José Antonio Calcaño

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José Antonio Calcaño (born March 23, 1900 in Caracas ; † September 11, 1978 ibid) was a Venezuelan composer , music critic and diplomat .

Life

Calcaño took piano lessons as a child and entered the cello class of Casals' student Mercedes Rivas in 1912 . He soon dropped out of medical school to devote himself entirely to music and wrote music-critical columns under the pseudonym Juan Sebastián for the newspapers El Sol and El Heraldo . With Vicente Emilio Sojo and his cousin Miguel Ángel Calcaño he founded the renovación musical movement . In 1928 he was one of the founding members of the Orfeón Lamas and the Orquesta Sinfónica Venezuela , to which he was a cellist. In the following years he also wrote music reviews for the newspapers El Universal and El Nuevo Diario .

In addition, Calcaño pursued a diplomatic career. After working in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1929–1932) he worked at the Venezuelan embassy in Bern and became the Venezuelan ambassador in Dublin in 1936 and in St. Louis in 1937 . In 1939 he became legation secretary in London and in 1940 head of the Foreign Trade Office in the Foreign Office. In the same year he founded the Coral Polifónica , which he headed until 1953. In 1945 he participated as a member of the Venezuelan delegation at the founding assembly of the United Nations in San Francisco.

In 1946 he retired from the diplomatic service. He lived in the USA until 1950, when he returned to Venezuela. There he founded the Conservatorio Teresa Carreño in 1951 , which he directed until 1959, the Coral Creole in 1952 and Los Madrigalistas in 1953 .

From 1954 to 1964 he worked as a professor at the Universidad Central de Venezuela and as a music critic for the newspaper El Nacional . In addition, initiated a series of concerts and the series Por el mundo de la cultura for radio , which ran on various Venezuelan channels until 1978.

Works

  • Madrigal campestre , 1929
  • Canción pagana , 1930
  • Contribucion al estudio de la musica en Venezuela , 1939
  • Miranda en Rusia , ballet, 1945
  • Primera sinfonía , 1946

Fonts

  • 400 años de musica caraqueña
  • La ciudad y su música , Fundarte, Caracas 1980