Alfredo del Mónaco
Alfredo del Mónaco was born in 1938 in Caracas, Venezuela. Between 1958 and 1968 he studied music privately with various instructors. In addition, he studied composition privately with various instructors, including Primo Casale. In 1961 he graduated with a law degree from the Andrés Bello Catholic University. Del Mónaco obtained several records of electroacoustic music from Europe, and subsequently became interested in this kind of music. In 1966 he composed his first works of this type by using the music phonology studio of the National Institute of Culture and Fine Arts (INCIBA). In 1968 he composed “Cromofonías II,” with which he gained an entrance into the Di Tella Institute in Buenos Aires, but he never attended that institution because the scholarship money ran out.
In 1974, he received a doctorate in music at Columbia University, where he studied composition with Mario Davidovsky and Vladimir Ussachevsky. During this time he worked in the electronic music center of that university and gave a conference about his compositions at the University of Buffalo. The following year he returned to Venezuela, where in 1977 he composed “Tupac Amarú,” which has become his most well-known work. Among his honors are the Venezuelan National Music Prize (1968 and 1999) and the Tomás Luis de Victoria Prize (2002). His music was performed twice at the Inter-American Music Festival in Washington, DC (1974 and 1980) and three times at the ISCM World Music Days. Del Mónaco died in Caracas in 2015.
Maestro del Mónaco’s Compositions
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