The oldest member of a Spanish family of musicians of Prussian origin, Rodolfo Halffter was born in Madrid on 30th October 1900. Self-taught as a composer, he was much inspired by the Harmonielehre textbook of Schoenberg, who, along with Debussy, was to have a decisive influence on the music of his maturity. Through the good offices of the critic Adolfo Salazar, he and his brother Ernesto were introduced to Manuel de Falla, by then the leading Spanish composer, and to the completion of whose ‘scenic cantata’ Atlantida Ernesto would devote many years. A further stimulus was the Residencia de Estudiantes, a loose association of forward thinkers which included García Lorca and Salvador Dalí.

Following the defeat of the Spanish Republican government in 1939, Halffter chose voluntary exile in Mexico City, where he taug