Pedro Vilarroig
Encyclopedia
Pedro Vilarroig is a Spanish composer and a professor of physics
Physics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...

 and cosmology
Cosmology
Cosmology is the discipline that deals with the nature of the Universe as a whole. Cosmologists seek to understand the origin, evolution, structure, and ultimate fate of the Universe at large, as well as the natural laws that keep it in order...

 at the Universidad Politécnica of Madrid
Technical University of Madrid
The Technical University of Madrid or sometimes called Polytechnic University of Madrid is a Spanish University, located in Madrid. It was founded in 1971 as the result of merging different Technical Schools of Engineering and Architecture, originated mainly in the 18th century...

. He is a best known for his compositions, and is a proponent of neotonalism
Neotonalism
Neotonalism is a manner of musical composition which spans all styles, from early in musical history to the present day. It uses a wide palette of possibilities, sometimes incorporating atonality and tonality in the same score....

, having founded and led the Asociación Española de Compositores Neotonales (Spanish Association of Neotonal Composers).

Biography

Vilarroig was born in Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...

 in 1954. His mother was a violinist and his father a painter. As a child, he often used to paint while listening to music. By this means, he heard a great deal of music by the great masters of classicism, who noticeably influenced him. While going for long walks, he would often hear new music in his head. Vilarroig graduated with a doctorate in Mining Engineer, and entered the Real Conservatorio Superior de Música of Madrid in 1973 when he was 19 years old (most of the Conservatory's students enter as young children).

When Vilarroig had finished his studies, he joined the Laboratorio de Interpretación Musical (Music Performance Lab) LIM for two years acting as a collaborator, performer and composer in electroacoustics.

Founder of the Asociación Musical Verda Stelo, he conducted a choir and a chamber orchestra for seven years. He read choral studies with the Czech professor Petr Fiala, participated in a composition workshop conducted by Carmelo Bernaola, conducted choirs in courses organized by the Federación Coral of Madrid, and wrote incidental music for courses led by Eduardo Armenteros and José Miguel Martínez at the SGAE in Madrid.

He has composed chamber and symphonic music, soundtracks for shorts, and has had other commissions for soundtracks, among them an audiovisual for the Spanish Foreign Office and two for the Natural Sciences National Museum
Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales
The Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales is the National Museum of Natural History of Spain. It is situated in the center of Madrid, by the Paseo de la Castellana. It is managed by the Spanish National Research Council....

 of Madrid. Though he has composed numerous works for electroacoustics, his style is clearly neotonal
Neotonalism
Neotonalism is a manner of musical composition which spans all styles, from early in musical history to the present day. It uses a wide palette of possibilities, sometimes incorporating atonality and tonality in the same score....

 with many influences, including Mahler
Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler was a late-Romantic Austrian composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. He was born in the village of Kalischt, Bohemia, in what was then Austria-Hungary, now Kaliště in the Czech Republic...

, Prokofiev
Sergei Prokofiev
Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor who mastered numerous musical genres and is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century...

, Shostakovich and Sibelius
Jean Sibelius
Jean Sibelius was a Finnish composer of the later Romantic period whose music played an important role in the formation of the Finnish national identity. His mastery of the orchestra has been described as "prodigious."...

.

He is founder and president of the Asociación Española de Compositores Neotonales and he was the president of the Federación Coral de Madrid from 1999 to 2008. He has also taught Physics and Cosmology at the Universidad Politécnica of Madrid
Technical University of Madrid
The Technical University of Madrid or sometimes called Polytechnic University of Madrid is a Spanish University, located in Madrid. It was founded in 1971 as the result of merging different Technical Schools of Engineering and Architecture, originated mainly in the 18th century...

 since 1980.

Composers' early works often consist of chamber pieces whereas orchestral works are composed later. This is the case of Vilarroig who made some pieces for piano as well as duos, but he soon started his symphonic works, managing to compose seven symphonies and a concerto for piano and orchestra between 1975 and 1990. Nevertheless the premiere of his second symphony did not take place until 2009 when it was performed by the Heredia
Heredia, Costa Rica
Heredia is a city located in the Heredia province of Costa Rica and is the capital of that province. It is currently undergoing a rapid process of industrialization and is located 10 kilometers north of the country's capital, San José....

