Agustín Barrios Mangoré

Agustín Barrios-Mangoré was a Paraguayan guitarist and composer known for his folk-influenced works for guitar. As a performer he was admired for both his virtuosity and his expressive musicality. Barrios was born in 1885 in San Juan Bautista, a city in the Misiones department of Southern Paraguay. He was the fifth of seven children, and his parents were both teachers. As a child he was interested in poetry and music, and he began playing the guitar when he was seven. At the age of 13, he started taking classical guitar lessons from Gustavo Sosa Escalada, who urged Barrios' parents to allow their son to attend the Colegio Nacional de Asunción. This led to his enrollment in 1900, where he studied music theory with Nicolino Pellegrini and he also continued working with Escalada. Around 1905, he started to take composing more seriously, and he made his first recordings four years later. In 1910 he toured and performed in South America, making extended stops in Buenos Aires, Brazil, and he eventually settled in Uruguay around 1920. For the next nine years, he toured in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, and he recorded with the Odeon label. It was also around this time when he began composing his Bach-inspired masterpiece, La Catedral. From 1930 to 1933, Barrios slowly traveled through Central America to Mexico City, where he was employed by his friend Tomas Salomoni, who was also a Paraguayan diplomat. Under Salomoni's patronage, Barrios relocated to Germany until 1935, when he spent several months in Spain. The following year, he began a tour of the Caribbean and Central America, which lasted until 1939, when he suffered a heart attack in Guatemala City. After his recovery, authorities discovered that his diplomatic travel documentation had been falsified by Salomoni, and his privileges for international travel were revoked. However, at the request and invitation from the president of El Salvador, he moved there and began teaching at the conservatory. In 1940 he wrote his guitar method, and he continued teaching and composing until his mysterious death in 1944.
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