Santiago Masarnau Fernández

He established the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul, an organization composed of laymen dedicated to serving the poor, in Spain.

At that same time, after the abdication of King Ferdinand VII of Spain and the subsequent outbreak of the Peninsular War, Masarnau senior was appointed the Secretary of the Royal Association of Nobility of Córdoba, in the service of the Count of Miranda, and the father moved with his three children to Andalucia.

When King Ferdinand regained the throne in 1814, the father was appointed a secretary to the Chief Royal Majordomo (Camarero mayor) and the family returned to Madrid.

[1] There the son was able to participate in the musical life of the Escorial, performing on the organ before King Ferdinand (including some of his own compositions) when he was only ten years old.

Following the family’s eviction from the court, Masarnau abandoned his original intentions of a career in engineering, and went to study music in Paris.

He may have been influenced in the decision to leave Spain by political sympathies with the liberal insurgency that sought to depose the king in these years.

While in Paris again from 1837 to 1843,[5] Masarnau became, at Rossini’s recommendation, the music teacher of the daughters of the Infante Prince Francisco de Paula.

The Society had been founded in 1833 by a charismatic 20-year-old lawyer, Frédéric Ozanam (who was beatified by the Catholic Church in 1997), and was conceived as a Christian reaction to Saint-Simonism (which was attractive to many musicians including Ferdinand Hiller and Félicien David).

When Masarnau returned permanently to Spain in 1843 he remained active in music, teaching in his brother's school, and contributing to a number of critical and artistic journals.