Miguel Roig-Francolí


Miguel Ángel Roig-Francolí is a Spanish/American composer, music theorist, and pedagogue. His 1980 Cinco piezas para orquesta, commissioned by Radio Nacional de España and written in a postmodern, neotonal style, won first prize in the National Composition Competition of the Spanish Jeunesses Musicales in 1981 and second prize at the UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers in 1982, and continues to be widely performed in Spain. His later compositions often have spiritual themes and are based on sacred texts and the melodies of Gregorian chant. In 2016 he won the American Prize in Composition for Perseus, for symphonic band. An expert on Renaissance composers Tomás de Santa María, Antonio de Cabezón, and Tomás Luis de Victoria, he has published numerous scholarly articles and monographs and two textbooks. Roig-Francolí is a Distinguished Teaching Professor of Music Theory and Composition at the University of Cincinnati – College-Conservatory of Music.

Life and career

Miguel A. Roig-Francolí was born in Ibiza in 1953. He studied composition privately in Madrid with Miguel Ángel Coria from 1976 to 1981 as well as graduating with a degree in piano from the Conservatorio Profesional de Música de Baleares in Majorca in 1982. He took his Master of Music degree in Composition in 1985 at Indiana University where he studied under the Chilean composer Juan Orrego-Salas. He then received the Título de Profesor Superior de Armonía, Contrapunto, Composición e Instrumentación from the Madrid Royal Conservatory in 1988 and two years later his PhD from Indiana University with his doctoral dissertation "Compositional Theory and Practice in Mid-Sixteenth-Century Castilian Instrumental Music: The Arte de tañer fantasía by Tomás de Santa María and the Music of Antonio de Cabezón". After teaching at Ithaca College, Northern Illinois University, and Eastman School of Music, he became Professor of Music Theory and Composition at the University of Cincinnati – College-Conservatory of Music in 2000. Although the majority of his published articles relate to 16th-century Spanish music and its composers, he has also written on atonal music and on the 20th-century composer, György Ligeti. His first textbook, Harmony in Context, was published by McGraw-Hill in 2003 and is now in its second edition. This was followed in 2006 by Understanding Post-Tonal Music.
Roig-Francolí's career as a composer began in the late 1970s while he was a student of Miguel Ángel Coria. His first work, Espejismos, premiered at the Festival Internacional de Barcelona in 1977. His most famous work, Cinco Piezas para Orquesta, was a commission by Spanish National Radio and composed in 1980. After winning the 1981 National Composition Competition of the Spanish Jeunesses Musicales, it was premiered by the Spanish Radio and Television Symphony Orchestra at Madrid's Teatro Real in 1982, and subsequently won second prize at the UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers. The work, described by musicologist Antoni Pizà as an "absolute pioneer" in introducing the postmodern aesthetic to Spanish music, has since been performed in Spain by the Orquesta Nacional de España, Orquestra Ciutat de Barcelona, Orquesta Sinfónica de Madrid, and Orquestra Simfònica de les Illes Balears. The score has formed the basis for two ballets: La Espera and Five Elements. After 1987, he concentrated primarily on his academic research and teaching but returned to composing in 2003 in what he has described as a personal reaction to the Iraq War: "Following the Iraq war and other events, I returned to composition as a way to engage with the world around me." The works from this second creative period often have spiritual themes and are based on sacred texts and the melodies of Gregorian chant. They include the choral works Dona eis requiem , Antiphon and Psalms for the Victims of Genocide, and Missa pro pace. One of Roig-Francolí's most recent works, Songs of the Infinite, was commissioned by the Foundation for Iberian Music. It premiered at Carnegie Hall on October 24, 2010. A monographic concert dedicated to Roig-Francolí's chamber music took place at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall on Nov. 17, 2013. Other recent works include Three Astral Poems, for orchestra; Sonata for two guitars, composed for and premiered by Duo Melis; and Sinfonía, “De profundis,” for orchestra.

Awards

Textbooks