The Desertmakers: Travel, War, and the State in Latin America by Javier Uriarte (review)

Abstract

composer and figures in Catalan literary circles, where Granados is perhaps better known for a compositional voice that used central European Romanticism to give voice to more traditionally Castilian subjects. The astute reader of Dissonances of Modernity will undoubtedly discover even more dissonances within these essays that will surely provide further food for thought and new ways of thinking about Spanish culture. Given the centrality of music to this collection of essays, many readers will be pleased to discover that sound files of the musical works discussed in the book have been placed on the publisher’s website and are immediately accessible to any reader with a smartphone that can read a QR code. Less attention to Spanish music is paid by academics and audiences than is paid to the music of any other major European country; so despite the cavils of this reviewer, Dissonances of Modernity is a necessary and worthwhile addition to the academic literature on gender, nationalism, and performance in nineteenthand twentieth-century Spain. There is no shortage of studies discussing how the Spanish people thought about these topics; now we can begin to learn how they heard these ideas as well.