In Memoriam Alberto Guerrero

The Chilean pianist Alberto Guerrero (1886-1959) settled in Canada in 1919, where he became a leading exponent of Debussy, Ravel and their contemporaries, as well as a celebrated piano teacher. His most famous student was Glenn Gould (who took pains to ignore his teacher’s influence, preferring that the world should know him as an autodidact), but he also taught other important Canadian musicians including John Beckwith and Bruce Mather. I studied with him for about a year in 1959. He knew I would never become a pianist and our lessons usually consisted of talks about philosophy (I recall discussing Comte, Husserl and Sartre with him) or the modern painters and poets, particularly the French, who were his favorites. He was one of the few musicians from whom a student could get a vista of ideas beyond music, and it was with great regret that I learned of his death while I was in Europe in 1959. In Memoriam Alberto Guerrero was written in November of that year.

Evidently this is the only composition I wrote in 1959. During this period I was attempting to support myself as a freelance radio producer and music journalist. To be frank, I was not sure I wanted to devote my life to music composition. I was considering a career in writing or the media. It would still be a few years before music would dominate my life. R. Murray Schafer