Daniel Alomía Robles He was born in Huánuco, in 1871. His parents were Marcial Alomía and Micaela Robles. In 1882, when he moved to Lima, at the end of his primary education, he expressed his deep-rooted artistic vocation in choral groups. In 1887, this composer and folklorist began his musical training under the direction of Manuel de la Cruz Panizo and Claudio Rebagliati . Motivated by the study of nature, he attended, between the years of 1892 and 1894, as a free student, at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of San Marcos. However, starting in 1895 he began a productive work of collecting folklore, a fact for which he traveled to different places in the interior of the country, putting into practice, as well as consolidating, his knowledge of indigenous languages. Such work forced him to leave the national borders to places like Ecuador and Bolivia; and at the same time it allowed him to confirm the continuity of an original melodic structure, based on the pentaphony. His public presentations began on February 21, 1910 with a concert at the Universidad Mayor de San Marcos . In 1911 he travels to Argentina. Upon his return, in the company of Enrique Bustamante, he visited various places in the southern Andes, arriving in 1917 in Ecuador, Panama and Cuba. Between 1919 and 1933 he lived in New York, where apart from his work as a composer, he gave numerous lectures, offered several concerts and recorded a hundred albums with Peruvian music at the Brunswick (now defunct) and Víctor houses.
Main compositions by Daniel Alomía Robles
Among his compositions, the opera Illa Ccori stands out.; the zarzuelas The condor passes (her best known work of his), Inca Ballet and Alcedo; and the symphonic poems Amanecer Andino , The resurgence of the Andes and The Indian . His folk compilation work reaches almost a thousand melodies, whose rhythm and origin are diverse. Among these, one of the most widespread is the Hymn to the Sun, whose antiquity dates back to the pre-Hispanic period.
Death of Daniel Alomía Robles
Daniel Alomía Robles died in Lima on July 17, 1942. His complete work was published in 1990 by his son Armando Robles Godoy, with the support of the National Council for Science and Technology (Concytec), in an edition that includes recorded cassettes of all his folkloric work and an appreciable percentage of his original compositions.