 Symphony Orchestra (Costa Rica
Costa Rica
Costa Rica , officially the Republic of Costa Rica is a multilingual, multiethnic and multicultural country in Central America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, Panama to the southeast, the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Caribbean Sea to the east....

) conducted by Eddie Mora. The critic Andres Saenz commented that the work "was finished when the composer was 22 years old. The symphony is composed of four movements and deploys a fully tonal harmonic language with some influences from composers as Mahler, Sibelius and Shostakovich, but mainly he has a look at the late post-Romantic period (end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th). In this decade (1970), when both the academy and the avant garde loathed the tonality
Tonality
Tonality is a system of music in which specific hierarchical pitch relationships are based on a key "center", or tonic. The term tonalité originated with Alexandre-Étienne Choron and was borrowed by François-Joseph Fétis in 1840...

, the young Vilarroig gathered up his courage giving the cold shoulder to atonality
Atonality
Atonality in its broadest sense describes music that lacks a tonal center, or key. Atonality in this sense usually describes compositions written from about 1908 to the present day where a hierarchy of pitches focusing on a single, central tone is not used, and the notes of the chromatic scale...

, represented by serialism
Serialism
In music, serialism is a method or technique of composition that uses a series of values to manipulate different musical elements. Serialism began primarily with Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, though his contemporaries were also working to establish serialism as one example of...

 and dodecaphonism. That way, the musical flow unfolds a view supported by a wide thematic body-language in a heroic and passionate spirit that states an underlying metaphor of fight and overcoming with an optimistic end.". Recordings of his third and eight symphonies took place in Moscow (2008) performed by the State Radio and Television Symphony Orchestra of Russia (conducted by Victor Ivanov), and his Concerto for piano and Orchestra in Prague was recorded by the pianist Luis Fernando Perez in 2006 and premiered in Madrid in November 2008. Later works, such as his Concerto for Saxophone and Orchestra, were performed in the first decade of the 21st century (Rivas, performed by Joaquín Franco).

Style

Pedro Vilarroig has a style that merges several tendencies. He does not repudiate tonality
Tonality
Tonality is a system of music in which specific hierarchical pitch relationships are based on a key "center", or tonic. The term tonalité originated with Alexandre-Étienne Choron and was borrowed by François-Joseph Fétis in 1840...

, atonality
Atonality
Atonality in its broadest sense describes music that lacks a tonal center, or key. Atonality in this sense usually describes compositions written from about 1908 to the present day where a hierarchy of pitches focusing on a single, central tone is not used, and the notes of the chromatic scale...

, modality
Musical mode
In the theory of Western music since the ninth century, mode generally refers to a type of scale. This usage, still the most common in recent years, reflects a tradition dating to the middle ages, itself inspired by the theory of ancient Greek music.The word encompasses several additional...

 nor fusions with other modern music such as jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

, new age, film music and electroacoustics
Electroacoustic music
Electroacoustic music originated in Western art music during its modern era following the incorporation of electric sound production into compositional practice. The initial developments in electroacoustic music composition during the mid-20th century are associated with the activities of composers...

. It is difficult to label him as neo-romantic or neo-classical since his works can differ radically from each other. One commentator described his musical style as one of "genre mixing", while reviewer Andrés Ruiz Tarazona notes that his musical style follows an "eclectical concept", with "variegated aesthetics, almost always inside the tonal area". There are people who express the view that this can lead to an impersonal method of composition, but it is necessary to listen to a substantial number of works to appreciate that there is a real personality beyond this mixture. A good example for comparison could be Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg
Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...

, who directs movies in different genres such as science fiction (ET
ET
- Film and television:*E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, a 1982 film*Entertainment Tonight, a daily television entertainment news show-Gaming:*E.T...

, Jurassic Park
Jurassic Park (film)
Jurassic Park is a 1993 American science fiction adventure film directed by Steven Spielberg. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Michael Crichton. It stars Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough, Martin Ferrero, and Bob Peck...

), history (Schindler’s List) and drama (The Color Purple
The Color Purple
The Color Purple is an acclaimed 1982 epistolary novel by American author Alice Walker. It received the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction...

). In all these films a strong Spielberg’s personality can be appreciated.

