ABSTRACT

The combination of the screenplay and direction by Humberto Solas and Leo Brouwer's musical score resulted in an iconic work that encapsulated the utopian vision of 1960s Cuba. Brouwer's artistic formation informed how he positioned himself and his contemporaries both within Cuba and on a global scale. Brouwer's interests and experiences proved seminal to the aesthetic direction of film music composition and to the professional development of younger composers who used opportunities to experiment with new and avant-garde techniques. However, when the authors examine Brouwer's essays on music's role in a revolutionary society, in particular the composers' obligation to innovation, they can begin to understand how musical aesthetics closely associated with Western, capitalist decadence were reframed to serve a socialist-revolutionary agenda. Brouwer's use of avant-garde music in the 1932 party scene aurally connects the decadence of another failed revolution to the decline of colonial society.