Tomás Marco Aragón is a Spanish

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

 composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

 and writer

Writer

A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....

 on music.

Life and work

Marco studied violin and composition in Madrid while at the same time pursuing the study of law (he received his licenciate in law in 1963). He turned to composition in 1958, and in 1962 began attending the Darmstädter Internationale Ferienkurse

Darmstadt New Music Summer School

Initiated in 1946 by Wolfgang Steinecke, the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, Darmstadt , held annually until 1970 and subsequently every two years, encompass both the teaching of composition and interpretation and include premières of new works...

, where he furthered his studies with Bruno Maderna

Bruno Maderna

Bruno Maderna was an Italian conductor and composer. For the last ten years of his life he lived in Germany and eventually became a citizen of that country.-Biography:...

, Pierre Boulez

Pierre Boulez

Pierre Boulez is a French composer of contemporary classical music, a pianist, and a conductor.-Early years:Boulez was born in Montbrison, Loire, France. As a child he began piano lessons and demonstrated aptitude in both music and mathematics...

, Karlheinz Stockhausen

Karlheinz Stockhausen

Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Another critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music"...

, György Ligeti

György Ligeti

György Sándor Ligeti was a composer of contemporary classical music. Born in a Hungarian Jewish family in Transylvania, Romania, he briefly lived in Hungary before becoming an Austrian citizen.-Early life:...

, Gottfried Michael Koenig

Gottfried Michael Koenig

Gottfried Michael Koenig is a contemporary German-Dutch composer.-Biography:Koenig studied church music in Braunschweig, composition, piano, analysis and acoustics in Detmold, music representation techniques in Cologne and computer technique in Bonn. He attended and later lectured at the...

, and Theodor W. Adorno

Theodor W. Adorno

Theodor W. Adorno was a German sociologist, philosopher, and musicologist known for his critical theory of society....

. In 1967 he participated in Stockhausen’s collective composition project Ensemble at Darmstadt.

His compositional style is rooted in the music of the Darmstadt School

Darmstadt School

Darmstadt School refers to a loose group of compositional styles created by composers who attended the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music from the early 1950s to the early 1960s.-History:...

. For example, Transformación (1974) strongly recalls Ligeti’s Lux aeterna (1966)—both are composed for 16 solo voices—as well as the harmonic overtone-singing of Stockhausen’s Stimmung

Stimmung

Stimmung, for six vocalists and six microphones, is a piece by Karlheinz Stockhausen, written in 1968 and commissioned by the City of Cologne for the Collegium Vocale Köln. Its average length is seventy-four minutes, and it bears the work number 24 in the composer's catalog...

 (1968). In 1965 he began a brief association with the neo-Dada composers’ group Zaj, founded the previous year by Walter Marchetti, Juan Hidalgo

Juan Hidalgo Codorniu

Juan Hidalgo is a Spanish contemporary composer born in Las Palmas, Canary Islands in 1927. After studying piano and composition in Barcelona and Paris with Nadia Boulanger and Bruno Maderna, in 1957 participates in the XII Internationale Ferienkurse Für Neue Musik festival in Darmstadt with his...

, and Ramón Barce (Haines 1967). He helped to found the Studio Nueva Generación in 1967 (Medina 2001), by which time some of his compositions were beginning to include references to historical styles and quotations from earlier composers—for example, Angelus novus (1971) refers to Gustav Mahler

Gustav Mahler

Gustav Mahler was a late-Romantic Austrian composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. He was born in the village of Kalischt, Bohemia, in what was then Austria-Hungary, now Kaliště in the Czech Republic...

, the Cello Concerto (1976) is based on themes by Manuel de Falla

Manuel de Falla

Manuel de Falla y Matheu was a Spanish Andalusian composer of classical music. With Isaac Albéniz, Enrique Granados and Joaquín Turina he is one of Spain's most important musicians of the first half of the 20th century....

 as well as the Cant dels ocells by Pablo Casals

Pablo Casals

Pau Casals i Defilló , known during his professional career as Pablo Casals, was a Spanish Catalan cellist and conductor. He is generally regarded as the pre-eminent cellist of the first half of the 20th century, and one of the greatest cellists of all time...

, and his Fourth and Fifth Symphonies (1987 and 1989, respectively) both use a quotation from Richard Strauss

Richard Strauss

Richard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till...

