A Re-evaluation of the Chilean Composer Carmela Mackenna Subercaseaux (1879–1962)
Research Report by Constanza Arraño 
University of Melbourne
Context 49 (2023): 49–56
Published online: 14 Mar. 2024
Extract
Although there are numerous studies that reconstruct, from different perspectives, the history of Chilean classical music, the presence of women in this history has been scarcely documented and researched. This absence has been constant throughout different periods of Chilean history, from colonial times (sixteenth to eighteenth centuries), to the formation of the Republic in the nineteenth century, through to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. My research aims to contribute to the visibility of women in the history of Chilean classical music by highlighting the musical work of Carmela Mackenna Subercaseaux (1879–1962), a pianist, composer, and diplomat who developed her career in Santiago and Berlin during the first half of the twentieth century. The choice of this figure was based on three reasons: first, the quality of her music, which includes some forty chamber and symphonic works written in a musical language typical of the avant-garde of the beginning of the century; second, her interpersonal links with renowned artists and politicians in Chile and abroad, both in her role as a musician and as a diplomat; and third, the different historical contexts in which she lived.