Roberto Gerhard
Catalan composer and musical scholar and writer (1896–1971)
Robert Gerhard i Ottenwaelder (Catalan pronunciation: [ruˈβɛɾd ʒəˈɾaɾt]; 25 September 1896 – 5 January 1970) was a Spanish and British composer, musical scholar, and writer, generally known outside his native region of Catalonia as Roberto Gerhard.
Early life
Gerhard was born in Valls, near Tarragona, Spain. His father was of German and Swiss ancestry; his mother was from Alsace-Lorraine.
He studied piano with Enrique Granados and composition with scholar-composer Felip Pedrell, teacher of Isaac Albéniz, Granados and Manuel de Falla. Gerhard visited Falla in Granada, but dismissed him as a possible teacher and decided to shut himself away in a Catalan farmhouse to reflect on his professional future and concentrate on his work. Seeking systematicity, he turned his gaze to German avant-garde music and decided to send a long letter to the composer Arnold Schoenberg, enclosing his compositions, on 21 October 1923, begging to be accepted as his pupil.
After the latter's acceptance, Gerhard immediately left for Vienna. He was Schoenberg's only Spanish pupil. Gerhard studied with Schoenberg in Vienna and Berlin between 1923 and 1928, and the teacher-pupil relationship became a lifelong friendship, as is shown in the complete correspondence published between the two composers.
Career
In 1928, Gerhard returned to Barcelona.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Roberto Gerhard” is catalan composer and musical scholar and writer (1896–1971). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Roberto, Gerhard and Catalan, not as a finished interpretation.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q713949. VIAF identifies the subject as 59269598. The Library of Congress control number is n81071366. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1896, 1970, 1923 and 1928.
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This entry incorporates text from “Roberto Gerhard” 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.