Aretz (de Ramón y Rivera), Isabel

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(b Buenos Aires, April 13, 1913; d Buenos Aires, June 2005). Venezuelan-Argentine ethnomusicologist, folklorist and composer, wife of Luis Felipe Ramón y Rivera. She studied the piano under Rafael González (1923–31) and composition with Athos Palma (1928–33) at the Buenos Aires National Conservatory of Music, instrumentation with Villa-Lobos in Brazil (1937), anthropology (1938–40) and, with Carlos Vega, folklore and musicology (1938–44) at the Museo de Ciencias Naturales de Buenos Aires. She took the doctorate in musicology in 1967 at the Argentine Catholic University with a dissertation on Argentine folk music. She was an associate member of the Instituto Argentino de Musicología from 1938 to 1950. After working as the first professor of ethnomusicology at the Escuela Nacional de Danzas de Argentina (1950–52) she moved to Caracas, Venezuela, where she has held appointments as research fellow in folklore and ethnomusicology at the Instituto Nacional de Folklore de Venezuela (...