Uploaded December 2010 | Updated September 2026, 3 days ago

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Born in Panama in 1917, Roque Cordero was one of the most respected creative talents in Latin America. As a child, he studied clarinet, violin and viola, and also dedicated his energies to writing popular music such as pasillos, tamboritos and tangos, until his interests turned to concert music at the age of 17. Four years later, he was appointed director of the Orquestra Sinfonica de la Union Musical in Panama, and later joined the Orquestra Sinfonica de Panama as a violist. In 1943, a scholarship from the Institute of International Education permitted him to enroll at Hamline University for study under Ernst Krenek, and these funds were supplemented by support from Dimitri Mitropoulos. During his stay in Hamline, Cordero was engaged by the University of Minnesota as Artistic Director of the Institute of Latin American Studios and, after completing his course of study, was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.

From 1950 to 1966, Cordero lived in his native country, playing a leading role in its musical life as an educator and conductor. He returned to the United States in 1966 to accept the post as Assistant Director of the Latin-American Music Center at Indiana University. Dr. Cordero was also Music Editor for the publishing company Peer International and was professor of Music at Illinois State University in Normal.

Other honors he received, in addition to the Guggenheim Fellowship, included the Order of Vasco Nuñes de Balboa, the title of Professor Honorario de la Facultad de Ciencias y Artes Musicales of the University of Chile, and an honorary doctorate from Hamline University. Among commissions he has received are those from Dimitri Mitropoulos, the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation, and the University of Alabama. The Concerto for Violin and Orchestra was a commissioned by the Serge Kousevitzky Music Foundation, which encouraged the composer to return to his draft of the violin concerto he had begun in 1958, but which he had put aside to work on his first string quartet. The concerto was completed late in 1962. The material is based on a tone row, whose applications are free, particularly in the second movement. In the Finale, the entire orchestra returns in a large rondo, assembled by the vigorous ostinato of the timpani that opens the movement. An insistent motto is played by the violin (melodically generated from the Concerto's tone row). This material's two statements are separated by a second idea that is shared in ternary fashion with the orchestra. Midway through the finale is a quasi recitative, whose personality constrasts with the foregoing and whose intervals relate to the second theme of the first movement. New approaches to the initial ideas of the finale round out the contours, and the movement concludes in a brilliantly texture finale. The Concerto's power and character, which overrides physiological concerns for the application of the 12-tone system, finds parallels in the works of the Expressionists, but its distinct individuality makes such comparisons superficial. Regardless of its competition, this work establishes itself as a major concerto of the twentieth century.