There may be a link between the chacarera and the chaconne, which is described in The New Oxford Companion to Music as follows: "A dance in triple meter which originated in Latin America and was taken up as a form and variations in Spain and Italy in the early seventeenth century, in France soon after.
Originating in the Andean yaraví of the Kechua Indians, this song type appears in various modalities and under various names in the lyrical tradition of several South American nations, including Chile, Bolivia, Uruguay, and Argentina (Francisco Curt Lange.
It was disseminated as the triste by the payadores in the pampa during the nineteenth century, and, though lacking a set form, is characterized by a slow guitar introduction, melodia-recitativo with sparse accompaniment (Diccionario de la Musica Labor, ed.
Higinio Angles and Juaquín Pena, Barcelona (Editorial Labor, S.A., 1954) 2143), the use of lament sighs such as "Ah" or "Ay," and a half-tone descent in the final two notes of its motif.
Some scholars suggest that the starkly minimal accompaniment reflects the bleakness of the text, shows the influence on the composer of Copland's "lean, bony, open-air quality" (Ronald Crichton, "Ginastera's Quartets," Tempo vol 111 (December 1974) 34), and serves as a musical "imitation of the vast open spaces of the pampas .
creating an image of the gauchos strumming their guitars in the wilderness" (Sergio de los Cobos, "Alberto Ginastera's Three Piano Sonatas: A Reflection of the Composer and his Country" D.M.A.
This chord, with its intensely Argentine connotations, appears "like sherbet between courses, to cleanse the palate" (Alison Dalton, violinist, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, interview by author of this article, 1996) throughout Ginastera's career, in nearly all of the genres in which he composed.
Ginastera sets this well-known Argentine lullaby in G major over a slow duple meter ostinato which, though centric to G as well, emphasizes dissonant auxiliary tones (Wallace, 86).
Whereas Ginastera's lullaby is ABA with exact ostinati in the A sections, de Falla's is twenty measures of rhythmically identical ostinato with only slight chromatic shifting.
In the wake of the milonga (and its more famous urban descendant, the tango), it fell out of favor in the zones near Buenos Aires, but found new vitality in the northern Argentine provinces and Bolivia.
The form is based on the choreography of the six-part dance for one or two split couples: 1) guitar introduction 2) march with paso valseado, an exchange of triple-meter steps for each individual 3) zapateo, a textless section of four or eight musical phrases during which the man stomps his boots in place while the woman struts around him.
This is most evident in the zapateo interludes, in which the raw rhythmic intensity echos "Les Augures Printaniers / Danses des Adolescentes" in Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps, which Ginastera cited as one of his earliest and most powerful musical influences.
Ginastera recommends the use of a "non-legato touch, accenting lightly on the first beat of each measure" to best communicate the malambo’s motoric, energetic rhythm (Sister Mary Ann Hanley, CSJ.
In response to their premiere in Buenos Aires, "Gato" was hailed as "the highest achievement of the five songs...for its sheer dynamic impulse" (La Nación, 14 July 1944, in Urtubey, 105).