Asuar, José Vicente (1933–)

José Vicente Asuar (b. 20 July 1933), Chilean composer and acoustic engineer. Born in Santiago, Asuar began his musical studies with Jorge Urrutia-Blondel (composition) and Juan Orrego-Salas (orchestration) at the Santiago Conservatory. From 1952 to 1958 he studied engineering at the Catholic University of Chile, continuing his education in Germany, at the Technical University of Berlin (1959–1960). While in Germany, he studied with Boris Blacher at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik (1959–1960) and with Jacques Wildberger at the Baden Hochschule für Musik. He studied composition privately under Fritz Winckel and Werner Meyer-Eppler; at Darmstadt University he attended the summer seminars of Bou-lez, Ligeti, Stockhausen, and Maderna (1960–1962). Back in Santiago, Asuar was director of the electronic music studio (1958–1959) at the Catholic University. In 1960 he returned to Germany to organize an electronic music studio at Karlsruhe. In Caracas from 1965 to 1968, Asuar created and directed the first Venezuelan studio of electronic music. In 1969 he became director of the Department of Sound Technology at the University of Chile. The following year he was awarded a Fulbright grant to study computer music with Lejaren Hiller at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Asuar has written works for instrumental ensembles, chamber and vocal music, and a considerable number of electronic music pieces. Some of his compositions are Variaciones espectrales (1959), Encadenamientos (1957), Preludio a la noche (1961), Estudio aleatorio (1962), La noche II (1966), and Kaleidoscopio and Catedral (1967). He has also written several essays about electronic-music techniques.

See alsoMusic: Art Musicxml .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

John Vinton, ed., Dictionary of Contemporary Music (1974).

Gérard Béhague, Music in Latin America (1979); New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, vol. 1 (1980).

Additional Bibliography

Dal Farra, Ricardo. "Something Lost, Something Hidden, Something Found: Electroacoustic Music by Latin American Composers." Organised Sound 11 (2006): 131-142.

                                    Susana Salgado