Amadeo Roldán y Gardes (

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

, 12 June 1900 –

Havana Havana (; Spanish: ''La Habana'' ) is the capital and largest city of Cuba. The heart of the La Habana Province, Havana is the country's main port and commercial center.

, 7 March 1939) was a

Cuba Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbea ...

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Defi ...

and

violin The violin, sometimes known as a ''fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone (string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in the family in regular ...

ist. Roldán was born in Paris to a Cuban mulatta and a Spanish father. It was his mother, the pianist Albertina Gardes, who initiated her children to music (his sister María Teresa was a mezzo-soprano and his brother Alberto a cellist). Roldán came to Cuba in 1919 after studying music theory and violin at the Madrid Conservatory, graduating in 1916. He became the concertmaster (leader of the first-violin section) of the new Orquesta Sinfónica de la Habana in 1922. In the mid-1920s he was appointed concertmaster of the Orquesta Filarmónica of Havana (he would assume the position of conductor in 1932) and founded the Havana String Quartet. During this period, Roldán, one of the leaders of the ''

Afrocubanismo Afrocubanismo was an artistic and social movement in black-themed Cuban culture with origins in the 1920s, as in works by the cultural anthropologist Fernando Ortiz. The Afrocubanismo movement focused on establishing the legitimacy of black identi ...

'' movement, wrote the first symphonic pieces to incorporate Afro-Cuban percussion instruments. Roldán's best-known composition is the 1928 ballet ''La Rebambaramba'', described by a critic of the era as "a multicolored musicorama ... depicting an Afro-Cuban fiesta in a gorgeous display of Caribbean melorhythms, with the participation of a multifarious fauna of native percussion effects, including a polydental glissando on the jawbone of an ass

Roldán's compositions included ''Overture on Cuban Themes'' (1925), three little poems: (''Oriente'', ''Pregón'', ''Fiesta negra'': 1926), and two ballets: ''La Rebambaramba'' (a ballet colonial in two parts: 1928) and ''El milagro de Anaquille'' (1929). There followed a series of ''Rítmicas'' (1930), ''Poema negra'' (1930) and ''Tres toques'' (march, rites, dance) (1931). The fifth and sixth of his ''Rítmicas'', composed around the same time as

Edgard Varèse Edgard Victor Achille Charles Varèse (; also spelled Edgar; December 22, 1883 – November 6, 1965) was a French-born composer who spent the greater part of his career in the United States. Varèse's music emphasizes timbre and rhythm; he coined ...

's '' Ionisation'', were among the first works in the Western classical music tradition scored for percussion ensemble alone. In ''Motivos de son'' (1934) he wrote eight pieces for voice and instruments based on the poet

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's set of poems with the same title. His last composition was two ''Piezas infantiles'' for piano (1937). His work was regularly featured in concerts sponsored by the Pan-American Association of Composers, founded by

Henry Cowell Henry Dixon Cowell (; March 11, 1897 – December 10, 1965) was an American composer, writer, pianist, publisher and teacher. Marchioni, Tonimarie (2012)"Henry Cowell: A Life Stranger Than Fiction" ''The Juilliard Journal''. Retrieved 19 June 202 ...

, including the inaugural, March 1929 performance in

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.Orovio, Helio 2004. ''Cuban music from A to Z''. Revised by Sue Steward. A biographical dictionary of Cuban music, artists, composers, groups and terms. Duke University, Durham NC; Tumi, Bath. p185 Roldán died at the peak of his creative powers at 38, of a disfiguring facial cancer (he had been an inveterate smoker). His career followed a similar path to Alejandro García Caturla, and the two men are considered to be pioneers of modern Cuban symphonic art.

References

External links

Amadeo Roldán y Gardes
– Composer's page at AfriClassical.com {{DEFAULTSORT:Roldan, Amadeo 1900 births 1939 deaths Cuban composers Male composers Cuban violinists Male classical violinists 20th-century classical composers Concertmasters Musicians from Paris Deaths from cancer in Cuba 20th-century classical violinists Male classical composers 20th-century French male musicians Spanish expatriates in France Spanish emigrants to Cuba Cuban male musicians

See also

References

External links