Uploaded December 2010 | Updated September 2026, 2 days ago
"Panamanian composer Roque Cordero's twelve-tone style is largely contrapuntal with constant doubling, repetition, and imitation between the parts. A characteristic passage, the entrance of the solo violin in his Violin Concerto (probably his best-known work). The solo violin presents the row as a straightforward twelve-note melody, although with a good deal of internal repetition. After the initial melodic statement (mm. 20-23), the theme is transposed up nine semitones and repeated almost exactly. If this sort of thematic statements of a twelve-tone series recalls the music of Schoenberg, the accompaniments evoke a very different musical world, one of driving rhythms and an ostinato-like repetition of small melodic fragments. The first six notes of the series, and the three dyads that comprise it (F-E, B-A, and C#-C), are an obsessive presence in the accompanying parts, even after the melody has turned its attention elsewhere. There is no particular dance being evoked here (Panamanian or otherwise), but there is a remarkable rhythmic drive and vitality." Joseph Straus, Twelve-Tone Music in America
"Panamanian composer Roque Cordero's twelve-tone style is largely contrapuntal with constant doubling, repetition, and imitation between the parts. A characteristic passage, the entrance of the solo violin in his Violin Concerto (probably his best-known work). The solo violin presents the row as a straightforward twelve-note melody, although with a good deal of internal repetition. After the initial melodic statement (mm. 20-23), the theme is transposed up nine semitones and repeated almost exactly. If this sort of thematic statements of a twelve-tone series recalls the music of Schoenberg, the accompaniments evoke a very different musical world, one of driving rhythms and an ostinato-like repetition of small melodic fragments. The first six notes of the series, and the three dyads that comprise it (F-E, B-A, and C#-C), are an obsessive presence in the accompanying parts, even after the melody has turned its attention elsewhere. There is no particular dance being evoked here (Panamanian or otherwise), but there is a remarkable rhythmic drive and vitality." Joseph Straus, Twelve-Tone Music in America
