Carlos Salzedo

Carlos Salzedo (6 April 1885 – 17 August 1961) was a French harpist, pianist, composer and conductor.

Carlos Salzedo was born Charles Moïse Léon Salzedo on April 6, 1885 in Arcachon, France. Salzedo's parents, Isaac Gaston Salzedo and Thérèse Judith Anna Salzedo-Silva, who resided in Bayonne, were vacationing in Arcachon when Mme. Salzedo fell down a flight of stairs, causing the two-month premature birth of Salzedo. Both parents were of noted Sephardic (Iberian Jewish) families and fine musicians, he a singer, she a pianist. Their first child, Marcel, became a prominent violinist, conductor, and composer of light music. During this time, Mme. Salzedo was employed as the summer-court pianist to Queen Mother Maria Christina of Spain in Biarritz. Young Léon-Charles played the piano for Maria Christina at the age of three leading her to dub him "my little Mozart." Salzedo's mother died just two years later when he was five. The family then moved to Bordeaux and a Basque woman, Marthe Tatibouet Bidebérripé, was hired to care for and help raise the children. Salzedo became deeply attached to her, and liked to think of himself as being culturally Basque. He himself attributed this as the source of his favorite meter being five beats in a bar of music, typical of the Basque dance Zortzico. Léon-Charles, having begun playing piano by the age of three, wrote his first composition, a polka called Moustique (Mosquito), which was published when he was just five years old. Though lost, the theme reappeared in the Polka of his Suite of Eight Dances. At six, he entered the St. Cecilia School of Music of Bordeaux, where he won first prize in piano and solfège three years later, after which the family moved to Paris. Léon-Charles entered the Paris Conservatoire at nine years old, where he again won prizes in piano (Descombes) and solfège (Schwartz). He continued his piano studies with Charles de Bériot, son of the renowned violinist and a pupil of Thalberg.

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