Agustín Lara Aguirre del Pino was born in Mexico City, the oldest child of a pharmacist. During his earliest years, he lived with his aunt Refugio Aguirre del Pino, director of the Hospicio de Niños in Coyoacán. Under her care, he had his first contact with the piano. At 13 years of age he took second place in the Juegos Florales, a poetic competition for youth, receiving recognition from that organization's prestigious judges Luis G. Urbina and Rubén M. Campos. Beyond this point, Lara's biography takes on an almost legendary character. His personality was so charismatic that numerous stories attached themselves to him which Lara, characteristically, saw no reason to dispel. Even the year of his birth has been debated endlessly by historians due to Lara's insistence that his actual birth date was not nearly as important as the date of his "rebirth", referring to a boating accident in Tlacotalpán were he and his friend nearly drowned. So effusive was he in regards to this incident that he went so far as to procure an official birth certificate with this date, engendering much scholarly debate. What seems clear is that by his twenties, perhaps even earlier, Lara was making a living playing the piano at cafes, cantinas and brothels. In a clear antithesis to his father's middle-class Mexican upbringing, Lara had found his unique 'niche' in life: a life centered around music and women.

Lara's popularity began very early in his career and accelerated quickly to the forefront of popular acclaim. The emergence of radio broadcasting in the 1930's propelled him into a career of major success. His professional career continued in full swing until his death 40 years later and included compositions for orchestra, realizations for movies and over 600 songs. Many of his songs were purportedly composed by his sister Maria Teresa Lara Aguirre del Pino and published under her name as a means of avoiding his exclusive contract with RCA Victor. Among his most popular songs in Mexico were Noche Criolla, La Clave Azul, Palmera and La Cumbancha. In the US his songs were popularized by artists such as Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and the Ames Brothers, with his most popular songs being Granada, The Nearness of You, Be Mine Tonight, and You Belong to My Heart (Solamente una vez).

Lara's songs are enduringly popular in Mexico. They are outstandingly lyrical and always convey a sense of sincerity and exuberance. Equally loved in Spain as in Mexico, Lara was awarded honorary Spanish citizenship by Gen. Francisco Franco in 1966. He used all the popular rhythms of his time including the tango, traditional Mexican song, the waltz, and ranchera songs. His unique personal style transformed Mexican popular song and had a strong influence on subsequent songs of Latin America and Spain. With no academic training, his genius was able to assimilate a wide range of musical styles from the fox-trot to the Cuban bolero. His lyrics always contain a poetic beauty whether simply or more elegantly stated. Lara's creations are the epitome of the so-called Golden Age of Mexican song. During Lara's funeral, a minute of silence was observed throughout Mexico while Toña la Negra performed one of his most well-loved songs, "Noche de Ronda".

Copyright © 2005 Amelia Seyssel

Federic Mompou has been called "an authentic master.... one of the greatest, most original, and most independent figures of twentieth-century Spanish music." A Catalan, he was born in Barcelona of a Catalonian father and a French mother. He began his piano studies at a very young age and gave his first public concert at age fifteen. From 1911 to 1913, Mompou lived in Paris, studying with the pianist Motte-Lacroix who became a close friend and who later presented some of Mompou's first compositions. Subsequent visits to Paris were interrupted by the first World War, but Mompou finally settled there in 1920 and did not permanently return to Barcelona until sometime after 1941. By 1957, Mompou had become a prominent musical figure in Spain and, starting in 1958, was professor of composition at the Curso de Santiago de Compostela. In 1979 Mompou was awarded the Premio Nacional de Música for 'the universal significance of his work.'

