Adolfo Salazar

Adolfo Salazar Ruiz de Palacios (6 March 1890 - 27 September 1958) was a Spanish music historian, music critic, composer, and diplomat of the first half of the twentieth century. He was the preeminent Spanish musicologist of the Silver Age. Fluent in Spanish, French, and English, he was an intellectual and expert of the artistic and cultural currents of his time, and a brilliant polemicist. He maintained a close connection with other prominent Spanish intellectuals and musicians including José Ortega y Gasset, Jesús Bay y Gay, and Ernesto Halffter. In his writings, he was a defender of the French musical aesthetic of Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy.

He composed over twenty works for orchestra, string quartet, solo piano, voice and piano, chorus, and guitar. While his compositions are significant in the context of the 1920s Spanish musical avant-garde, today his critical writings are deemed of greater importance. He is most known for his insightful commentary and analysis in his eighteen years as music critic (1918-1936) for the Madrid daily El Sol.

Salazar was born in Madrid. He attended Madrid University, first studying history but then switching to music. He was co-director of the Revista Musical Hispano-Americana (1914-1918) with Rogelio Villar. He studied composition with Bartolomé Pérez Casas, and is said to have studied with Maurice Ravel, though little documentary evidence exists. In 1915, along with Manuel de Falla and M. Salvador y Carreras, he founded the Sociedad Nacional de Música, serving as secretary until 1922. In the late 1920s, he turned his attention from composing to devote himself to music criticism. In his columns for El Sol between 1918 and 1936, he both reviews concerts and discusses trends in the Spanish public's reception of classical music. His activities as critic and historian intermingle, though the second became more important over the years and is a consequence of the first. Salazar corresponded with many of the leading intellectuals and composers of his time, including José Ortega y Gasset, as well as members of the Grupo de los Ocho including Jesús Bay y Gay, Ernesto and Rodolfo Halffter, and Salvador Barcarisse. In 1932, he attended the International Congress of Arab Music in Egypt.

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