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Amaury Veray Torregrosa

Amaury Veray Torregrosa (Ah-mah- uh -ree Ver Ay 14 June 1922 - 30 October 1995) was a virtuoso pianist, composer, singer, critic and scholar from the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico. His geniality illuminated the world with one of the most sublime compositions, where Amaury Veray reconciled European forms with an original island flavor. Considered a classic, this masterpiece, “Villancico Yaucano”, is a Christmas carol narrating the travels of a "yaucano" boy (from the municipality of Yauco) who transports us into the Nativity scene. The story continues with the voyage of this humble boy who went to visit baby Jesus when he was born in a manger in Bethlehem. This majestic stamp transmits great emotion as this humble boy enters at the presence of baby Jesus and with great sentiment starts to cry, as he exclaims that everyone there brought him precious gifts, but that he could not bring him a gift because he is poor; but in its place he offers baby Jesus, the love of his heart, that is the most valuable thing that he has.

Early Life and Education

Amaury Veray Torregrosa was born on June 14, 1922 in the small city of Yauco. His parents were the dentist Dr. Francisco Veray Marín and Margarita Torregrosa. He completed his primary studies in his hometown and began his training in piano with Professor Olimpia Morel, daughter of the illustrious composer Juan Morel Campos, from Ponce. Later he continued his studies with Emilio Bacó Pasarell and it is when he created, at the age of 16, his first compositions “Lullaby” and “Funeral Stamp”. During that time, he also dedicated himself to singing. His beginnings as an interpreter go back to the evenings that were held at the Colegio Nuestra Señora del Santísimo Rosario in Yauco, in the “novenas” and in the Christmas “misas de aguinaldo”. He was also a member of the Municipal Band.

When he was 17 years old, he moved to the city of San Juan. Upon his arrival, he soon became acquainted with the concerts offered by the Office of Cultural Activities at the University of Puerto Rico. Months later he was appointed teacher of a music appreciation course for adults at the Rafael M. Labra School in Santurce. Meanwhile he studied at the University of Puerto Rico where he completed his Bachelor of Arts Degree with a specialization in Modern Languages in 1943. With the recommendation of professor Facundo Bueso, the then rector of the University of Puerto Rico, Don Jaime Benítez, granted him a scholarship to continue his studies in music at the New England Conservatory in Boston. But his dream was postponed when he was called up to serve in the United States Army. While in the Armed Forces, Amaury traveled to Panama and Hawaii, where he organized choirs with his fellow soldiers.

After graduating from the United States Armed Forces, he was able to return to the New England Conservatory in 1946, to take courses in music theory and music composition, and in contemporary music. During his years studying at the Conservatory, Amaury Veray met flutist Georges Laurent (who had been in Puerto Rico with maestro Jesús María Sanromá), clarinetist Viktor Polatschek, and Brazilian conductor Eleazar de Carvalho. He likewise had the opportunity to meet and listen to Igor Stravinsky give lectures on the aesthetics of music.

At the Faculty of the Conservatory, Veray was a disciple of Carl Mckinley, professor of composition; of Francis J. Cooke master of form and analysis; Harold Schwalb in charge of the harmony courses; Louis Lautnr, Arnold Schoenberg professor of counterpoint; Ivan Waldbauer, student of Béla Bartok and Zoltán Kodály, music theory teacher.

In 1949 Amaury Veray graduated from the New England Conservatory with honors, obtaining a specialty in Theory and Composition plus a sub-specialty in Contemporary Music.

Career

At the request of his father and some of his friends, Veray returned to Puerto Rico. Backed by a solid education, he worked as a music teacher at the Escuela Superior de Ponce, was a choir director at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Ponce and an employee working as a composer for the Community Education Division attached to the Puerto Rico Department of Public Education.

In that institution he composed music for several of the films produced by the entity: “Pedacito de Tierra” (1952); “El puente” (1954), a film that won an award at the Venice Festival; “Doña Julia” (1955), “El de los cuatro cabos blancos” (1957); and another was “El milagro de la montaña”, based on a story by the Puerto Rican famous writer René Marqués. Also, for more than a decade Veray collaborated as a composer in various theatrical and ballet performances.

He founded the National Archives of Music and simultaneously organized concerts and conferences on Puerto Rican music and its socio-historical significance. It should be noted that his efforts on the importance of bringing and teaching music to the poorest communities of the Island, were inserted into the social reform program promoted by the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.

The Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico was another of the educational centers where Veray worked. The musician belonged to the first faculty of the Conservatory. There he taught music history, composition and all theoretical subjects. He was also the first president of the Music section of the Puerto Rican Athenaeum from 1953 to 1956.

His vast output earned him recognition in 1956 from renowned cellist Pablo Casals, who signed him a government scholarship by the Senate of Puerto Rico, so that he could study in Italy at the National Academy of Santa Cecilia in Rome and continue advanced studies in composition with maestro Ildebrando Pizzetti, an Italian composer who specialized in incidental music for theater with dark neoclassical themes. Amaury Veray was the first Caribbean student to study at this Conservatory.

Thanks to his dedication and musical culture, Amaury became one of the honorary students of the aforementioned Italian school. That distinction allowed him to be the secretary of maestro Ildebrando Pizzetti. And under this responsibility, the Puerto Rican accompanied the composer to different cities in Europe where he presented his works.

In those years Italy enjoyed an effervescent cultural life. In this stimulating environment, Amaury had the opportunity to meet Gian Francesco Malipiero, Paul Hindermith and Mario Castelnuovo Tedesco, who was Pizzetti's first student.

Pizzetti's musical style strongly influenced the mystical and sophisticated character of his later work. The musicologist Edgardo Díaz Díaz mentions, in a portrait dedicated to Amaury Veray, that his years in Italy place him in a unique position. And within this scope, Amaury Veray has composed pieces for piano in genres such as the funeral print, the pastoral, the lullaby and the waltz. He also cultivated other genres such as the prelude, the fugue and the madrigal. The specialist Edgardo Díaz also points out that for the composition of his music, Amaury Veray used European structures to give his melodies a particular harmonic color. He further mentioned that his music evokes the Italian cantinela, the Spanish Renaissance, and the use of the melodic minor scale. The hectatonic scale attributed to Scriabin and Debussy is recurrent in several of his songs; and then, Veray resorts to pre-Renaissance modes.

You can clearly see Pizzetti’s influence in Veray's compositions when you listen to “Fantasia para orquesta” (1965) and “De Profundis” (1970), where he highlights the combination of the patriotic with the mysterious, and the painful. A faithful devotee of "tropical Catholicism", as he maintained, his religious repertoire ranges from Christmas carols and madrigals, to his "Seraphic Ode to Saint Francis of Assisi" (1972), a sonorous portrait of the composer's and his people's existential anguish. In “A portrait of Julliet”, Veray creates a sublime cantata based on William Shakespeare’s most magnificent masterpiece “Romeo and Juliet”. While he reveals the deep loneliness in the metaphor of sound itself with “El Jolgorio en la Jacana” (1971) for piano, percussion and aerophones, and “Dípticos” (1972), an exquisite work for seventeen percussion instruments, two solo voices, and a piano. His greatest aspiration was to compose opera, and we know that he had already finished his opera “La Danza de Juan Aquilino” at the time of his death.

Humanitarian

As a human being, Amaury has been described as a completely selfless person, a humanist per excellence. His students can attest to this claim, as he often helped them find housing, books, and introduced them to key people. But he always guided them towards self-discipline and character development, without imposing authoritarian attitudes.

While working as a professor at the Conservatory, he gave graduates the opportunity to work in their field of study. Likewise, he was one of those who fought to end discrimination against Puerto Ricans, by hiring displaced Puerto Rican musicians.

However, this did not stop him from experiencing marginalization firsthand, as people in the high-spheres of the Island, discriminated, unrecognized his merits and rarely programmed his music in symphony orchestra concerts, except for the "Villancico Yaucano" and from time to time “El Niño de Aguadilla”.

In 2022, it was the 71th anniversary of Amaury Veray composing the "Villancico Yaucano". It is said by his close friend Flavia Lugo de Marichal (mother of Tere Marichal), that the musician created this masterpiece in just an hour and a half in his home in Yauco. Then he went down to his friend’s house, she was the young soprano María Amelia Lugo de Vivaldi, and she was surprised when he told her, “please come with me to rehearse this, as we are going to be presenting it this midnight at la Misa de Gallo on Christmas Eve” in Iglesia Nuestra Señora del Rosario. And the rest is history. This valuable composition was included in the Christmas repertoire of the Vienna Boys' Choir and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.