Vilarroig is very interested in his own spiritual development and his search for answers is displayed in such works as his symphony nº 3. This symphony has a dark tone that contrasts with the subsequent ones. In some sense his music is a narrative of his own life. Most of the people that listen to his music agree with the idea that it sounds descriptive and near to film music.

He has also made an audiovisual presentation called "Cosmological suite". About it, we can say that, basically conceived from the musical point of view, Vilarroig’s audio-visual showed dramatic pictures about some aspects of the Universe for 49 minutes.

Records

  • Three symphonies for orchestra published in audio tape.
  • Coauthor of the collection «Happy Baby» in CD for babies, with adaptations of classical pieces, as well as his own works with the general title Variations about six child songs.
  • CD titled "Venite Adoremus" by the choir Matritum Cantat with the carol Camino de Belén va una estrella.
  • Anniversary of the creation of the choir Villa de las Rozas with the work Wo leia sawola ni.
  • CD titled "Ave María" by the choir Surá of Costa Rica with his Ave María.
  • CD titled "Concerto for Piano and Orchestra" with the Praga Symphony Orchestra with the works:
    • String Quartet
    • Sonata for Alto Saxophone and Piano
    • Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, Luis Fernando Perez, pianist
  • CD together with the Russian composer Andrei Petrov
    Andrei Petrov
    Andrey Pavlovich Petrov was a Russian and Soviet composer. Andrey Petrov is known for his music for films such as I Step Through Moscow, Beware of the Car, and Office Romance.-Life:...

     and Eddie Mora (from Costa Rica) with his Symphony nº 3 "Philosophical" recorded in Moscow with the State Radio and Television Symphony Orchestra. Both are under the record label Verso.

Appraisal, press releases and radio

  • University radio (Costa Rica)
  • Aldeas infantiles review
  • Valladolid daily
  • Las Rozas
  • Tribuna review
  • Press release of Wake up & dream
  • Soria Herald
  • El Pais
  • ABC
  • Toro
  • Scherzo review
  • Radio Universidad Clasica, (Costa Rica) with the full broadcasting of his String Quartet nº 1 and his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra
  • Voice of Russia (interview)
  • Radio Clásica
  • Broadcasting in Radio Clásica of his whole work Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (the same day).
  • Tonality comes back
  • Cadena Ser (Guadalajara)
  • COPE
  • Radio Clásica
  • Mas espectáculo (web site)
  • Cadena Ser (Jaén)

Courses and lectures

  • Computer Generated Sound and Music Fractals (electroacoustics) and Consciousness Geometry at the Civil Engineer Association.
  • Introduction of the software Ondaedit, for the generation of arbitrary shaped sound, at the Contemporary Music Spreading Center (CDMC). This software was created by himself.
  • Application of Astronomical data for the Musical Composition, at the CDMC also.
  • He took part in the Film Music Workshop carried out at the SGAE facilities with the introduction of the software TCFilm, also developed by himself and used for image and score synchronization in a film.

Books

  • 1. Cosmology:
    • Title: Principles of Cosmology and Astrophysics. Applications of the General Theory of Relativity (Spanish language), ISBN 84-95063-35-2
  • 2. Physics of sound:
    • 1. Title: Fourier Theory from its applications' point of view (Spanish language), ISBN 84-921166-2-5.
    • 2. Title: Physical harmony. The scientific basis of music (Spanish language), ISBN 978-84-692-4546-0.

Commissioned and compulsory Works

  • I Festival Coral de Las Rozas. Compulsory work: Wo leia sawola ni.
  • XIV Certamen de Canción Castellana Villa de Griñón. Compulsory work: Campos de Castilla (2005).
  • II Competition Rivas en Canto. Compulsory works: Si me hallaras vacío, based on a poem by the poet José Luis Morante (2007),
  • Course about chamber music. More compulsory works have been Sonata for Strings and his String Quartet in the Chamber Music Course organized by Angel del Palacio, regular conductor of the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos orchestra, that took place in Toro in August, 2006. Compulsory work: Sonata for Strings and String Quartet. (references: King Juan Carlos University,)
  • Matritum Choral meeting. Compulsory work: Ave María.
  • The Sonata for Piano and alto Saxophone is included and recommended by the Real Conservatorio Superior de Música of Madrid in the repertoire for saxophone.
  • Two works for boy voices, The Garden and Bells of Madrid ordered by Félix Redondo, conductor of the Children Choir of the Comunidad de Madrid.
  • Two sacramental works: In Paradisum and Dies Irae requested by the Cantiere Vocale Utrecht Choir.
  • Symphony poem Mercury, requested because of the Almadén mines anniversary.

