Julio Aagreras to Carlos Vega: Unpublished comments from the composer about the “cielo” from his Rapsodia sobre motivos criollos (ca. 1901) for guitar

Abstract

In his study about the cielito present in his book Las danzas populares argentinas (Vega, 2019 [1952]), Carlos Vega mentions the Argentine guitarist and composer Julio Salvador Sagreras (1879-1942) amongst the musicians who, during the late 19th century, employed the cielito, present in the Argentine popular memory, as a source of inspiration for their compositions. In his Rapsodia sobre motivos criollos, for guitar (published in 1900 or 1901), Sagreras introduces a cielito that, according to Vega, he had heard “a while back […], he did not remember where” (Vega, 2019 [1952]: 189). In this article we present the previously unavailable source from which Vega received this information, a handwritten document by Sagreras, available in the Instituto de Investigación Musicológica “Carlos Vega” (UCA); we analyze the most significative points which emerge from its reading in the context of Vega’s studies on the cielito and we offer a diplomatic transcription of the text for its complete knowledge.