Candombe and Piano Writing in the Uruguayan Concert Repertoire

An Analysis of Luis Cluzeau Mortet’s Tamboriles

Abstract

The present study examines Tamboriles (1952) by Luis Cluzeau Mortet, a work that represents an early incorporation of Afro-Uruguayan candombe elements into the concert piano idiom. Using an analytical-contextual methodology, the study addresses both the aesthetic constraints of Uruguayan musical nationalism and the structural, timbral, and performance challenges posed by translating a multistratal oral practice into a tempered, notation-coded medium such as the piano. The analysis reveals a symmetrical formal architecture of six sections organized by a principle of structural mirroring (1–6, 2–5, 3–4), within which there unfolds a progressive intensification—followed by a retraction—in the density of rhythmic elements drawn from candombe. The work is built from four-bar modular blocks characterized by static, nonfunctional harmony and a distinctive rhythmic identity, enabling an organization grounded in procedures of repetition, variation, and juxtaposition. At the rhythmic level, the various blocks incorporate elements from the candombe drums—either fragments of the characteristic toques for each drum, taken independently or combined—placed in their traditional registers or shifted to others, as well as composite rhythmic resultants derived from the overall texture. At the textural level, Cluzeau Mortet renders the principle of functional stratification of the cuerda de tambores (candombe drum ensemble) through the superposition of streams of sixteenth notes, displaced accents, and deliberate dissonances that evoke both the genre’s polyrhythmic logic and the inharmonic spectral profile of its instruments. Acknowledging the complexity of translating the drum ensemble’s elements to the piano, Cluzeau Mortet adopts a non-mimetic yet structurally informed compositional strategy that offers an abstract, pianistically conceived representation of candombe. This approach allows the genre’s elements to remain recognizable within the instrument’s language while preserving the integrity of its materials and respect for the culture from which they arise.