Mompou's compositions focus primarily on works for the piano, with works for voice and piano being the most numerous and important oevre aside from his piano compositions. He was a master of miniature, creative and with a very personal style. Considering his French parentage it is, perhaps, not remarkable that he was influenced by the French impressionist composers (Debussy and Satie). It was during his early school years at the Ecôle Française in Barcelona, on hearing a Fauré concert in 1909, that he was inspired to abandon thought of a career as a piano virtuoso and turn to composing. However, those French influences did not overwhelm the more powerful influence of his musical roots; the influences of other Catalan composers (de Falla and Granados) and of the folk music genre had as much influence on him as the French. Even so, Mompou's style is not idiosyncratically Spanish or French; having developed early on a style that was uniquely his own, and it is for this unique and unparalleled contribution that he was recognized and honored in his later years. More than anything else, Mompou's music arises out of his search for a spontaneity grounded in a thorough examination of the possibilities of the harmony and timbre existent in the sonority of the piano. Present in all of Mompou's music is "an underlying mysticism derived from his interest in various philosophies and from his thoughtful, reticent, and profoundly human personality." His music is typically sensitive, intimate and subtle, deliberately simple and spare of means, using both lyrical and poetic impulses to convey is aesthetic message.

Copyright © 2005 Amelia Seyssel

Born in Barcelona, Spain, Fernando Obradors is principally known for his four volumes of song arrangements: Canciones clásicas españolas. His songs have been favorites of nearly all Spanish divas and, as a result, have become known worldwide. Obradors studied piano with his mother, and later with Lamote de Grignon and Antonio Nicoau, although he was largely self-taught in harmony, counterpoint and composition. He directed the Orquesta Filarmónica of the Grand Canaries and briefly, the orchestral group of Radio Barcelona, later also conducting the Orquesta Filarmónica of the Grand Canaries and teaching in the Las Palmas Conservatory. In addition to his songs, he composed zarzuelas and some symphonic works, principally the Réplica a la Fanrandola de Bizet. However, the zarzuelas and symphonies did little to gain him recognition, his chief claim to fame being his song arrangements.

Obradors's songs are so internationally popular because they are the epitome of the popular conception of Spanish style. Composed in a style acquired from folk songs and tonadilla, his arrangements include folk songs from various regions of Spain, each being treated with a personal manner that draws on all the most typical aspects of Spanish music. His lyrics are drawn not only from the popular songs of the 18th and 19th centuries, but also from literature as early as the 15th, and his arrangements, if light in weight and texture, are nonetheless brilliant and effective, never failing to please.

Copyright © 2005 Amelia Seyssel

Known as the precursor of musical nationalism in Mexico, Manuel Ponce was born in Fresnillo, Mexico, where his family, collaborators with the Maximilian regime, temporarily located for fear of reprisals when the empire collapsed in 1882. Two months after he was born, the family returned to their home in Aguascalientes where Ponce spent the remainder of his childhood. His mother was very musically minded and Ponce learned the notes of the musical staff before he learned his letters. At four years old, he began piano studies with his sister Josefina, writing his first composition at age 5 while convalescing from smallpox, a piece he titled: "The Dance of the Small Pox." After relocating to Mexico City and studying with Vicente Gabrielli, an Italian, the 19 year old Ponce began studies at the Conservatorio Nacional; by this age he was also proudly playing many of his own compositions, generally smaller forms like the Mazurka, Gavotte and Danza. Becoming bored at the Conservatorio, he returned to Aguascalientes and began teaching piano. It was during this period that he developed an enduring interest in developing a truly Mexican style based on Mexican folklore and folk music. At age 23, he determined to go to Europe and sold his possessions, including his piano, to finance the adventure. In Europe, he first enrolled in the Liceo Rossini in Bologna, studying first with Luigi Torcchi and then with Dall'Olio, a pupil of Puccini. Later he moved to Germany and studied with Martin Krause at the Stern Conservatory in Berlin. In 1908, Ponce returned to Mexico, but not before performing with great success in the Beethoven Hall of Berlin.