's Also sprach Zarathustra (Soler 1994)—and for this reason his name is sometimes connected with the German New Simplicity

New Simplicity

New Simplicity was a stylistic tendency amongst some of the younger generation of German composers in the late 1970s and early 1980s, reacting against not only the European avant garde of the 1950s and 1960s, but also against the broader tendency toward objectivity found from the beginning of the...

 composers (Medina 2001). Around 1970 he began to employ traditional forms such as the symphony

Symphony

A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, scored almost always for orchestra. A symphony usually contains at least one movement or episode composed according to the sonata principle...

, sonata

Sonata

Sonata , in music, literally means a piece played as opposed to a cantata , a piece sung. The term, being vague, naturally evolved through the history of music, designating a variety of forms prior to the Classical era...

, and, especially, the concerto

Concerto

A concerto is a musical work usually composed in three parts or movements, in which one solo instrument is accompanied by an orchestra.The etymology is uncertain, but the word seems to have originated from the conjunction of the two Latin words...

. His return to nationalism

Nationalism

Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...

 involves amongst other things a number of important works for the guitar

Guitar

The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...

, including three concertos (Marco 1995).

In addition to the effect of his prodigious compositional output, he has had a strong influence on Spanish musical life through his work as a critic, broadcaster, writer, editor, educator, and administrator. After five years working as a music critic for various newspapers and magazines, in 1967 he founded, together with Ramón Barce, the magazine Sonda, dedicated to the subject of contemporary music. For eleven years he worked in the music division of the Radio Nacional de España, and for three years was professor of music history at the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED) and professor of composition at the Conservatorio Real in Madrid. He has served as technical director of the Spanish National Orchestra (1981–85) and the Center for the Promotion of Contemporary Music (1985–95), and founded the Alicante International Contemporary Music Festival which he directed for eleven seasons. In 1996 he became Director General of the Instituto Nacional de las Artes Escenicas y la Música (National Institute for Music and the Performing Arts), a post he held until 1999.

Honors

Marco has twice been awarded the Spanish Premio Nacional de Música

Premio Nacional de Música

The Premio Nacional de Música forms part of the annual National Awards in Spain....

, in 1969 and again in 2002. He won the Prix d’Honneur of the VI Bienalle de Paris in 1969 and, in that year as well as in 1971, received prizes from the Gaudeamus Foundation in the Netherlands. His composition Autodafé was awarded the Golden Harp Prize in 1975, and the UNESCO Young Composers’ Prize at the International Rostrum of Composers

International Rostrum of Composers

The International Rostrum of Composers is an annual forum organized by the International Music Council that offers broadcasting representatives the opportunity to exchange and publicize pieces of contemporary classical music...

 in 1976. For his activities as a broadcaster he was awarded the Premio Nacional de Radiodifusión in 1975. In 1993 he was elected to membership in the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, and in 1998 was awarded a Doctor Honoris Causa by the Universidad Complutense de Madrid.

Theater

• Anna Blume (text: Kurt Schwitters), for two reciters, instrumental ensemble, and tape (1967)
• El caballero de la triste figura, chamber opera after Don Quijote by Cervantes
  Miguel de Cervantes
  Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was a Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright. His magnum opus, Don Quixote, considered the first modern novel, is a classic of Western literature, and is regarded amongst the best works of fiction ever written...
  
   (2004)
• Cantos del pozo artesiano (text: Eugenio de Vicente), for actress and ten instruments (1967)
• Jabberwocky (text: Lewis Carroll), for actress and instrumental ensemble (1966)
• Llanto por Ignacio Sánchez Mejías, ballet, with orchestra (1985)
• Ojos verdes de luna (text: Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer
  Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer
  Gustavo Adolfo Domínguez Bastida, better known as Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, was a Spanish post-romanticist writer of poetry and short stories, now considered one of the most important figures in Spanish literature. He adopted the alias of Bécquer as his brother Valeriano Bécquer, a painter, had...
  
   and a poem from the Orlando Furioso
  Orlando Furioso
  Orlando Furioso is an Italian epic poem by Ludovico Ariosto which has exerted a wide influence on later culture. The earliest version appeared in 1516, although the poem was not published in its complete form until 1532...
  
   by Ludovico Ariosto
  Ludovico Ariosto
  Ludovico Ariosto was an Italian poet. He is best known as the author of the romance epic Orlando Furioso . The poem, a continuation of Matteo Maria Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato, describes the adventures of Charlemagne, Orlando, and the Franks as they battle against the Saracens with diversions...
  
