Latin American Electroacoustic Music Collection

José Vicente Asuar (Chile)


After some experimenting with concrète music, José Vicente Asuar (born in Santiago, 1933) started to work using electronic sounds and composed his "Variaciones Espectrales" in 1959.

Before that, in 1957, even he was studying civil engineering at the university, proposed and wrote for his graduate thesis about "Generación Mecánica y Electrónica del Sonido Musical" ("Mechanical and Electronic Generation of Musical Sounds").

In 1961, while being in Karlsruhe, Germany, where he helped to establish an electronic music studio, Asuar composed "Preludio La Noche" and later "Serenata para mi voz y sonidos sinuosidales". He also worked on "Estudio Aleatorio" there, a piece that was never concluded.

Asuar came back to Chile in 1962 and after some years in Chile he went to Venezuela in 1965, commissioned to build an electronic music studio in Caracas. There he also composed several pieces, as: "La Noche II", "Divertimento" and "Guararia Repano", this last being prized later at the international electroacoustic music competition in Bourges, France. During his stay in Caracas Asuar was also working on a big multimedia spectacle developed under the general guidance of Inocente Palacios to celebrate the 400 years Caracas.

Asuar came back to Chile in 1968 and started to develop a Sound Technology career at the university. He was in charge from 1969 to 1972. Meanwhile, during a stay in the United States, he composed in 1971 another piece: "Buffalo 71", working at the electronic music studio of New York University at Buffalo.

Since 1969 he became interested in the possibilities of using computers in music. In 1970, working with the help of a group of professors and students of the Sound Technology career he finished a piece for orchestra scored with the help of an IBM360: "Formas I". Another project, this time using the computer to control electronic instruments, was developed in 1972: "Formas II"

A few years later he started his own computer music studio based on what he called COMDASUAR (or "Computador Musical Digital Analógico Asuar") and produced several pieces there, among them: "Una flauta en el Camino" (COMDA 2), "Elegía" (COMDA 5) from 1982, "En el Jardín" (COMDA 7) from 1986, and "En el Infinito" (COMDA 8) from 1987.

(text updated: March, 2004)

Resources available for this composer:
- List of compositions (10 compositions)

Index: