemisphere that lie outside of Canada and the United States. It is better to resort to such circumlocution than to risk the misleading assumption of a fundamental similarity in the twenty countries with which we are concerned.</jats:p>

<jats:p>Leaving the continent of South America we come to Panamá and the five Central American Republics. In Panamá we find a composer whose star is rapidly rising, Roque Cordero (b. 1917), previously mentioned as one of the prize-winners of the Caracas Festival. Cordero studied with Ernst Křenek in the United States on a Guggenheim Fellowship and became addicted to twelve-note writing, which, however, he employs freely rather than dogmatically. Like so many others, he began along the path of folkloristic nationalism with a <jats:italic>Capricho Interiorano</jats:italic> (1939) for orchestra, based on the <jats:italic>mejorana</jats:italic>, a typical Panamanian dance; continuing with the Panamanian Overture No. II, and the ballet <jats:italic>Setetule</jats:italic>, on themes of the Cuna Indians of Panamá. But his main trend has been towards subjective expression in symphonic form, initiated with his Symphony I (1945) and reaching its culmination to date in his Symphony II (in one movement), composed for the Caracas Festival in 1957. This is an intensely dramatic and emotional utterance, saved from mere rhetoric not only by its communicative sincerity (which called forth an ovation from a public rather recalcitrant to musical modernism) but also by its solid musical structure.</jats:p>