Juan Bautista Plaza

At the tender age of 16 years, Venezuelan composer, educator and ethnomusicologist Juan Bautista Plaza (1898-1965) was appointed choirmaster at his school in Caracas, and he continued in that post even after he entered University, ostensibly to study law and medicine. But music won out, and in 1920 he was sent on scholarship to Rome, Italy, becoming a Master of Sacred Composition (1923). He returned to Caracas as the choirmaster of the cathedral (1923-1947), and was also a professor at the Escuela Nacional de Musica (1924-28/1936-62). In 1936, Plaza began studying and cataloging a large collection of Venezuelan colonial music, eventually published in 12 volumes in 1943, making him a central figure in the growth of Venezuelan Nationalism. He was a prolific writer and lecturer, and produced daily newspaper articles and hundreds of radio talks for the general public.

Plaza's Siete canciones venezolanas (Seven Venezuelan Songs) (1932) are on Spanish texts by Venezuelan poet Luís Barrios Cruz (1898-1968). The songs are an example of Plaza's brand of música criolla, drawing on popular Venezuelan songs and dances of partially European origin, and they may well have been inspired bySiete canciones populares españolas (1914), by Spanish composer Manuel de Falla (1876-1946).