The musical style of Mario Alfagüell

Abstract

The present DMA Document explores the life and work of Costa Rican composer Mario Alfagüell (born 1948) over five chapters. Chapters one to three place the composer in a historical/cultural context and chapters four and five explore the compositional approaches of the composer. Chapter one presents a historical overview of music in Central America; chapter two presents the history of academic music in Costa Rica; chapter three presents the biography of the composer; chapter four describes his compositional techniques; and chapter five presents an analysis of three piano works. This document includes two appendixes. Appendix A presents an interview with the composer and appendix B shows the music scores used for the analyses in chapter five.