Today’s date in 1922 marks the birthday of Héctor Campos Parsi, one of Puerto Rico’s finest composers.

Campos Parsi originally planned to become a doctor, but after a meeting with the Mexican composer Carlos Chávez, ended up studying music at the New England Conservatory in 1949 and 1950 with the likes of Aaron Copland, Olivier Messiaen and Serge Koussevitzky, and between 1950 and 1954 with Paul Hindemith at Yale and with Nadia Boulanger in Paris.

Returning to Puerto Rico, Campos Parsi pursued a dual career: as a writer, he contributed short stories, essays, poems to Puerto Rican magazines, and wrote music reviews and articles for island newspapers. As a composer, he wrote instrumental and vocal works for chamber, orchestral, and choral ensemble. Two of his best-known works are Divertimento del Sur, written for string orchestra with solo flute and clarinet, and a piano sonata dedicated to Puerto Rican pianist Jesús María Sanromá.

As a musicologist, Campos Parsi wrote entries for music encyclopedias and served as the director of the IberoAmerican Center of Musical Documentation and as composer-in-residence at the University of Puerto Rico at Cayey, where died in 1998 at 75.

Héctor Campos Parsi (1922-1998): Divertimento del Sur; Members of the Casals Festival Orchestra; Milton Katims, conductor; Smithsonian Folkways COOK-01061