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Spanish composer From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Rodolfo Halffter Escriche (October 20, 1900 – October 14, 1987) was a Spanish composer and music critic with Mexican citizenship (from 1939), having chosen to leave Francoist Spain. He came from a musical family and was self-taught as a composer, but he wrote in a style always informed by his early engagement with the modernist aesthetics of Madrid's Grupo de los Ocho. His music was influenced by Claude Debussy and Arnold Schoenberg. It has been compared to that of Domenico Scarlatti in its neoclassicism and to Manuel de Falla in its mild polytonality. He also wrote music for films. Starting in 1953, he became the first composer to use twelve-tone technique in Mexico. He returned to Spain beginning in the 1960s and received its Premio Nacional de Música in 1986, but he died in Mexico City.
Born in Madrid to a family of musicians, Rodolfo Halffter was the brother of Ernesto Halffter and uncle of Cristóbal Halffter, also composers.[1] His father Ernest Halffter Hein was from Königsberg, Germany.[citation needed] His mother Rosario Escriche Erradón was of Catalan heritage and gave her children their first music lessons.[citation needed]
As a composer, Rodolfo Hallfter was largely self-taught and most influenced by Claude Debussy and Arnold Schoenberg, having read Schoenberg's Harmonielehre.[1] He was also advised by Manuel de Falla, who he met through Adolfo Salazar.[1] Halffter worked first as a bank clerk and later as a music critic for El sol and El universo gráfico.[2] At the Residencia de Estudiantes he met regularly with artists like Salvador Dalí and Federico García Lorca, and he set the poems of Rafael Alberti to music in Marinero en tierra.[1]
He was among the composers of the Grupo de los Ocho, or Grupo de Madrid, in the 1930s.[citation needed] This group was influenced by Salazar, who encouraged its members to innovate.[citation needed][lower-alpha 1] At the same time, he worked as a music critic in La Voz.[citation needed] He also worked in the propaganda ministry of the Second Spanish Republic, whereas his brother Ernesto supported Francisco Franco.[citation needed] Rodolfo chose to leave Francoist Spain after the Spanish Civil War.[3]
He arrived in Mexico in 1939,[4] where he was welcomed by Carlos Chávez and Blas Galindo in Mexico City.[5] He first taught at the Escuela Superior de Música (1939–1940) and then at the Conservatorio Nacional de Música for 30 years.[5] In 1946, he became editor of the Nuestra música and director of Ediciones Mexicanas de Música.[5] The same year, violinist Samuel Dushkin gave the premieres of Halffter's Violin Concerto, helping to establish his growing international reputation.[5] He may have participated in the 1954 and 1957 Festivales de Música in Caracas, perhaps placing him in the company of Roque Cordero and René Leibowitz.[4]
Halffter returned to Spain on many occasions after 1962.[6] He taught in Granada and Santiago de Compostela and participated in music festivals. He died in Mexico City on October 14, 1987, fourteen days before his 87th birthday.[1]
Halffter wrote the majority of his most important works while in the Grupo de los Ocho.[citation needed] They are typified by their mild polytonality, asymmetric rhythms, and clear melodic writing after Falla,[6] and their neoclassical style has been compared to the musical idiom of Domenico Scarlatti.[citation needed] Halffter began to use twelve-tone technique in 1953 with Tres hojas de album, becoming the first composer to do so in Mexico, while largely maintaining his prior style.[7] This was at a time when the technique was becoming mainstream and had already become respected as somewhat antifascist.[8]
The Spanish government honored him with a concert in his later career, and he received further honors from the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando and the Mexican Academia de Artes.[6] In 1986, he was awarded Spain's highest award for composition, the Premio Nacional de Música.[citation needed] He has been remembered as a composer working in the style established by Falla[6] and as the first composer of twelve-tone music in Mexico.[4]
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