Juan Antonio Orrego-Salas (January 18, 1919 – November 24, 2019) was a Chilean

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 ...

musicologist Musicology (from Greek μουσική ''mousikē'' 'music' and -λογια ''-logia'', 'domain of study') is the scholarly analysis and research-based study of music. Musicology departments traditionally belong to the humanities, although some mu ...

music critic ''The Oxford Companion to Music'' defines music criticism as "the intellectual activity of formulating judgments on the value and degree of excellence of individual works of music, or whole groups or genres". In this sense, it is a branch of mus ...

, and academic.

Life and career

Born Juan Antonio Orrego-Salas in

Santiago Santiago (, ; ), also known as Santiago de Chile, is the capital and largest city of Chile as well as one of the largest cities in the Americas. It is the center of Chile's most densely populated region, the Santiago Metropolitan Region, whose ...

on January 18, 1919, Orrego-Salas studied at the Conservatorio Nacional de Música (Chile), the music school of the

University of Chile The University of Chile ( es, Universidad de Chile) is a public research university in Santiago, Chile. It was founded on November 19, 1842, and inaugurated on September 17, 1843.

, in his native city where he was a pupil of

Pedro Humberto Allende Pedro Humberto Allende Sarón (July 29, 1885 – August 17, 1959) was one of the most important Chilean composers of the twentieth century. He obtained the prestigious ''Premio Nacional de Arte'' in 1945. Biography Allende was born on July 29, ...

(composition) and Domingo Santa Cruz Wilson (composition). He also earned of Bachelor of Arts in architecture in addition to earning his diploma in music composition from the University of Chile. After completing his degrees, Orrego-Salas joined the faculty of Conservatorio Nacional de Música where he was a lecturer in music history, and he simultaneously joined the faculty of the

Pontifical Catholic University of Chile The Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (''PUC or UC Chile'') ( es, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile) is one of the six Catholic Universities existing in the Chilean university system and one of the two pontifical universities i ...

where he founded the university choir in 1938. Grants from the

Rockefeller Foundation The Rockefeller Foundation is an American private foundation and philanthropic medical research and arts funding organization based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The second-oldest major philanthropic institution in America, after the Carneg ...

and a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

enabled him to pursue further studies in the United States from 1944 through 1946. During this period he studied music composition with

Aaron Copland Aaron Copland (, ; November 14, 1900December 2, 1990) was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later a conductor of his own and other American music. Copland was referred to by his peers and critics as "the Dean of American Com ...

and

Randall Thompson Randall Thompson (April 21, 1899 – July 9, 1984) was an American composer, particularly noted for his choral works. Career Randall attended The Lawrenceville School, where his father was an English teacher. He then attended Harvard University, ...

and musicology with

Paul Henry Lang Paul Henry Lang (August 28, 1901 – September 21, 1991) was a Hungarian-American musicologist and music critic. Career Lang was born as "Pál Láng" in Budapest, Hungary, and was educated in Catholic schools. In 1918, as World War I was coming ...

and

George Herzog George Herzog (October 19, 1851 – September 16, 1920) was an American interior designer and decorative painter, best known for his work on Philadelphia Masonic Temple. Career Born in Munich to German landscape painter Hermann Ottomar ...

. In 1947 Orrego-Salas was appointed professor of music composition at the University of Chile; and was awarded the title Profesor Extraordinario at that institution in 1953. He concurrently served as editor of the ''Revista musical chilena'', a position he began in 1949, and began working as a

for ''

El Mercurio ''El Mercurio'' (known online as ''El Mercurio On-Line'', ''EMOL'') is a Chilean newspaper with editions in Valparaíso and Santiago. Its Santiago edition is considered the country's newspaper of record and it is considered the oldest daily in t ...

'' in 1950. A second Guggenheim Fellowship awarded in 1954 brought Orrego-Salas back to the United States in 1954-1956. After returning to Chile he served concurrently as director of El Instituto de Extensión Musical at the Conservatorio Nacional de Música and as dean of the music school at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. His students in Chile included composer Sylvia Soublette. In 1961, Orrego-Salas permanently relocated to the United States to work at

Indiana University Bloomington Indiana University Bloomington (IU Bloomington, Indiana University, IU, or simply Indiana) is a public university, public research university in Bloomington, Indiana. It is the flagship university, flagship campus of Indiana University and, with ...

, where he co-founded the

Latin American Music Center Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

(LAMC). One of his students at IU's

Jacobs School of Music The Indiana University Jacobs School of Music in Bloomington, Indiana, is a music conservatory established in 1921. Until 2005, it was known as the Indiana University School of Music. It has more than 1,500 students, approximately half of whom ar ...

was composer

Ricardo Lorenz Ricardo Lorenz (born May 24, 1961) is a Venezuelan composer and academic. Life and career Born in Maracaibo, Venezuela, Lorenz earned degrees from both the Conservatory of Music Juan Manuel Olivares and the Juan Manuel Olivares National School of ...

who succeeded him as director of the LAMC. In 1992, he was the inaugural winner of Chile's National Prize for Musical Arts. He died in

Bloomington, Indiana Bloomington is a city in and the county seat of Monroe County, Indiana, Monroe County in the central region of the U.S. state of Indiana. It is the List of municipalities in Indiana, seventh-largest city in Indiana and the fourth-largest outside ...

, on November 24, 2019.Ricardo Lorenz,
Juan Orrego-Salas: 1919–2019
, Indiana University Bloomington, Jacobs School of Music, Latin American Music Center website (accessed January 17, 2020).

References

External links

* (accessed 1 October 2013).
La Ciudad Celeste, conducted by Carmen-Helena Téllez

A conversation with Juan Orrego-Salas, recorded March 1, 2014

August 17, 1991
A Latin American Composer in the United States
2004 {{DEFAULTSORT:Orrego-Salas, Juan 1919 births 2019 deaths Chilean composers Chilean male composers Chilean musicologists 20th-century classical composers Musicians from Santiago Jacobs School of Music faculty Academic staff of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile University of Chile alumni Academic staff of the University of Chile Male classical composers Chilean emigrants to the United States 20th-century male musicians Chilean centenarians Men centenarians