I imagine a dawn in Zegama. idyllic With a burning sun, eager to live, that lights up the Aizkorri mountain range. Dawn always shines, no matter where you look. As in Naples, with that Tyrrhenian Sea turned into a cradle. No wonder it inspires artists so much. Painters, writers… or musicians.
The latter is the case of a zegarrama and a Neapolitan. Both of them transferred on a pentagram their impressions when contemplating the sun in their native towns. With a very different result. The first, Juan Tellería, wrote the melody of an a priori unknown Amanecer en Zegama; while the second, Alfredo Mazzucchi, did the same with O sole mio. Now, the composition that the Gipuzkoan created in 1935 without lyrics and without political will, became a year later the not at all innocent Cara al sol.
Precisely tomorrow is the 75th anniversary of the death of the musician who set the soundtrack to Falangism. A musician born in that humble rural Zegama, orphaned at the age of seven, raised by a priest uncle who gave him his first music lessons. Thanks to his talent he won a scholarship in San Sebastian. And he didn’t stop studying. Then in Madrid and later in Paris and Germany, where he participated in the crazy and creative 20s.
On his return to Madrid he met Primo de Rivera, who was looking for music for his anthem. This was his big mistake. Not only was he never paid royalties (as also happened to Alfredo Mazzucchi with O solo mio ) but he was marked for life… and for death. In the Civil War he was imprisoned and escaped being shot by a judge who believed that music was a universal language without ideologies.
Tellería continued to compose for the republic and then for the dictatorship, which asked him for more hymns and also to cede the rights to Cara al sol, recorded before the war. He refused. Tellería was not to anyone’s liking. And his most relevant work, composed of symphonic poems and zarzuelas, remains forgotten or unpublished. This was undoubtedly his great condemnation.
