Fernando Remacha

That was how he began his instruction under Conrado del Campo, in whose classes he met Salvador Bacarisse and Julian Bautista, the people who formed the initial core of the Grupo de Madrid together with Remacha.

During his period as a student in Madrid, Remacha also played in the Orquesta de Revista y Zarzuela, which performed at the Teatro Apolo and provided him with a wage of twelve pesetas a day.

1923 was also the year in which Remacha finished his composition studies under Conrado del Campo, and entered and won the Premio de Roma (Rome Prize) with a cantata and a motet for choir and orchestra, and an instrumental fugue.

The grant obtained in the prize contest allowed him to travel to Rome, where he studied under Gian Francesco Malipiero, deepening his knowledge of Monteverdi and Vivaldi.

Bacarisse placed him in contact with Ricardo Urgoiti, who in 1929 had founded the firm Filmofono, a cinema production company that achieved enormous success with films of a commercial bent.

Remacha's work at Filmofono evolved from the mere synchronisation of records (in the silent-film period) to tasks as the genuine manager and technical expert in musical affairs.

He also composed incidental music for four Spanish films produced by Filmofono in the talking-film period: Don Quintin el amargao (Mr Quentin the Sourpuss) (1935).

In a record shop of Urgoiti's company in Avenida Pi y Margall of Madrid Remacha met Rafaela Gonzalez, whom he married on 7 October 1932.

1930 was an important year in Remacha's career as a composer since it marked the presentation of the Grupo de Madrid, formed with Salvador Bacarisse, Julian Bautista, Gustavo Pittaluga, Juan José Mantecón, Rosa García Ascot, and the brothers Rodolfo and Ernesto Halffter.

In 1938, in the midst of the Spanish Civil War, he received his second Premio Nacional de Música for the "String Quartet", composed in 1924 as a required piece under his Italian grant.

Separated from his family, Remacha did not feel up to remaining in the refugee camps that had been hastily set up by the French government, and in the security of his not having held a political office and not having been in the army, he decided to depart for Tudela.

With "Cartel de Fiestas" ("Festival Poster") (1947), a work that won a contest for topical and regionalist themes, he introduced himself in Pamplona, capital of Navarre.

Also in 1963 he composed the cantata "Jesucristo en la Cruz" ("Christ on the Cross"), which earned him the Tormo de Oro Prize of the Cuenca Religious Week, pleasantly surprising the music critics with the concept of this work.

For its part, the Institucion Principe de Viana organised the Remacha Memorial, holding three concerts to promote acquaintance with some of the composer's works.

This attitude aroused the admiration and respect of the most representative Spanish avant-garde composers of the times, a position that Remacha did not find comfortable because of his characteristic modesty and scant selfesteem.

The carelessness and abandon he showed for his scores and the scant importance he attributed to them was also reflected in disillusionment that Remacha felt for composition in the last years of his life.