Josep Soler (composer)
Catalan composer (1935–2022)
Josep Soler i Sardà (25 March 1935 – 9 October 2022) was a Catalonian/Spanish composer, writer, music theorist, and one of the main Catalan members of the Generación del 51.
Life and career
Soler was born in Vilafranca del Penedès, Spain, on 25 March 1935. He studied composition and orchestration with Cristòfor Taltabull, and was also a pupil of René Leibowitz in Paris.
Soler's works include 16 operas, 7 symphonies, 3 piano concertos, 7 String Quartets, 16 Sonatas for piano and an orchestration of Isaac Albéniz's Pepita Jiménez, inter alia. Since 1982, he taught at the Reial Acadèmia Catalana de Belles Arts de Sant Jordi (Royal Catalan Academy of Fine Arts of Saint George) in Barcelona. His students included Benet Casablancas and Alejandro Civilotti.
In 2013, Soler was awarded the Gold Medal of Merit in Fine Arts awarded by the Spanish Ministry of Culture. He refused this honour, stating:
"Aceptar el reconocimiento sería aceptar la autoridad del Gobierno español, y yo no quiero saber nada del ministro Wert ni del gobierno de Rajoy, porque a ellos no les interesa en absoluto ni la cultura ni la educación."
("To acknowledge this recognition is to acknowledge the authority of the Spanish government, and I do not want anything to do with minister [José Ignacio] Wert and the government of [Prime Minister Mariano] Rajoy, because they are not interested at all in either culture or education.")The personal papers of Josep Soler i Sardà are preserved in the Biblioteca de Catalunya.
Soler died on 9 October 2022, at the age of 87.
Bibliography
LEIBOWITZ, René.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Josep Soler (composer)” as catalan composer (1935–2022). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 9, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q3184122. VIAF identifies the subject as 115704453. The Library of Congress control number is n81132278. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1935, 2022, 1982 and 2013.
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This entry incorporates text from “Josep Soler (composer)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.