Tomás Marco - Symphonies Nos.4 & 5 (1991)

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Tomás Marco - Symphonies Nos.4 & 5 (1991)

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Tomás Marco - Symphonies Nos.4 & 5 (1991)
Classical | EAC: FLAC+Cue+Log | 1 Cd, Covers | 234 Mb
Label: col legno - Date: 1991

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Tomás Marco - Symphonies Nos.4 & 5 (1991)

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Tomás Marco Aragón (born 12 September 1942 in Madrid) is a Spanish composer and writer on music.

Marco studied violin and composition in Madrid while at the same time pursuing the study of law (he received his licenciate in law in 1963). He turned to composition in 1958, and in 1962 began attending the Darmstädter Internationale Ferienkurse, where he furthered his studies with Bruno Maderna, Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, György Ligeti, Gottfried Michael Koenig, and Theodor W. Adorno. In 1967 he participated in Stockhausen’s collective composition project Ensemble at Darmstadt.

His compositional style is rooted in the music of the Darmstadt School. For example, Transformación (1974) strongly recalls Ligeti’s Lux aeterna (1966)—both are composed for 16 solo voices—as well as the harmonic overtone-singing of Stockhausen’s Stimmung (1968). In 1965 he began a brief association with the neo-Dada composers’ group Zaj, founded the previous year by Walter Marchetti, Juan Hidalgo, and Ramón Barce (Haines 1967). He helped to found the Studio Nueva Generación in 1967 (Medina 2001), by which time some of his compositions were beginning to include references to historical styles and quotations from earlier composers—for example, Angelus novus (1971) refers to Gustav Mahler, the Cello Concerto (1976) is based on themes by Manuel de Falla as well as the Cant dels ocells by Pablo Casals, and his Fourth and Fifth Symphonies (1987 and 1989, respectively) both use a quotation from Richard Strauss's Also sprach Zarathustra (Soler 1994)—and for this reason his name is sometimes connected with the German New Simplicity composers (Medina 2001). Around 1970 he began to employ traditional forms such as the symphony, sonata, and, especially, the concerto. His return to nationalism involves amongst other things a number of important works for the guitar, including three concertos (Marco 1995).

In addition to the effect of his prodigious compositional output, he has had a strong influence on Spanish musical life through his work as a critic, broadcaster, writer, editor, educator, and administrator. After five years working as a music critic for various newspapers and magazines, in 1967 he founded, together with Ramón Barce, the magazine Sonda, dedicated to the subject of contemporary music. For eleven years he worked in the music division of the Radio Nacional de España, and for three years was professor of music history at the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED) and professor of composition at the Conservatorio Real in Madrid. He has served as technical director of the Spanish National Orchestra (1981–85) and the Center for the Promotion of Contemporary Music (1985–95), and founded the Alicante International Contemporary Music Festival which he directed for eleven seasons. In 1996 he became Director General of the Instituto Nacional de las Artes Escenicas y la Música (National Institute for Music and the Performing Arts), a post he held until 1999.

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Tomás Marco - Symphonies Nos.4 & 5 (1991)

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