He died in Río Piedras on October 30, 1995. His remains are in the Municipal Cemetery of Yauco. In honor of Amaury Veray Torregrosa and the great contributions that he made to the music field, the Conservatory of Music in Puerto Rico named its library in 1995, Biblioteca Amaury Veray. And a year and two months after Maestro Veray’s death, this piece would be performed by none other than the acclaimed Spanish tenor, Plácido Domingo, and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra in Austria.

Honors and Awards

• Pablo Casals Scholarship (1956)
• Biblioteca Amaury Veray (1995)

Musical Works

Film

• ."Pedacito de Tierra" (1952)
• “El puente” (1954): Award at the Venice Festival
• “Doña Julia” (1955)
• "Elisa Tavárez" (1956)
• “El de los cuatro cabos blancos” (1957)
• “El milagro de la montaña”

Ensembles and Orchestra

• "Canción de Cuna" (1938)
• "Estampa Fúnebre (1938)
• "Villancico Yaucano" (1951)
• "El Niño de Aguadilla" (1954)
• La Encantada" (1957): for ballet based on Manuel Jiménez's plena
• “Cuando las mujeres” (1957): for ballet
• “Sonata para violín y piano” (1959)
• “Fantasia para orquesta” (1965)
• "Seraphic Ode to Saint Francis of Assisi" (1972)

Ballet

• “La carreta”: incidental music for theatre piece composed by René Marquéz
• “Farsa del amor compradito”: incidental music for theatre piece composed by Luis Rafael Sánchez

Opera

• "La Danza de Juan Aquilino" (1995)

Discography

• “El jolgorio en la jacana” (1971): chamber music
• "Amaury Veray: Música Festiva en Tres Tiempos"
• “De Profundis” (1970)
• "Dípticos” (1972): seventeen percussion instruments, two solo voices, and a piano
• “A Portrait of Juliet” (1982): cantata for soprano and chamber ensemble
• "Merry Christmas from Vienna": Villancico Yaucano / Various artists: Plácido Domingo (1997)

Publications

Articles

• "Tavárez and the elastic style" (1954)
• “La obra pianística” (1960)
• “La misión pedagógica de José Enrique Pedreira" (1960)
• “Presentación de José Ignacio Quintón” (1960)
• “Monsita Ferrer” (1962)
• “Sonatina puertorriqueña para canto” (1962)
• “Esperanza” (1962)
• "Fernando Callejo Ferrer" (1962)

Book

• "Villancico Yaucano" (2006): children's book with illustrations by Iván Camilli

References

1. Diaz Diaz, Edgardo."Amaury Veray: soledad y redención en la metáfora del sonido [Amaury Veray: a sonic metaphor of solitude and redemption," in Latin American Music Review. 17/1, Spring/Summer 1996, pp. 93-95.
2. “Amaury Veray.” Fundación Nacional Para La Cultura Popular, prpop.org/biografias/amaury-veray/.
3. “La Música nos Cuenta Amaury Veray: El Villancico Yaucano.” Facebook/Tere Marichal, www.facebook.com/tmarichal/posts/609357823651345/?vh=e&extid=MSG-UNK-UNK-UNK-COM_GK0T-GK1C. Accessed 12 May 2023.
4. “Placido Domingo - Villancico Yaucano.” Youtube, www.youtube.com/watch?v=y64NWi7rRy8. Accessed 12 May 2023.
5. "Merry Christmas from Vienna: Villancico Yaucano / Various Artists: Plácido Domingo, Ying Huang, Michael Bolton". Apple.
6. Veray Torregrosa, Amaury (June 30, 2006). Villancico Yaucano (in Spanish). Río Piedras, Puerto Rico: La Editorial Universidad de Puerto Rico. ISBN 13: 978-0847725069.

Further Reading

• “Choral Music in Puerto Rico: An Overview - the IFCM Magazine.” Icb.ifcm.net, icb.ifcm.net/ru_RU/choral-music-puerto-rico-overview/?print=print. Accessed 12 May 2023.
• “Exhibición Centenarios.” Archivo Virtual Del Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, www.archivoicp.com/exhibicioncentenarios.
• Blosser, Amy, and José Rivera. “Choral Music of Puerto Rico: Mid-Nineteenth Century to the Present.” CHORAL JOURNAL, vol. 55, p. 51, acda-publications.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/choral_journals/RiveraSep14.pdf. Accessed 12 May 2023.