His name identifies a well-known school in the largest district of Lima, San Juan de Lurigancho. Master of masters in the musical art, he is one of our most important and internationally known artists, author of one of the melodies that most represent us in the world. There are those who have come to consider this immortal work as the second National Anthem of our country , for the intense emotional resonances produced by each evz that is heard, inside or outside of Peru. Recorded more than 400 times by a diverse range of national and international artists, El Cóndor Pasa It has passed into the collective imagination of the world as a symbol of Peruvian identity, despite which the emblematic figure of this composer and pianist from Huanuquén is rarely reviewed and highlighted as it deserves. That is why we dedicate this new post of the biographical series “And who was it?” to Mr. Daniel Alomía Robles .
He was born in Huánuco, on January 3, 1871, and died in Lima, on June 18, 1942. He was a notable composer and musicologist, author of the famous composition “The condor passes “.
While still a child he joined the choir of the cathedral in his hometown. When he turned 13 (1884), his parents, Don Marcial Alomía, of distant Arab-Andalusian origin, and Doña Micaela Robles, a Huanuco lady of Andean ancestors, sent him to Lima to encourage his artistic talent in the field of art. painting and manual arts. He studies secondary school at the Colegio Nacional Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe. In 1887, in full adolescence, he met the teacher Manuel de la Cruz Panizo, composer and singer of religious music in various churches and monasteries of Lima, who instructed him in solfeggio and choral singing.
For his professional studies, Alomía Robles chose to study at the San Fernando School of Medicine of the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos. On one of several study trips to Matucana, he becomes interested in curing the uta with herbs from the mountains, and decides to travel to the jungle to study them, arriving in San Luis de Shuaro. In this town he meets the Spanish Franciscan Father Gabriel Sala, who guides him towards his destiny. He gives her two pieces of music from the Campa ethnic group, the first in his music collection. He then leaves Medicine dedicating himself entirely to Music:composition, arrangement and compilation of vernacular themes.
A tireless traveler since he was 15 years old, he traveled through deep Peru with his own resources. He enters the most abrupt places in the mountains. He compiles the songs and traditional popular music, capturing ancestral melodies and legends from the Inca and colonial times. He collects musical instruments and ceramics from the pre-Columbian cultures of Peru.
Alomía Robles married the Cuban pianist, Sebastiana Godoy Agostini, with whom he had ten children. When Sebastiana died of cancer, he married her sister-in-law, Carmela Godoy Agostini. With her he had two more children, the Peruvian filmmakers Armando and Mario Robles Godoy. His granddaughter, journalist Marcela Robles Rey, Armando's daughter, is well known. In 1905 he was Mayor of the city of Huacho.
In 1910, Father Alberto Villalba Muñoz presented it at the University of San Marcos as a qualifier of the pentaphonic scale of Andean music, which distinguishes it from that of Western music, whose scale is heptaphonic.
Various institutions and personalities from the American art world expressed deep interest in his work:Mr. Peter H. Goldsmith, director of the inter-American division of the American Association for International Conciliation; Maestro Edwin Franko Goldman, director of the band of the same name, the Carnegie and Guggenheim Foundations, Columbia and Yale Universities, the Pan-American Union in Washington and President Harding of the USA, who proposed his opera "Illa Cori" to be premiered at the great opening ceremonies of the Panama Canal in 1914. Unfortunately, the start of the First World War (1914-1918) frustrated the project.
The record companies RCA Víctor and Brunswich recorded, on 24 discs, his main works, among them the most important:" The condor passes ”. On June 16, 1933, he arrived in Callao, returning to the country after a long residence in New York.
Based in Lima, he receives numerous tributes, an appointment to a public position (Head of the Section of Fine Arts of the Ministry of Education of Lima) and numerous premieres with the National Symphony Orchestra , under the baton of its then owner, maestro Theo Buchwald.
Attacked by septicemia, he died in Chosica - Lima, at the age of 71, leaving several compositions unfinished and the project of a research department with the Puno composer Theodoro Valcárcel, also renowned artist of indigenous lineage and vocation.
Daniel Alomía Robles he was a tireless composer with deep Andean roots. His musical concepts differ radically from the prevailing academism at the time. He was, without a doubt, the first Peruvian and, perhaps Latin American, composer who based his work as a musical constructor on the constant research and study of native sound materials, specifically Andean, that is, those that define —as González Prada stated —:"the true Peru, the nation formed by the multitude of Indians scattered in the mountains."
His creative work found in popular genres, in songs and short piano pieces, effective channels of expression mixed in simple and spontaneous formal structures. He did not intend to reach the complexities of the conventional development or academic variations typical of European conceptions, but he did leave beautiful testimonies of an authentic search for Peruvian popular musical expression.
Daniel Alomía Robles he not only bequeathed a stupendous collection of native melodies, but also achieved, as a composer, a simple, pure and spontaneous proposal in the handling of Andean sound materials, a visionary proposal linked to the work of the Peruvian composer of the contemporary world.
His last years were spent revising his Collection of Popular Melodies, recently published by his son.
In addition to this collection, it is worth mentioning among his works the opera “Illa Cori” (or “The conquest of Quito by Huayna Cápac”); the zarzuela “Alcedo”, of which only “Serenata” remains; the operetta “La Perricholi”, of which fragments have been found; 88 songs for voice and piano, highlighting those based on poems by Manuel González Prada; a "Mass of Glory" (1909); the symphonic poems “The Indian”, “The Andean Dawn” and “The Emergence of the Andes”; and numerous piano pieces including “Las acllas en el Coricancha”, “En El Caribe”, and various waltzes, marineras and fox trots. All with the characteristic Andean-indigenist flavor that characterizes Robles.
“La zarzuela”, whose “Plegaria” is one of his best-known works, was declared Cultural Heritage of the Nation in 1993. His world-famous composition “ The condor passes ” has been performed by such renowned artists as the famous rock duo formed by Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel (Simon &Garfunkel), who bought the copyright from some street musicians in London, but years later had to return them to the heirs of Aloma Robles. This duo put his own lyrics, the work of Paul Simon, with the title "If I could" – "If I could".
In the television program “The function of the word” of December 12, 2012, by the linguist-journalist-polygrapher Marco Aurelio Denegri, which is broadcast on Wednesdays at 10 pm . Channel 7 -which we recommend to all our compatriots, in particular teachers-, discussed the life-giving career of the author of “El cóndor pasa ”, and in particular about the genesis, diffusion and transcendence of this essential song.