Taltabull, Cristófor
Taltabull, Cristófor
Taltabull, Cristófor, Catalan composer and pedagogue; b. Barcelona, July 28, 1888; d. there, May 1, 1964. He studied piano with Granados and composition with Pedrell. In 1908 he went to Germany, where he took lessons with Reger. In 1912 he went to Paris, where he was an accompanist to singers, a proofreader for the publisher Durand, and a music copyist; he also composed popular songs for vaudeville and wrote film music. After the outbreak of World War II in 1939, he returned to Barcelona, where he became a teacher of composition. Many important Spanish composers of the younger generation were his pupils. As a composer, he was particularly successful in songs to French and Catalan texts. His style of composition is impressionistic, mainly derived from Debussy; he had a delicate sense of color and rhythm; thematically, most of his music retains Spanish, or Catalan, melorhythmic characteristics.
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire