Adolfo Salazar Ruiz de Palacios (6 March 1890 - 27 September 1958) was a Spanish music historian, music critic, composer, and diplomat of the first half of the twentieth century. He was the preeminent Spanish musicologist of the Silver Age. Fluent in Spanish, French, and English, he was an intellectual and expert of the artistic and cultural currents of his time, and a brilliant polemicist. He maintained a close connection with other prominent Spanish intellectuals and musicians including José Ortega y Gasset, Jesús Bay y Gay, and Ernesto Halffter.[1] In his writings, he was a defender of the French musical aesthetic of Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy.
He composed over twenty works for orchestra, string quartet, solo piano, voice and piano, chorus, and guitar. While his compositions are significant in the context of the 1920s Spanish musical avant-garde, today his critical writings are deemed of greater importance. He is most known for his insightful commentary and analysis in his eighteen years as music critic (1918-1936) for the Madrid daily El Sol.
Biography
Salazar was born in Madrid. He attended Madrid University, first studying history but then switching to music. He was co-director of the Revista Musical Hispano-Americana (1914-1918) with Rogelio Villar. He studied composition with Bartolomé Pérez Casas, and is said to have studied with Maurice Ravel, though little documentary evidence exists. In 1915, along with Manuel de Falla and M. Salvador y Carreras, he founded the Sociedad Nacional de Música, serving as secretary until 1922. In the late 1920s, he turned his attention from composing to devote himself to music criticism. In his columns for El Sol between 1918 and 1936, he both reviews concerts and discusses trends in the Spanish public's reception of classical music. His activities as critic and historian intermingle, though the second became more important over the years and is a consequence of the first.[2] Salazar corresponded with many of the leading intellectuals and composers of his time, including José Ortega y Gasset, as well as members of the Grupo de los Ocho including Jesús Bay y Gay, Ernesto and Rodolfo Halffter, and Salvador Barcarisse. In 1932, he attended the International Congress of Arab Music in Egypt.
In 1937, Salazar went to Paris to carry out a propaganda mission on behalf of the Republican government.[3] In 1938, he was named cultural attaché for the Spanish Embassy in Washington, D.C. While in the United States, he organized courses in folklore at the University of Middlebury in the company of Joaquín Nin-Culmell. In 1939, he moved to Mexico at the invitation of Mexican president Lázaro Cárdenas del Río, and continued to write essays and monographs on European music. From 1939, he taught at the Colegio de México, and from 1946 at the Mexico National Conservatory. In 1947, he gave a lecture series at Harvard University titled "Music in Cervantes," and two years later was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship.[4] He died in Mexico City in 1958.
Musical style
Salazar's earliest works ("Estampes," "Jaculatoria") have Spanish-style nationalism. His style evolved in the mid-1910s toward Impressionistic techniques: parallel chords, lack of clear cadences, and avoidance of major or minor modes. His most successful works are the two for string quartet, Rubaiyat and Arabia. Written correspondence shows that Manuel de Falla gave guidance to Salazar in the composition of Rubaiyat. His last composition, Cuatro letrillas de Cervantes, is more strictly tonal and closer to folksong than his early works, with clear patterns and two-measure phrases.
Compositions
1913 - Melancolie (Goethe), voice and piano
1915 - Tres poemas de Rosalía de Castro, voice and piano
1916 - Tres preludios, for piano
1917 - Quartet in G minor - Schumaniana, for piano
1920 - Trois chansons de Paul Verlaine, voice and piano
1923 - Arabia, orchestra
1924 - String quartet no. 3 in B minor - Rubaiyat, string quartet
- Sinfonía y ballet. Idea y gesto en música y danzas contemporáneas (1929)
- La música contemporánea en España (1930)
- La música actual en Europa y sus problemas (1935)
- El siglo romántico (1936, 2nd ed. 1955)
- La música en el siglo XX (1936)
- Música y sociedad en el siglo XX (1939)
- La rosa de los vientos en la música europea (1940)
- Las grandes estructuras de la música (1941)
- Introducción a la música actual (1942)
- La música moderna (1944)
- Music in Our Time (1946)
- La danza y el ballet (1950)
- La música de España (1953)
Related Research Articles
Mario Lavista was a Mexican composer, writer and intellectual.
