[1] He stood out for his multifaceted profile, for being an outstanding judge, a prolific composer exceeding more than one hundred pieces, and also for being the director of the National Conservatory of Music on three occasions.
[2] His parents were Domingo Durán, aide-de-camp of President Gabriel García Moreno, and Emperatriz Cárdenas, his first music teacher, a singer and notable harpist.
Due to the difficult circumstances of academic mussic in Ecuador, the composer was forced to prepare himself largely as an autodidact, since only two years after his birth, the main music institute, the National Conservatory, founded by García Moreno in 1870, had been closed.
During his years as Director of the Conservatory, he organized and conducted the student and faculty symphony orchestra, as well as trained a large number of composers and performers.
The writer Zoila Ugarte de Landívar wrote: The happy bohemian, the musician of the yaravís, had the misfortune of losing the fingers of his right hand.