  ), monodrama, for soprano, strings, and two percussionists (1994)
• Selene (text: Tomás Marco) (1965–73)
• El viaje circular, opera in one act after the Odyssey
  Odyssey
  The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work ascribed to Homer. The poem is fundamental to the modern Western canon, and is the second—the Iliad being the first—extant work of Western literature...
  
   by Homer
  Homer
  In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
  
   (2002)

Film music

• Módulo '74, music for the film by José Esteban Lasala (1974)
• Temporalidad interna, music for the film by Javier Aguirre (1970)

Choral and vocal

• América, cantata (2000)
• Apocalypsis, cantata for reciter, choir, and instrumental ensemble (1976)
• Ceremonia barrocca, for choir and chamber ensemble (1991)
• Concierto coral no. 1, for double choir and violin (1980)
• Ecos de Antonio Machado, for choir and organ (1975)
• Espacio sagrado (Concierto coral no. 2) , for piano, double choir, and orchestra (1983)
• Luar, for soprano and guitar (1991)
• Misa básica, for choir (1978)
• La Pasión segun San Marcos, narrator, 3 choirs, brass, and percussion (1983)
• Retrato del poeta (text: Gerardo Diego), for voice and piano (1973)
• (S) Otto Voci (e)
• Tea Party, for four singers (S, MzS, T, B), clarinet, trombone, vibraphone, and cello (1970)
• Transfiguración, for 16 solo voices (1974)
• Ultramarina (Epitafio para Lope de Aguirre) , for voice and instrumental ensemble (1975)

Orchestral

• Anábasis, for orchestra (1970)
• Angelus novus (Mahleriana), for orchestra (1971)
• Arbol de arcángeles (serenata virtual), for string orchestra (1995)
• Bis, encore, zugabe, propina, for orchestra (1993)
• Campo de estrellas , for orchestra
• Concerto for Cello and Orchestra (1976)
• Concerto for Violin and Orchestra (1971)
• Concierto austral, for oboe and orchestra (1981)
• Concierto del agua, for guitar and orchestra (1993)
• Concierto del alma, for violin and string orchestra (1982)
• Concierto Eco, for amplified guitar and orchestra (1976–78)
• Concierto Guadiana, for guitar and strings (1973)
• Del tiempo y la memoria, concerto for soprano, consort (harp, accordion, alto saxophone, timpani, and a percussionist), 3 distant violins, and orchestra (2006)
• Escorial, for orchestra (1974)
• Laberinto Marino, for cello and orchestra (2001)
• Les mécanismes de la mémoire, for violin and orchestra (1973)
• Mysteria, for an orchestra of 38 musicians (1970)
• Oculto carmen, for orchestra (1995)
• La Périphérie du paradis, for six groups of at least six performers each (1988)
• Pulsar, for orchestra (1986)
• Quasi una requiem, for string quartet and string orchestra
• Sinfonietta No. 1 ("Opaco resplandor de la memoria"), for orchestra (1998–99)
• Sinfonietta No. 2 ("Curvas del Guadiana") (2004)
• Symphony No. 1 "Aralar" (1976)
• Symphony No. 2 "Espacio cerrado" [Closed Space] (1985)
• Symphony No. 3, for small orchestra (1985)
• Symphony No. 4 "Espacio quebrado" [Broken Space] (1987)
• Symphony No. 5 "Modelos de universo" [Universe Models] (1989)
• Symphony No. 6 "Imago mundi" [Image of the World] (1992)
• Triple Concerto, for violin, cello, piano, and orchestra (1987)
• Vitral (música celestial I), for organ and string orchestra (1968–69)

