BALTASAR SAMPER, COMPOSITOR: EL REDESCOBRIMENT D’UN MÚSIC CATALÀ A L’EXILI

Baltasar Samper i Marquès (1888-­1966), from Majorca, was one of the most promi­nent musicians of the first third of the 20th century, forming part of the musical elite of Catalonia until the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. A long exile, first in France and later in Mexico, from where he was never to return, pushed him into the background and made him an almost completely forgotten figure, except for his work as an ethnomusicologist within the framework of the Obra del Canconer Popular de Catalunya (Catalonia Folk Song Institution), which is quite well known today. Despite the fact that Samper was an outstanding composer, his work is now generally unknown to all except for a very few pieces. In this paper we present a review of the studies on Samper and a list of his works which are known to date. Moreover, for the first time we make public a preliminary but complete description of the musician’s valuable compilation of personal documents which has been kept for 50 years by his family in Mexico