1983

First premiere with the LIM for the work Ondas 1 (Waves I), for audio tape and three synthesizers.

1991

He participated in the theatre and music show «Hydros», that took place in Segovia, with several snippets of his composition for electroacoustics 1980S26 The Saturn’s New Satellite.

1992

Zodiac Suite performed by the pianist Javier R. Van-Baumbergen in 1992 at the Mining School of Madrid.

1994

  • his work Lux Æterna for choir and brass ensemble was premiered in the concert of the First Choir Conducting Course by the Grup Reial de Metall conducted by Francisco Serra.
  • First cantata for choir and orchestra La Profil´de viaj spuroj in Esperanto
    Esperanto
    is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto , the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887...

     language, that was performed for the first time by the choir Verda Stelo and the Valencia Symphony Orchestra at the Palau de la Música of this town.

1995

Esferas (Spheres), for string quartet and electroacoustics, at the Auditorio del Centro de Arte Reina Sofía.

2000

A piano and saxophone sonata was performed by Joaquín Franco and Blanca Calvo, both of them teachers at the Conservatory of Madrid. From this event, and ordered by the saxophone professor, Joaquín Franco, he composed a concerto for saxophone and orchestra.

2004

  • A sonatina for violin and piano ordered by the duo Blanca Calvo (piano) and Joan Espina (Second violins Principal of the National Orchestra of Spain).
  • Premiere at the cinema hall of Hervás (Cáceres) with the work Cosmological Suite, an audiovisual presentation by means of computer generated animation, also introduced in the new technologies festival Maquinarte at the Auditorium of Cáceres, Alcobendas, Museo de las Ciencias de Castilla La Mancha (Cuenca) and Centro Cultural Gaya Nuño (Soria).

2005

  • The choral meeting Matritum Cantat, organized by the city council of Madrid, took place. There, the participating choirs sang his Ave Maria for mixed choir as the compulsory work.
  • 25th Anniversary of the creation of the Laboratorio Oficial José María de Madariaga. Closing concert with his Saxophone Quartet performed by the Joaquín Franco Quartet.

2006

  • He organized a concert in the chamber hall of the Auditorio Nacional. In this concert his Wind Quintet was performed among works of several Spanish composers. The event was a great success.
  • Two concerts with the String Quartet performed by the group «Cuarteto Neotonal» (Centro cultural Nicolás Salmerón and Junta de Distrito Centro).
  • The Sonata for alto saxophone and piano was also performed in October 2006 at the Instituto Cervantes of New York by Joaquín Franco and Jesús María Gómez.

2007

  • Soundtrack of the show Más Abajo del Aire, a theatre work with the same name by Sergio Masís. It took place on May, 2007, at the Universidad Nacional of Costa Rica.
  • Premiere of Paisajes (Landscapes) (flute and guitar version) by the guitar player Claudio Ferrer and the flautist Helena Ramos at the Conservatorio Teresa Berganza of Madrid
  • Electroacoustics concert in the auditorium of the Reina Sofía center with the works “Black hole” y “Supernova” from the Cosmological Suite, both broadcasted by Radio Clásica.
  • Intervenes in the Chamber Orchestra Conducting Course with his work “Interlude” (Toro, Spain).
  • Performance of his string quartet nº 1 in two concerts in the Classicals in Summer cycle of the Comunidad de Madrid.
  • Premiere of his work Variations about the gloss by Alonso de Mudarra, performed by the chamber ensemble “Arpista Ludovico”, with Mª Rosa Calvo Manzano, at the Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas.
  • Premiere of his First Sonata for Piano at the General Studies School of the San José Faculty of Arts, Lincoln School and Music School Auditorium of Turrialba (Costa Rica).
  • Premiere of the work Panegiricum Cupro, a request for the VII Science Week in Madrid. Assembly-room of the Mining School.
  • Premiere of the work Bells of Madrid. Introduction of the disk by the Madrid Community Children Choir, accompanied by performers from the Madrid Community Orchestra and broadcasted by Telemadrid.

