Guillermo Uribe Holguín

Guillermo Uribe Holguín (Bogotá, 1880 – Bogotá, 1971) was the most influential Colombian composer of his generation and a central figure in the country's musical life during the first half of the twentieth century. Born and died in the Colombian capital, his output extends across some 120 opus numbers, testifying to sustained production over several decades.

His training began with the violin, first with Ricardo Figueroa at the Academia de Música de Bogotá, an institution later renamed the Conservatorio Nacional, and then with Narciso Garay. Between 1903 and 1904 he travelled to New York and Mexico City. In 1905 he was appointed professor of violin and solfège at the Academia de Bogotá, where he also founded an orchestra. In 1907 he received a government scholarship to study with d'Indy at the Schola Cantorum in Paris and, after completing his studies in Brussels, returned to Bogotá in 1910, the year he took charge of the Conservatorio Nacional, a post he held until 1935. He made a further visit to Paris in 1919.

In terms of his idiom, his music combines the lingering late Romanticism in which he was trained with personal contact with Falla and Joaquín Turina and an admiration for Debussy. He cultivated above all orchestral, chamber and piano music. His piano work Trozos en el sentimiento popular, which includes pieces in the style of the pasillo, bambuco and joropo, illustrates his interest in Colombian folk genres.

Among his principal titles are Symphony No. 1, Op. 11, the Symphony “Del terruño”, Op. 15, the Requiem, Op. 17, and Symphony No. 11, Op. 117. He also wrote concertos for violin and for piano, the Sinfonieta campesina and the ballet Bochica. As a writer he left a Curso de armonía and his autobiography Vida de un músico colombiano.

His legacy lies in having shaped a Colombian symphonic and chamber tradition out of national materials, and in his teaching and institutional work, which marked the training of several generations of the country's musicians.