Chamber music

• Albor, for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and piano (1970)
• Algaida, for ondes Martenot, piano, and percussion (1978)
• Anaconda, for two marimbas
• Arcadia, for variable ensemble of woodwinds, strings, and keyboards (1975)
• Arias de aire, for flute and piano (1986)
• Autodafé (Concierto barrocco no.1), for piano, organ, three instrumental groups, and violins in echo (1975)
• Bastilles, for a stringed instrument and harpsichord (1988)
• Car en effet, for 3 clarinets and 3 saxophones (1965)
• Diwanes y quasidas, for chamber ensemble (1987)
• Dúo concertante no. 1, for two guitars (1974)
• Dúo concertante no. 2, for violin and guitar (1976)
• Dúo concertante no. 3, for violin and piano (1978)
• Dúo concertante no. 4, for viola and piano (1980)
• Ensemble (flute part, in a collaborative composition, supervised by Karlheinz Stockhausen), for 12 instruments, tapes, and live electronics (1967)
• Espejo de viento, for 12 saxophones (1988)
• Espejo velado, for double wind quintet (1982)
• Hoquetus, for 1, 2, or 3 clarinets, live and/or recorded (1977)
• Jetztzeit, for clarinet and piano (1971)
• Kukulcán, for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and horn (1969/72)
• Kwaidan, for saxophone and piano (1988)
• Locus solus, for chamber ensemble (1978)
• Luciérnaga furiosa (Duo concertante no. 5), for flute and guitar (1991)
• Maya, for cello and piano (1968–69)
• Miriada, for guitar and percussion (1969–70)
• Miró, for eight cellos (1993)
• Necronomicon, for six percussionists (1971)
• Nuba, for flute, oboe, clarinet, violin, cello, and percussion (1973)
• La nuit de Bordeaux: aguafuerte Goyesca, for guitar and string quartet (1998)
• Paraíso dinámico, for 4 saxophones, piano, and two percussionists
• Paraíso mecánico, for saxophone quartet (1988)
• Paso a dos, for two pianos (1968)
• Quinteto filarmónico, for flute, harp, violin, viola, and cello (1984)
• Quinto cantar, for violin, cello, and piano (1988)
• Recóndita armonía (Chamber Symphony No. 1), for 15 instruments (1990)
• Roulis-Tangage, for trumpet, piano, vibraphone, percussion, guitar, electric guitar, and cello (1962–63)
• Rosa-Rosae, for flute, clarinet, violin, and cello (with crotales and triangles), with or without lighting effects (1969)
• Schwan (ein Liebeslied),for trumpet, trombone, 2 percussionists, viola, and cello (1966)
• String Quartet No. 1 ("Aura") (1968)
• String Quartet No. 2 ("Espejo desierto") (1987)
• String Quartet No. 3 ("Anatomía fractal de los ángeles") (1993)
• String Quartet No. 4 ("Los desastres de la guerra") (1996)
• Tartessos, for four percussionists (1979)
• Tauromaquia (Concierto barrocco no. 2), for piano 4 hands and 13 instruments (1974–76)
• Teatro de la Memoria, for six saxophones (2002)
• Tormer, for harpsichord, violin, viola, and cello (1977)
• Trio concertante no. 1: en homenaje a Mompou, for violin, cello, and piano (1983)
• Trio concertante no. 2, for flute, violin, and viola (1984)
• Trivium, for tuba, piano, and percussion (vibraphone and marimba) (1962)

guitar

• Albayalde, for guitar (1965)
• Fantasia Sobre Fantasia, for guitar (1989)
• Naturaleza muerta con guitarra (Homenaje a Picasso), for guitar (1975)
• Paisaje grana (Homenaje a Juan Ramón Jiménez) , for guitar (1975)
• Presto mormorando, for guitar (1996)
• Sempere, for guitar (1985)
• Sonata de fuego, for guitar (1990)
• Tarots, 22 pieces for guitar (1991)

percussion

• Algunas maneras de nombrar la lluvia, for five-octave marimba (with “algunos instrumentos de boca”) (2004)
• Floreal: música celestial II, for solo percussion (1969)

keyboard & accordion

• Aria de la batalla, for organ (1979)
• Astrolabio, for organ (1969–70)
• Bachground, for piano
• Campana rajada, for piano (1980)
• Cuatro cartas, for piano (1987)
• Evos, for piano (1970)
• Fétiches, for piano (1967–68)
• Herbania, for harpsichord (1977)
• Le Palais du facteur cheval , for piano (1984)
• Pirana, for piano (1965)
• Sonata acueducto, for accordion (1999)
• Sonata atlantica, for piano
• Sonata de Vesperia, for piano (1977)
• Soleá, for piano (1982)
• Temporalia, for piano (1974)

strings

• Partita del obradoiro, for violin
• Reloj interior, for contrabass, with or without simultaneous electronic transformation (1971)
• Sicigia, for cello (1977)

winds

• Akelarre, for a woodwind instrument and tape (1976)
• Octavário, for solo flute (or with percussion) (1967)
• Tromba di pace, three pieces for solo trumpet (1999)
• Zobel, for solo flute (1984)

Writings (selective list)