2008

  • Premiere of his Concerto for saxophone and orchestra at the Pilar Bardem auditorium of Rivas, performed by the Neotonarte Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Antonio Palmer and Joaquín Franco as a soloist.
  • Once more Panegiricum Cupro was performed at the mining congress celebrated in Peñarroya-Pueblo Nuevo.
  • Performance of The Odyssey oberture at the National Auditorium of Music by the Juan Carlos King University Symphony Orchestra conducted by Angel del Palacio.
  • Premiere of the work Two Christmas Motetes at the Federación Coral de Madrid closing concert of the XXI Choral Music Programme by the Juan Carlos King University Symphony Orchestra and Matritum Cantat and Comillas University choirs, conducted by Javier Blanco.
  • Recording of 3th and 8th symphonies by the State Radio and Television Symphony Orchestra of Russia (Moscow).
  • Performance of pieces from the cantata “Profil’ de viaj Spuroj” by the Arequipa Symphony Orchestra (Perú).
  • Premiere of the two works Dies Irae and In Paradisum in the Pieterskerk in Utrecht. The second performance took place in the Achelse Kluis in Valkenswaard (Netherland). Both concerts were performed by the professional chamber choir Cantiere Vocale Utrecht conducted by Wilko Brouwers.
  • Premiere of his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in Madrid, Monumental Theatre with the Neotonarte Symphony Orchestra conducted by Antonio Palmer and Luis Fernando Pérez as soloist.
  • Concert at the El Pardo Royal Chapel with his works The Odyssey (oberture) and Two Motetes or Christmas. King Juan Carlos University Symphony Orchestra and Matritum Cantat choir. Conductors Angel del Palacio and Javier Blanco.
  • Broadcasting of his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra on Spanish Television, Conciertos de la 2.
  • Concert at the Basílica de Atocha with his works: Ave María and Obertura and Interludio.

2009

  • Screening of the Cosmological Suite in Córdoba and in Madrid at the program of Prem Rawat Foundation “Peace is possible”.
  • Premiere of the last piece from the child Opera: Tierra de Todos, (Earth for everybody) National Auditorium, symphony hall, by the King Juan Carlos University Symphony Orchestra.
  • Premiere of the work Añoranzas (Yearnings) for alto saxophone and piano, Ateneo of Madrid, performed by Jesús María Gómez and Joaquín Franco.
  • Broadcasting of his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra on Spanish Television, Conciertos de la 2. (Repetition)

List of works

align="center" style="background:#ffdead;"| CATALOGUE
Work Symphony orchestra
Symphony nº 4 "Cosmos" Symphony orchestra and choir
Symphony nº 5 "Rebirth" Symphony orchestra
Symphony nº 7 "Storm" Symphony orchestra and choir
Symphony nº 8 Symphony orchestra
Symphony nº 9 "Genesis" Symphony orchestra choir and soloists
Concerto for piano and orchestra Symphony orchestra and soloist
Concerto for saxophone and orchestra Symphony orchestra and soloist
Concerto for violín and orchestra Symphony orchestra and soloist
Suite "Ages of Music" Symphony orchestra
Symphony-Poem “The Odyssey” Symphony orchestra, choir and a soloist
Symphony-Poem “Mercury” Symphony orchestra
Dies irae Symphony orchestra
In paradisum Symphony orchestra and choir
La profil´de viaj spuroj Cantata Choir, soloists and orchestra
Earth for everybody (Child Opera) Symphony orchestra, soloists and Children's Choir
Two motetes for choir and orchestra:
  • O Magnum Mysterium
  • Hodie Christus Natus Est
  • Choir and orchestra
    Work for audio tape and three synthesizers Electroacoustics
    Esferas (Spheres) String quartet and audio tape
    Symphony nº 6 Electroacoustics
    Two suites for electroacoustics:
  • 1980S26, The Saturn's New Satellite
  • Cosmological Suite
  • Electroacoustics
    Concerto for sound card Electroacoustics
    Several pieces for electronics Electroacoustics
    Variations for six child songs Electroacoustics
    Red planet Electroacoustics

    External links

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