The Music Recovery Project: Life and Times of a young composer
Updated: 4 days ago
I’ve put together a short video reel and brief written account below, of my uncle Cristian’s life, his family, his fiancée and his music and art teachers, men of accomplishment who have left their mark on the city of Leon. Enjoy!
The Story of Cristian and His Music
I first began to learn about my uncle Cristian when I met my great aunt, my grandfather‘s youngest sister, Tia Lola (1915-2013) in the summer of 1975. My father had sent me to Spain at 12 because I said to him that I would like to learn Spanish.
My great aunt was a great storyteller and remembered everyone who had gone before her. She left a tremendous impression on me when she said, she had prayed to God that her life be taken instead of Cristián’s. She was devastated when her prayers went unanswered. She also told me that her eldest brother, Cristian’s father, Jose Pinto Maestro - may have died of emphysema on the face of it, but really, having lost two children, his only daughter and the prodigy that was Cristian, he died of a broken heart.
When my father emigrated to Canada in 1960, intent on a medical career in psychiatry, and on starting a family, having just married my mother, he left everything behind. The one thing he asked for in subsequent years, and received, were the music scores and some paintings - not all - that his eldest brother had made. We know that we do not have Cristian‘s complete works, in music or in art, but we are fortunate to have enough to gain some insight into his gifts and his potential.
In Leon, the city of his birth, where he lived and died, (1924-1947) Cristián is commemorated by association with the works of his father, Jose Pinto Maestro (1893-1952) and through his father‘s network of friends, including the musician Odon Alonso Gonzalez (1900-1977) and artist Demetrio Monteserin (1876-1958). All three of these men, Cristián’s father, (my grandfather), his music teacher and art teacher respectively, have had streets named for them in Leon.
Cristian himself is represented in a bronze group sculpture placed in front of the auditorio de musica de Leon, along with Odon Alonso Gonzalez and his son, Odon Alonso Ordas, (1925-2011) who became a renowned conductor in Spain with an international recording career and commissioned this statue in honour of his father, and first teacher. It is very touching that Cristián is included in this remembrance.
Odon Alonso Ordas may also have had a hand in the other reasons why my grandfather is still so remembered today. In 1978 a single was released featuring the Himno de Leon, a song first composed and performed in 1934 to commemorate the 500th anniversary of a mediaeval joust in a small town called Hospital de Orbigo, in Leon province.
His father, Odon Alonso Gonzalez, wrote the music and my grandfather, enamoured of all things historical, the words. Along with the release of this recording, the song itself was declared to be the anthem of the city and province of Leon. The Himno de Leon is now held in the national library of Spain in Madrid. It’s played on every conceivable occasion daily, by the military, at sporting events, at schools, (since the 1940’s) and by confraternities, taking part in Easter processions.
The first verse of the Himno de Leon that my grandfather wrote, is inscribed on his tombstone:
“Sin León no hubiera España,que antes que Castilla leyes,concilios, fueros y reyes,dieron prestigio a León”.
This translates to:
“If it weren't for León, there would be no Spain; for long before Castile had laws, councils, charters, and kings, these had already brought prestige to León”.
My grandfather was right. As of 2013, the city of Leon is listed as a UNESCO memory of the world site, because it has the oldest documentary evidence of a parliamentary system in Europe, dating back to 1188.
My grandfather was also instrumental in reviving the Easter processions in Leon, creating a strong sense of unity and belonging, at an otherwise dangerous and uncertain time, marked by societal breakdown just as the Spanish Civil War broke out (1936-1939). Thanks to him in large part, through his activities as a journalist, lawyer, and local historian, the traditions of Holy Week, almost extinct in the early 20th century, thrive in Leon today.
My grandmother, Agustina Ferre Llaurens, (1899-1965) complemented her husband’s relentless curiosity, and enormous intellect. She was extremely artistic and very musical and carried this through all the domestic arts. Not only did she draw and paint, but she was also expert at embroidery, crochet, sewing and making her own clothes and household linens. Though the family engaged a live in cook and nanny, Agustina also knew how to cook, and later taught my mother to love cooking when she came to stay with us in Canada in 1965, the last year of her life.
Agustina was busy in the early years of her marriage. Married in December 1921, over the next 10 years, she had nine pregnancies, five of which resulted in miscarriages or still births. The surviving children were Cristián (1924-1947), Jose (1926-1988), my father Ricardo (1930-2011), and Maruja (1931-1946).
Together, my grandparents created a household deeply immersed in arts and culture, intellectual pursuits. There was a piano, radio, gramophone and a substantial library at home. All of their children learned to play instruments, and their only daughter was trained in the art of embroidery like her mother.
Cristian’s life and opportunities were shaped in this environment. His gifts for music and art were recognized and encouraged very early on. Through his art teacher, Demetrio Monteserin, we have a very detailed remembrance of Cristian written in tribute after his untimely death.
