Tomás Marco

Tomás Marco Aragón (born 12 September 1942) is a Spanish composer and writer on music. Life and work Marco was born in Madrid where he later studied violin and composition, while at the same time pursuing the study of law (he received his licenciate in law in 1963). He turned to composition in 1958, and in 1962 began attending the Darmstädter Internationale Ferienkurse, where he furthered his studies with Bruno Maderna, Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, György Ligeti, Gottfried Michael Koenig, and Theodor W. Adorno. In 1967 he participated in Stockhausen’s collective composition project Ensemble at Darmstadt. His compositional style is rooted in the music of the Darmstadt School. For example, Transfiguración (1974) strongly recalls Ligeti’s Lux aeterna (1966)—both are composed for 16 solo voices—as well as the harmonic overtone-singing of Stockhausen’s Stimmung (1968). In 1965 he began a brief association with the neo-Dada composers’ group Zaj, founded the previous year by Walter Marchetti, Juan Hidalgo, and Ramón Barce. He helped to found the Studio Nueva Generación in 1967, by which time some of his compositions were beginning to include references to historical styles and qu