Posts by Alejo de los Reyes

The great female masters of the classical guitar in 20th Century Argentina

The last couple of decades have brought as a novelty in the classical guitar world a large number of female performers appearing in the most prestigious venues and festivals. This is not to say that women have taken a sudden interest in the guitar or music. During the last century there is plenty of material that attests to the contrary, and for the previous centuries, the abundant production of pictorial works that portray them is enough. In a certain sense, the ideals historically associated with the feminine (elegance, fine motor skills, delicacy) perfectly represent many of the things needed to
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Learning on an academy and/or by tradition

Nowadays, learning by tradition is becoming less and less common. The profusion of academies since the 19th century has generated an academic culture that – hand in hand with the ideals of positivism that coined them – recognizes its teaching paradigm, inherited from the method of the hard sciences, as the only one that provides valid learning. It is not that academies did not exist before the 19th century -they certainly did. But it is around that time that the amount of academies around Europe multiplied, and they defined the modern system of teaching and evaluation, as well as began
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