• 1970. Música española de vanguardia. Punto omega,coleccion Universitaria de bolsillo. Madrid: Ediciones Guadarrama.
• 1970. La música de la España contemporánea. Temas españoles 508. Madrid: Publicaciones Españolas.
• 1971. Luis de Pablo. Artistas españoles contemporáneos 6. Madrid: Dirección General de Bellas Artes, Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia.
• 1972. Cristóbal Halffter. Artistas españoles contemporáneos 34. Madrid: Servicio de Publicaciones del Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia.
• 1976. Carmelo A. Bernaola. Madrid: Servicio de Publicaciones del Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia. ISBN 8436900480
• 1983. Historia de la música española 6: Siglo XX. Edited by Pablo López de Osaba. Madrid: Alianza. ISBN 8420689882 (7-volume set). English edition as Spanish Music in the 20th Century translated by Cola Franzen, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993. ISBN 0-674-83102-5
• 1987. "Los Módulos." In Escritos sobre Luis de Pablo, edited by José Luis García del Busto, 159–78. Madrid: Taurus.
• 1988. "La sinfonía hoy" Temporadas de la música 6, no. 19:69–73.
• 1991. Xavier Benguerel (co-authored with Carles Guinovart). Barcelona: Generalitat de Catalunya, Departament de Cultura.
• "Treinta años después." Revista de Occidente, no. 151:115–18.
• 1993. La creación musical como imágen del mundo entre el pensamiento lógico y el pensamiento mágico: Discurso académico del electo Excmo. Sr. D. Tomás Marco Aragón, leído en el acto de su recepción pública el día 7 de noviembre de 1993. Madrid: Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando.
• 1993. Manuel Castillo: "Cinco sonetos lorquianos". Granada: Centro de Documentación Musical de Andalucía
  Centro de Documentación Musical de Andalucía
  Musical Documentation Center of Andalusia is an organization created in 1987 by the Ministry of Culture of the Junta de Andalucía to recover, preserve, catalog, classify and disseminate the musical heritage created in or related to Andalusia in all forms.Its current director is the musicologist...
  
  .
• 1995. "Mis relaciones compositivas con la guitarra." In La guitarra en la historia 6, edited by Eusebio Rioja Vázquez, 11–22. Córdoba: Posada.
• 1996. "Granada, una ciudad musical." In VII Jornadas de Música Contemporánea , 1–28. Granada: Fundación Caja de Granada.
• 1996. "Sobre mis sinfonías." Cuadernos de música iberoamericana 1:283–95.
• 1999. "La máquina como extensión musical". Actas del coloquio internacional antropología y música: Diálogos. II—Hombres, música y máquinas. Música oral del sur: Revista internacional 4:85–95.
• 2002. Pensamiento musical y siglo XX. Madrid: Fundación Autor-SGAE. ISBN 84-8048-469-1
• 2003. Historia de la música occidental del siglo XX. Madrid: Alpuerto. ISBN 8438103820
• 2005. "Lo folclórico en el sinfonismo: Nacionalismo turístico y de postal." Pensar el flamenco desde las ciencias sociales. Música oral del sur: Revista internacional” no. 6:337–47.

Sources

• Ariznavarreta, Idoia. 1996. "Entrevista a Tomás Marco." Kantuz, no. 32 (July-Aug): 27–28. (Originally published in the periodical El correo.)
• Charles Soler, Agustín. 2002. Análisis de la música española del siglo XX: En torno a la Generación del 51. Valencia: Rivera.
• Gomez Amat, Carlos. 1974. Tomás Marco. Artistas españoles contemporáneos. Serie músicos 74. Madrid: Servicio de Publicaciones del Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia, D.L. ISBN 8436903366
• García del Busto, José Luis. 1986. Tomás Marco. Colección Ethos-Música 14. Oviedo: Universidad de Oviedo.
• Haines, Edmund. 1967. "The New Dada in Spanish Music." Antioch Review 27, no. 1 (Spring): 76–88.
• Medina, Angel. 2001. "Marco (Aragón), Tomás". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie
  Stanley Sadie
  Stanley Sadie CBE was a leading British musicologist, music critic, and editor. He was editor of the sixth edition of the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians , which was published as the first edition of the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.Sadie was educated at St Paul's School,...
  
   and John Tyrrell
  John Tyrrell (professor of music)
  John Tyrrell was born in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia in 1942. He studied at the universities of Cape Town, Oxford and Brno. In 2000 he was appointed Research Professor at Cardiff University....
  
  . London: Macmillan Publishers.
• Sagastume, Manu. 1996. "La Generación del 51." Kantuz, no. 32 (July-August): 27.
• Soler, Agustín Charles. 1994. "Tomás Marco: Análisis del lenguaje musical empleado en las sinfonías 4 y 5." Nassarre: Revista aragonesa de musicología 10, no. 1:17–60.
• Villasol, Jesús S. 2002. "Anatomía de una seducción." Diverdi: boletín de información discográfica 11, no. 106 (July-August): 28.http://www.diverdi.com/files/boletin/10/2/106.pdf
• Zapke, Susana. 1997. "Annäherung an die spanische Musik der Nachkriegszeit: Concierto de música contemporánea española bajo el signo del cincuentenario de Falla." Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste: Jahrbuch 11:383–90.