Concierto barroco: contrapunto entre el espacio central apolíneo y el espacio marginal dionisíaco

Abstract

In Concierto barroco, Alejo Carpentier displays his knowledge of music and architecture to show us those social and cultural dynamics that bear on Latin American identity. He avails himself of the structure in some baroque musical compositions to organize his novel. It is the counterpoint in this polyphonic clash, which reveals centuries of social dynamics. He uses the concept of time-space associated with architecture to accentuate the counterpoint and to direct attention to those historical and social events, which have strengthened our hispanic culture, to the point of granting it an important place within the western cultural context. In spatial and temporal displacements within the counterpoint itself the center/the apollinean is related to a creole dominant class, whereas the periphery/the dionisiac is associated with the socially disadvantaged. Physical transformations become metaphors of social space and its relative positions and of historical events which have reversed class roles and their protagonism.