Editor's Note: A Selection of the Works of Gerard Béhague
The tragic death of Gerard Béhague came faster than many imagined it would. Former students and friends began to receive word in October 2005 that he had been diagnosed with lung cancer and was undergoing treatment. Some eventually discovered that the cancer was at an advanced stage, and that it appeared to be a particularly aggressive strain. But the specifics of his condition were difficult to come by, and Dr. Béhague himself took pains to keep the matter to himself. After the treatments caused hair loss and began to tire him physically, he no longer hid the matter, but for the most part still declined to discuss details.
Those who knew him will recall his forceful personality; this aspect of his character never changed, and he seemed determined not to let cancer get the better of him. He maintained a positive attitude, noting that he was receiving the best medical care and that the experimental drugs he had been prescribed seemed to be effective. He may have believed he could fight off the cancer for a good while, convincing many of us in the process. Certainly if anyone had the strength of will to overcome illness, it was Gerard Béhague. He continued traveling to conferences, working in his office, and fulfilling other professional duties until the last weeks of his life.
In the aftermath of his passing, a number of us slowly began the task of sorting through the massive amounts of written and recorded materials he had accumulated over the course of his career, including the contents of two adjacent offices at the University of Texas and his home office. The bulk of this painstaking work fell to his wife Cecilia Pareja, and to the journal's current editorial assistant, Michael O'Brien. Many weeks of intensive labor were required to sort and classify documents even in the most general way. While some items have remained with the family, the vast majority now constitute a special collection in the Nettie Lee Benson Library. The cataloguing of these materials is still in process, but should be [End Page 1] finished before long. They will undoubtedly provide a wealth of information to scholars interested in continuing avenues of research pursued by Dr. Béhague. Some materials that he inherited from his former mentor Gilbert Chase are also included in the library collection.
One of the things that constantly amazed me in sorting through his office materials was the amazing breadth of his professional interests and activities. Anyone familiar with his publications and teaching knew something of this, but to see the stacks of conference papers, essays, and archival documents devoted to extremely diverse themes drove home this knowledge in a new way. I know of no other scholar who has acquired such an intimate familiarity with as many diverse facets of Latin American music as Gerard Béhague. This is one of the things he will be remembered for. And even more impressive was his ability to combine and synthesize this information, to move seamlessly between analyses of classical, popular, or traditional music, to discuss religious rites of indigenous Mexico one moment and Andean art song the next, música tejana and the compositions of Villa-Lobos, candomblé drumming and sixteenth-century villancicos, all the while linking the focus of his interests to broader conceptual concerns.
With this memorial edition of the Latin American Music Review, we pay tribute to his scholarship a final time by reprinting a selection of unpublished or little-known essays that demonstrate the breadth of his knowledge. The materials have been grouped loosely into four categories: (1) theoretical or issue-oriented essays, including "A Performance and Listener-Centered Approach to Analysis" and "Diversity and the Arts"; (2) art music...
