Cristóbal Halffter (Madrid, Spain; 1930-2021) was, as well as guest conducting with Europe’s leading orchestras since 1970, Associate Composer to the Madrid Symphony Orchestra and a member of the board of the Prince Pierre Foundation of Monaco, a post which he also occupied up to 2009 with the Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung.
A member of the San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts, Madrid, the Swedish Royal Academy, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, and Akademie der Schönen Künste, Munich, he held honorary doctorates from the University of León and the Universidad Complutense de Madrid.
His work as a composer ranged across diverse areas of creativity, and has been published by Universal Edition (Vienna). He has been distinguished with cultural awards in Spain, Germany, France and Monaco, including the Gold Medal of the Goethe Institute and Spain’s Gold Medal of Fine Arts and National Music Prize (this last in 1953 and 2004). In 2015, the Government of Spain awarded him with the Grand Cross of the Civil Order of Alfonso X the Wise.
Speech
Contemporary Music, 2nd edition
For four decades, Cristóbal Halffter, 2009 Frontiers of Knowledge laureate in Contemporary Music, has been one of Spain’s best-known composers, recognized in his own country and internationally. A leading member of the Generation of ’51, aligned with the European musical avant-garde, Halffter was born into an illustrious musical family. His uncles Rodolfo and Ernesto Halffter were both composers, the latter a colleague of Manuel de Falla who completed the Cadiz-born composer’s work ‘Atlántida’ after his death. And his son, Pedro Halffter, has carried on the tradition, combining composition with the direction of two leading Spanish orchestras and the Teatro de la Maestranza in Seville.
His family moved to Germany for the three-year duration of the Spanish Civil War and this country has since figured prominently in his personal and artistic history. With the conflict over and the family resettled in Madrid, he began his musical training with composer Conrado del Campo in the conservatory where he would later serve as Director (1964 to 1966) and Professor of Composition.
The Frontiers jury remarked of Cristóbal Halffter’s works that they “breathe an immense inspiration,” and that “through their coherence and the continuity of their commitment, they have greatly contributed to the idea of a European contemporary music.” A signal achievement, when we think that in the early 1950s music in Spain had been sunk in a period of stagnation since the end of the last great musical wave, led by the Generation of ‘27.
What finally jolted it from its rut was the re-connection to contemporary creation proposed by Halffter and like-minded artists, eager to catch up with the 20th-century musical currents whose influence had so far evaded Spain, including such names as Stravinsky or Béla Bartók. The next task was to explore the movements that had begun to spring up around the twelve-tone technique developed by Schönberg, the new random music and the harmonic revolution. And it was just a short step from there to the lessons of serialism emanating from North America, or the techniques of randomization – the math behind the music. With Halffter, throughout, as a visible and active presence.
After continuing his studies in the United States and Germany, Halffter taught at the University of Navarra from 1970 to 1978, as well as occupying the Chair of Composition for the Contemporary Music Courses in Darmstadt (Germany). Between 1976 and 1978, he was chairman of the Spanish section of the International Contemporary Music Society, and in 1979 was appointed Artistic Director of the Electronic Music Studio at the Heinrich Strobel Foundation in Freiburg (Germany). A disciple of figures such as Stockhausen, Maderna, Ligeti, Boulez or Adorno, the Halffter of these years was a committed artist, fully of his time.
In 1968, he composed the cantata Yes, speak out, yes, a commission from the United Nations to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights. And a more explicit example still comes with his introductory notes for the “Author’s Choice” concert organized in his honor by the Spanish National Orchestra (ONE). Paraphrasing Ortega y Gasset’s words in Writings on Velázquez and Goya that “being a painter is a way of being a man,” Halffter writes: “Being a composer is a way of being a man, considering that condition in its fullest, most transcendental sense and aware of the responsibility that comes with the decision, freely taken, to become a composer.”
Halffter writes: “Being a composer is a way of being a man, considering that condition in its fullest, most transcendental sense and aware of the responsibility that comes with the decision, freely taken, to become a composer.”
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This responsibility is felt by any innovative artist determined to uphold the value of their work against the notion that “what is not popularly known is not worthwhile” – an idea which, according to Halffter, “has sunk in deep, and that is a problem.” He goes on: “All innovations take time to be absorbed. The composer, like the painter, works 24 hours a day and that is a considerable learning experience. The public, who maybe hear one concert every week, learn more slowly, as they have to grapple with new perceptions. So the composer, or artist in general, deserves our respect and recognition as a serious professional committed to the culture and society of which he or she is a part.”
Halffter also reflects on the idea of culture in our times: “Our society tends to confuse culture and spectacle. Culture can be spectacle, but spectacle is often anything but culture.” An argument he returns to when talking about the Frontiers prize: “Many major works expressive of the culture of the turn of the century have been virtually ignored. That is why I am so pleased to be in the company of scientists in these Frontiers of Knowledge awards. And I stress the word knowledgehere, not information. Information is everywhere; it is knowledge we are running short of.”
In 2000, the new Frontiers laureate had the premiere of his opera Don Quijote in Madrid’s Teatro Real. In 2003, the specially commissioned Adagio en forma de rondó was performed at the Salzburg International Festival. And in 2008, his second opera Lázaro had its first outing on the stage of the Kiel theater (Germany). Halffter has also conducted such major formations as the Berlin Philharmonic, the Radio France National Orchestra (Paris), the London Symphony Orchestra and, in Switzerland, the Zurich Tonhalle, the Suisse Romande (Geneva) and the Lucerne Festival orchestras. Principal guest conductor of the Spanish National Orchestra since 1989, he also holds the post of resident composer with the Dresden Philharmonic.
