Daniel Alomía Robles

Daniel Alomía Robles (3 January 1871 – 17 July 1942) was a Peruvian composer and ethnomusicologist. He is best known for composing the song “El Cóndor Pasa” in 1913 as part of a zarzuela — a musical play that alternates between spoken and sung parts — of the same name. This song was based on Andean folk songs and is possibly the best known Peruvian song, partly due to the worldwide success that the melody obtained when it was used by Simon & Garfunkel as their music for “El Cóndor Pasa (If I Could)”, although that song has different lyrics. Early life Daniel Alomía Robles was born in Huánuco, Peru, on January 3, 1871 to Micaela Robles and Marcial Alomía, a French immigrant. It was while living with an uncle in Lima at the age of 12 that Alomía Robles first heard musical theatre. In an interview in 1942 with Esteban Pavletich Trujillo, Alomía Robles credited his wife as the impetus for creating his first musical works. In 1910, Alomía Robles published his discovery that the musical structure of Andean music involved a Pentatonic scale. “El Cóndor Pasa” In 1913, Daniel Alomía Robles composed “El Cóndor Pasa”, and the composition was first performed publicly at the Teatro Mazzi in Lim