Alberto Ginastera completed his ballet Panambí in 1937. The ballet was arranged as a symphonic suite, and was performed the same year at the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, conducted by Juan José Castro. Panambí marked the beginning of Alberto Ginastera’s long and successful career as an Argentine composer. Chapter I of this document provides a brief introduction into the history behind Alberto Ginastera’s Panambí suite, and includes a review of the research that is exclusively devoted to the suite, as well as documents that do not provide direct analyses of Panambí, but contain information that aid in a better understanding of the suite’s composition. Chapter II includes analyses of the suite that illustrate important elements that contribute to the structure and sound of the Panambí suite. These components include Ginastera’s construction of the La Noche theme found in the first movement and its use as a master set, his use of diatonic collections and pitch centricity, the importance of unordered pitch class intervals IC1 and IC6, his use of aggregate completion as a compositional method, and his use of local motives over larger spans of temporal space. Chapter III explores the possibility that many of these compositional methods are due to the influence of Claude Debussy’s La Mer and Igor Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printmeps. The “guitar chord” may also be the result of the influence of Debussy’s La Mer.

The main goal of this thesis was to develop tools and methods for creating new music for the Japanese bamboo flute shakuhachi. Shakuhachi is an end-blown bamboo flute, which has existed in Japan since the seventh century. The oldest shakuhachi solo repertoire, honkyoku, can be considered as “tone-color melodies”, where the expression is primarily happening through microtonal alterations of pitch and timbre, while the melody is secondary. An early fascination with timbre led the author to the shakuhachi and its sound aesthetics, and towards exploring new methods for making music. The main method described is composing through improvisation, using nonlinearity to focus on the present with the sound and timbre of shakuhachi. To learn about unconscious factors during music making, a micro-phenomenological interview method is used, aiming to reach a deeper understanding of the decision-making and the pre-reflective experience during improvisation. The history, learning methods, aesthetics, and concepts of Japanese traditional shakuhachi music are explored to give inspiration and context for the work, in the search for a personal musical expression within the tradition. Analysis of timbral gestures is conducted to further research the timbral aspect of Japanese traditional music, as well as to analyze the musical connection between Japanese traditional shakuhachi music and the music composed in the project.