José Pablo Moncayo García was a Mexican pianist, percussionist, music teacher, composer and conductor. "As composer, José Pablo Moncayo represents one of the most important legacies of the Mexican nationalism in art music, after Silvestre Revueltas and Carlos Chávez." He produced some of the masterworks that best symbolize the essence of the national aspirations and contradictions of Mexico in the 20th century.
Cristóbal Halffter Jiménez-Encina was a Spanish classical composer. He was the nephew of two other composers, Rodolfo and Ernesto Halffter and is regarded as the most important Spanish composer of the generation of composers designated the Generación del 51.
Hilda Paredes is one of Mexico's leading contemporary composers, and has received many prestigious awards for her work. She currently resides in London, and is married to the noted English violinist, Irvine Arditti.
Tomás Marco Aragón is a Spanish composer and writer on music.
Arturo Márquez Navarro is a Mexican composer of orchestral music who uses musical forms and styles of his native Mexico and incorporates them into his compositions.
Dieter Lehnhoff Temme is a German-Guatemalan composer, conductor, and musicologist.
Juan José Colomer is a Spanish composer.
Rodolfo Halffter Escriche was a Spanish composer.
Rafael Aceves y Lozano was a Spanish composer. He studied at the Madrid Conservatory, earning a gold medal in 1863. He was especially known for his sacred music compositions of which his Stabat Mater is the best known.
Otto Mayer-Serra, was a Spanish-Mexican musicologist known for being one of the first musicologist to write a systematic study of 20th century Mexican music.
Benet Casablancas Domingo is a Catalan composer and musicologist.
José Luis Turina is a Spanish composer, grandson of Joaquín Turina.
Mauricio Sotelo is a Spanish composer and conductor.
Antonio Reparaz was a Spanish composer who gained renown for the success of his many operas.
Adolfo Odnoposoff was an Argentine-born-and-raised cellist of Russian ancestry who performed in concerts for 5 decades in South, Central, and North America, the Caribbean, Europe, Israel, and the former USSR. He had performed as principal cellist in the Israel Philharmonic and many of the important orchestras of Latin America. He had soloed with major orchestras under conductors that include Arturo Toscanini, Erich Kleiber, Fritz Busch, Juan José Castro, Rafael Kubelik, Victor Tevah, Luis Herrera de la Fuente, Carlos Chavez, Paul Kletzki, Luis Ximénez Caballero (es), Willem van Otterloo, Sir John Barbirolli, Eduardo Mata, Antal Doráti, Jorge Sarmientos (es), Erich Kleiber, George Singer (1908–1980), Ricardo del Carmen (1937-2003), Anshel Brusilow, Pau Casals and Enrique Gimeno. He also performed a Khachaturian work under the direction of Khachaturian.
Guido Antonio Santórsola di Bari Bruno was a Brazilian-Uruguayan composer, violinist, violist, viola d'amore player, and conductor of Italian birth.
Fabián Panisello is an Argentinian-Spanish composer, conductor, and professor.
Adolfo Gutiérrez Arenas is a Spanish cellist.
The Sociedad de Cuartetos de Madrid, 1863–1894, was an organization that provided concert series with an educational approach. They attempted to save chamber music from fading into oblivion since Italian opera and Zarzuela dominated Spanish concert life. Founded by violinist Jesús de Monasterio and pianist Juan María Guelbenzu Fernández in 1863, this society contributed significantly to the circulation and interest of chamber music in the Iberian Peninsula. The quality of the music, over their thirty-one seasons, was always praised. They also exposed a lack of interest by the majority of the Spanish composers for the chamber music genre during this time. Despite their great perseverance and increasing success, the society's activities concluded on January 5, 1894, due to health problems that troubled Monasterio for several seasons prior. The Society of Quartets represents the first serious and lasting initiative for the circulation of chamber music in 19th-century Spain. Their activities carried out through thirty-one concert seasons in Madrid as well as other concerts offered outside the capital.
References
↑ Carredano, Consuelo (2008). Adolfo Salazar: Epistolario 1912-1958. Madrid: Amigos de la Residencia de Estudiantes. p.373.
↑ Casares Rodicio, Emilio (2001). Diccionario de la Música Española e Hispano-americana. Madrid: Sociedad General de Autores y Editores. p.583.
↑ Carredano, Consuelo (2012). "La propaganda republicana en París: Adolfo Salazar, la Guerra Civil y Les Archives Espagnoles". Cuadernos de Música Iberoamericana. 24: 7.
↑ Katz, Israel; Sage, Jack. "Salazar, Adolfo". Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Retrieved 16 July 2016.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
