[1] Enrique Iturriaga Romero was born in Lima, Peru, in 1918 and spent most of his childhood in Huacho, a small port city north of the Peruvian capital.

In the coastal regions of Peru where he grew up, the most common type of popular music during the first half of the twentieth century was música criolla.

In 1932, at the age of fourteen, he auditioned in Lima for Lily Rosay, piano teacher at the Sas-Rosay Academy of Music.

In 1947, when he was still a student he won the Duncker Lavalle National Prize for his work Canción y muerte de Rolando for voice and orchestra, on a text by the poet Jorge Eduardo Eielson.

[2] In April 1957 he won the Juan Landaeta Prize for his work Suite for Orchestra, in the contest called by the second Latin American Festival in Caracas.

[4] In 1963 he traveled to the United States, invited to meet and study the work of universities and other higher institutions in the field of music.

In addition to teaching and criticism, his dissemination work was expanded with the publication of the books La música en el Perú – in co-authorship – and Método de composición melódica.

[4] Iturriaga garnered recognition early, when in 1947 he won the Dunker Lavalle Award for his work for voice and orchestra Canción y muerte de Rolando, inspired by the famous poem by Jorge Eduardo Eielson.

[4] In 1957 he won the Juan Landaeta Prize, Caracas; and in 1965, the Third Ibero-American Festival of Washington commissioned him with a work, "Vivencias", that was premiered by the Buffalo Symphony Orchestra.