Enrique Escudé-Cofiner was born on 13 August 1909 on Carrer Robadors, in the Raval of Barcelona — then the city’s barrio Chino. His father, a Gypsy from Valls (Tarragona), was a flamenco guitarist and guitar teacher; his mother, a Catalan from the Pyrenees, was not Gypsy. His father taught him solfège and took him along to the cafés cantantes and tablaos of early-century Barcelona. Everything that later defined his music — the meeting of flamenco, Catalan song, jazz and the classical tradition — began there.
A prodigy at the organ (1916–1936)
He sang in the boys’ choirs of La Mercè and Santa Maria del Pi, where Mossèn Masvidal taught him organ, solfège and composition, and in 1921 and 1922 he sang in the children’s chorus of Carmen at the Liceu. At fourteen he was playing the organ at the church of the Pi; from 1925 to 1936 he was its titular organist. At sixteen the press was already calling him el prestigiós músic Enric Cofiner, and at seventeen three of his songs were published by Durand in Paris.
After his father’s death in 1929 he became deputy director, and in 1931 artistic director, of the Societat Coral Euterpe, the first choral society in Spain, founded by Clavé. That year his orchestration of Desperta, ferro! had to be encored at the celebration of the Republic. From 1932 to 1937 he studied at Barcelona’s Municipal School of Music — harmony with Enric Morera, counterpoint and fugue with Jaume Pahissa — and in 1935 he conducted the Barcelona Municipal Band while leading, at the same time, a jazz orchestra, the Rodamon’s Band, on Via Laietana. His Evocación gitana was broadcast by Radio Madrid.
War and the camp (1936–1939)
The sacking of the church of the Pi in 1936 ended his career as an organist. He composed his Oda sinfónica — the seed of the later Estampas gitanas — and on 25 April 1937 the Barcelona Municipal Band premiered his sardana Juliol at the Palau de les Belles Arts; La Vanguardia praised it as «spirited, rhythmic and inspired». In August of that year he shared a benefit concert with Lamote de Grignon and Enric Morera. In May 1938 he was arrested as a deserter and interned in a concentration camp in Girona, where he turned twenty-nine. He was held for nine months and released in February 1939, as the front collapsed.
Madrid, Cairo, Beirut (1939–1955)
He moved to Madrid in 1941, studied at the Conservatory with Conrado del Campo and Gerardo Gombau, and formed his own dance orchestra, Cofiner y sus chicos. In December 1946 he made his debut at the Shepheard’s Hotel in Cairo and stayed ten months, playing at the palace of King Farouk, at the San Stefano casino in Alexandria and on the radio programme Cairo Calling. The following years took him to the Ambassador Hotel in Bhamdoun and the Normandy in Beirut, to Jerusalem, Damascus and Amman, back to Cairo for a piano recital in the Semiramis Hotel’s Salon Cléopâtre, and on to Rome, Capri, Milan — where he recorded for Fonit — Istanbul, Athens and Switzerland. On 19 August 1949 he was awarded the Cross of Civil Merit for spreading Spanish music in the Middle East.
The songwriter (1952–1996)
Back in Madrid, Cofiner became one of the most recorded songwriters in Spain. No se lo digas a nadie, Chiquita bonita, Mari Carmen, María Soledad, Me gusta mi novia, La portuguesa, Viva la mujer and Rumba del reloj were sung by Manolo Escobar, Jorge Sepúlveda, Antonio Machín, Sara Montiel, Pedro Vargas, Rafael Farina, the Hermanas Fleta and many others, with reissues documented as late as 2008. In 1959 Dalida recorded La portuguesa as Aïe mon cœur, with lyrics by Eddy Marnay; more than seventy versions followed, by Petula Clark, Marcel Amont, André Claveau and others. It remains the catalogue’s greatest international success.
He wrote the music for around twenty musical revues in Madrid’s theatres, a film score (El precio de la sangre), and conducted the Telefunken Orchestra. From 1963 he sat on the board of the SGAE, and from 1967 to 1975 he directed its Music Section, representing Spain at CISAC and BIEM. In 1976 he composed the Gypsy Concert for flamenco guitar and orchestra with Sabicas; it was not premiered until 1993, at the Córdoba Guitar Festival, with Rafael Riqueni and the Córdoba Orchestra under Leo Brouwer. In 1986 four of his piano works — Imágenes de España, Rondó gitano, Embrujo and Sierra Morena — were finally published. He died in Molins de Rei, near Barcelona, on 1 May 1996, leaving some six hundred works registered with the SGAE and more than two hundred recorded songs.
The legacy
In 2017 the composer’s family donated his personal archive to the SGAE’s Documentation and Archive Centre (CEDOA) in Madrid, where it has been catalogued and described by musicologist Irene Valle de Lope. The Foundation created in his name works from that archive: transcribing the manuscripts, publishing the scores and commissioning today’s performers — from classical pianists to flamenco artists — to give the music the hearing it never had. Discover the works and recordings.