Federico Moreno Torroba

The last of the Spanish Romantics, composer, conductor, and impresario Federico Moreno Torroba (1891-1982) left his mark on virtually every aspect of Spanish musical culture during a career that spanned six decades and saw tremendous political and cultural upheavals. After Falla, he was the most important and influential musician: in addition to his creative activities, he was President of the General Society of Authors and Editors and director of the Academy of
Fine Arts. His enduring contributions as a composer include dozens of guitar works composed for Andrés Segovia and several highly successful zarzuelas, which remain in the repertoire
today.Written by two leading experts in the field, Federico Moreno Torroba: A Musical Life in Three Acts explores not only his life and work, but also the relationship of his music to the cultural milieu in which he moved. It sheds particular light on the relationship of Torroba’s music and the cultural politics of Francisco Franco’s dictatorship (1939-75). Torroba came of age during a cultural renaissance that sought to reassert Spain’s position as a unique
cultural entity, and authors Walter A. Clark and William Krause demonstrate how his work can be understood as a personal, musical response to these aspirations. Clark and Krause argue that Torroba’s decision to
remain in Spain even during the years of Franco’s dictatorship was based primarily not on political ideology but rather on an unwillingness to leave his native soil. Rather than abandon Spain to participate in the dynamic musical life abroad, he continued to compose music that reflected his conservative view of his national and personal heritage. The authors contend that this pursuit did not necessitate allegiance to a particular regime, but rather to the non-political exaltation of Spain’s
so-called “eternal tradition,” or the culture and spirit that had endured throughout Spain’s turbulent history.Following Franco’s death in 1975, there was ambivalence towards figures like
Torroba who had made their peace with the dictatorship and paid a heavy price in terms of their reputation among expatriates. Moreover, his very conservative musical style made him a target for the post-war avant-garde, which disdained his highly tonal and melodic españolismo. With the demise of high modernism, however, the time has come for this new, more distanced assessment of Torroba’s contributions. Richly illustrated with photographs and musical examples, and with a helpful
chronology and works list for reference, this biography brings a fresh perspective on this influential composer to Latin American and Iberian music scholars, performers, and lovers of Spanish music alike.

Author Biography

Walter Aaron Clark is internationally renowned for his research on Spanish and Latin American music. He is the author of Oxford biographies on Isaac Albéniz and Enrique Granados, as well as the series editor of OUP’s Currents in Latin American and Iberian Music. He has edited or co-edited books on Latin pop (Routledge), Ibero-American Renaissance music (Pendragon), and the first comprehensive textbook on Latin American music (Norton). He
is the founder/director of the Center for Iberian and Latin American Music at the University of California, Riverside.
William Craig Krause began his research on Moreno Torroba in 1988, resulting in a presentation at the International Musicological Society conference in Madrid in 1992 and the completion of his dissertation in in 1993. Since that time he has authored or co-authored articles on this and related subjects in The Revised New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Diccionario de la Música Española e Hispanoamericana, Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart
and Encuentros. While primarily a professor of musicology at Hollins University, he also has an extensive background in the field of arts administration and recently has developed a secondary area of interest in the music of Appalachia.