Back in Mexico, Ponce pursued his dream of developing a truly Mexican style and also disseminated the work of the European Impressionists (Falla, Ravel, Debussy) who were almost unknown in Mexico at that time. He also founded a piano academy, with Carlos Chavez being his most prominent pupil, and took over the professorship of piano at the Conservatorio Nacional. In 1912, while in Aguascalientes for a holiday, he was inspired to write his much-loved song Estrellita, composed in the style of the Mexican bajio songs. Ponce intended to "ennoble the Mexican song, raising it to the level of the concert hall." His song compositions include both concertized arrangements of folk songs as well as settings of poetry by various poets, all of which where warmly received and frequently interpreted by his wife, a contralto. Heifitz loved Ponce's compositions, transcribing Estrellita for the violin. In 1915, Ponce moved briefly to Havana, Cuba, and quickly attached himself to the concert activity there, founding the Academia Beethoven and writing articles and reviews on music. Returning to Mexico in 1917, Ponce was named professor at the Conservatorio and married Clementina Maurel, whom he had met and affianced just before his stay in Cuba. His renowned lifelong association with Andres Segovia began when that great guitarist visited Mexico in 1923. In 1925, Ponce and his wife settled in Paris where he enrolled in a composition course with Paul Dukas at the Ecôle Normale de Musique. Here also he associated with Joaquín Rodrigo and Hector Villa-Lobos while developing his friendship with Segovia and composing prolifically. Later, his connection with Segovia also put him in contact with Manuel de Falla. On completion of his course with Dukas, in 1934, Ponce returned to Mexico, with his wife following him shortly, after first performing in a Parisian concert dedicated to Ponce's work.

Aside from his songs, Ponce is most remembered for his long friendship with Andres Segovia and the consequent trove of new compositions for guitar, including his Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra begun in 1922 and finished in January of 1941. Ponce is described as "...a musician of true nobility, of easy and elegant inspiration and a complete dominion of all means of expression," and he is remembered as a simple, refined and friendly personality, highly respected and loved in Mexico. He was very fond of children and wrote 20 pieces in the Mexican style for young pianists as well as 50 choral pieces for Kindergarten. His songs continue to delight audiences wherever they are performed, the melodies having always a charm that captivates the listener.

Copyright © 2005 Amelia Seyssel

Organist, singer and one of the greatest composers of the Baroque period, Henry Purcell infused his music with a sense of immediacy and intimacy that, regardless of form or style, inevitably draws the listener up into its compelling momentum. Whether a majestic anthem, a sacred hymn, or a saucy catch, one can always be assured of an unusually high quality of musicianship and a scrupulous attention to detail. The variety and complexity of his music reflects the drama and paradox of the era in which he lived. The year 1660, one year after Purcell's birth, marks the restoration of King Charles II after the Cromwell Commonwealth. By the time Purcell was eight years old, he had personally experienced the London Plague (1664-5) which killed more than 70,000, possibly including his father, and the Great Fire of 1666 which left two-thirds of London homeless. It was an age characterized by primitive methods of dealing with everyday living and a callous insensitivity to the sanctity of human life—public displays of hang, drawn, and quartered executions were typical. Yet, the Baroque was not without its intellectual culture and love of beauty, as exemplified by the great names of the period: Newton, Locke, Rembrandt, Milton, and Moliére, to name but a few.

Details of Purcell's lie are sketchy, but it seems very clear that he began his musical life as a chorister at Westminster Abbey and the Chapel Royal. This put him under the tutelage of Henry Cooke, a proponent of the 'Italian style', then with Pelham Humphrey, who had studied both in italy and with Lully in France, and later yet with John Blow, renowned for his contrapuntal technique. When Purcell's voice broke at the age of fourteen, he was apprenticed in charge of the king's keyboard and wind instruments, which involved the repairing and upkeep of these instruments as well as an ability to play them. Purcell later played an important role in the continuing restoration of organs damaged during the Cromwell Protectorate. In 1679, Purcell succeeded John Blow as organist of Westminster Abbey and in 1683, he was also appointed organ maker and keeper of the king's instruments.

Purcell's songs rely primarily on his gift for melodic line. The ease with which he handles long continuous lines without repetition has all the qualities of a master musician. His wide-ranging vocal lines are highly expressive with a quality of nostalgia that can only be attributed to the magic of Purcell's personal involvement with the music. Purcell's tendency toward chromaticism was encouraged by the growing popularity of the 'Italian manner' and his vocal music, particularly his solo vocal music, uses chromaticism as a melodic feature to clarify, explicate, and intensify the text. Florid writing, though it occurs frequently in recitative as well as in the aria, rarely confuses the textual declamation. Only recently, with Benjamin Britten, has there been a possible rival to Purcell in setting English text. Notably, Britten was a careful student of Purcell's techniques.

Copyright © 2005 Amelia Seyssel