From this, we know that Cristian in many ways was self driven as an artist and a musician and alive to every possibility of inspiration available to him. Monteserin provides a brief insight into Cristian’s musicianship, citing his ability to improvise, his melodic gifts, and that he had a good hand and a strong touch on the piano, though he was a virtuoso on the violin and had also mastered the viola at short notice. Both this article and a transcript of a broadcast delivered on the radio the day after Cristian’s death, leave us in no doubt of his immense creative ability and potential according to his teachers and contemporaries.
The obituary article by Monteserin describes his protégé’s exceptional ability to learn, his poetic bent, and extraordinary observational skills, not only in art and music but in every discipline that he turned his attention to. Cristián was a polymath and it’s clear that his teachers knew that if not already, he would one day surpass them. Monteserin also gives us the only direct insights we now have into Cristián’s personality and temperament: refined, romantic, melancholic, and yet completely engaged, charismatic and compelled from the heart in everything he did.
Despite this seemingly idyllic existence and complete devotion to the arts, life was not easy. The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) soon tore everything apart. Each one of my grandfather‘s 12 siblings, was on a different side of the conflict and two of his brothers were killed. One died by execution in 1936 and the other in battle, in 1938.
While it seems the city of Leon itself was not on the front lines, the war hit close to home, as the city fell immediately to Nationalist forces, and the convent of San Marcos, now a luxury hotel on the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela; then served as a prison and concentration camp, holding soldiers on the republican side. My grandfather had to hide out to escape execution. He also harboured family fleeing the front in southern Spain. Cristian and his brothers saw the bodies of those who had been executed, left on the road, just outside the city. Later as the second world war progressed, people in Leon suffered famine, food shortages, lack of infrastructure, and little medical care, despite Spain’s neutrality in WWll.
Even in such chaotic times, Cristián found personal happiness. He fell in love with a beautiful girl, Maria Dolores (Loli) de la Vega Alvarez, (1927-2011) who shared his deep love of music. She studied piano, completing her degree in Valladolid and Madrid - and also sang at home. Cristián wrote poetry and songs for her, and also gave her some of his paintings, all of which she kept, and which have been lovingly preserved by her family.
But joy was coloured with melancholy. Given the dark prospects of those times, Cristian had to forgo his dreams of being a composer and artist to make a living and to marry; hence he was enrolled in the study of law, which he did not enjoy.
Compounding a sadness which he could not shake, his only sister and the youngest of the family died after a long struggle with tuberculosis in September 1946 and in quick succession, two grandparents. Cristian himself died three weeks short of a year after his sister in September 1947. According to one account, his death occurred on the very day that his and Loli’s family had agreed to announce their engagement to marry. It’s a bitter truth that penicillin became widely available just a couple of years later, but not soon enough to save my aunt and uncle.
Since then, silence. Cristian left a large body of work for one so young: drawings of Holy Week processions, painted landscapes, street scenes, still life and portraits of family in oil and watercolour and 33 musical scores, lovingly illustrated in pen and ink, comprising works for solo piano, piano and voice, violin, and piano, and two string quartets.
Until now, no one has ever been able to hear Cristian’s voice through his music. My father rarely spoke of him and though he could play piano by ear, he never played any of his brother’s compositions. Like many who have endured heavy losses early on, my father profoundly appreciated and enjoyed the life he built in Canada, returning to live in Leon only towards the end. When my father died, we wanted to honour him and his family.
Though I always knew of my uncle’s scores, neither I nor my family had the training to read or transcribe the music. Being an artist myself, I understood that this was a precious and rare inheritance that could easily be lost, unless we could realize a recording and from there, perhaps a concert performance.
Since undertaking this project, I’ve come to know through musicians Stephen Ingram, (who has transcribed all of Cristian’s scores and performed his piano solos and accompaniments) and operatic soprano Laura Nielsen, that the narrative of Cristian’s genius is borne out by the complexity and beauty of his music. In some sense, we can at last have the privilege of knowing Cristian through insights into his musical expressions. There is no greater way to honour someone and bring them back to life then to be able to listen to and perform their works.
Beyond this, the music may give us a voice in how Cristian is remembered. Much has been made in Leon of my grandfather’s accomplishments and by association those of his son Cristian. Many people continue to explore and publish articles in the press concerning both my grandfather, and my uncle. However, in the narrative of proximity to the history of Leon, my father, and Cristian’s closest direct descendants - my brother and his children, and myself, have held no place, as we have never lived there. The possibility of bringing Cristian’s music to Leon, may help to change that.
But finally, and most importantly for us, to hear Cristian’s music is to embody his legacy and celebrate his life, rather than mourn his death anew. I would not have become the artist that I am today and may not have had the will to persist, without having had the example of my uncle Cristian. For that I am deeply grateful to him. My nephew Cristian, named for this great uncle, also carries Cristian’s musical inclinations into the next generation.
For people who will come to know of his story and hear his music, perhaps Cristian’s greatest gift will be an appreciation of life in all its’ beauty, even in the midst of hardship. If I could describe Cristian’s fullest being and completion of his life’s purpose in the musical traces that remain, perhaps it is this: a tender exaltation of the human spirit, etched by the touch of his hand, in sound.
- Marina Pinto Miller, Sunday, June 7, 2026
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