The composer, writer and musical theorist Josep Soler i Sardà died yesterday at the age of 87. Soler is the author of a catalog of more than a thousand compositions, including eight symphonies, three piano concertos, seven string quartets, several cantatas and oratorios and an abundant literature for piano and organ. He also composed sixteen operas.
Soler studied in Paris with René Leibowitz and was eraly in his career highly regarded as a contemporary composer. He is considered being a pioneer of the Expressionist school in Catalonia. He is also the author of important essays on music theory and had an intense pedagogical work, much of which he carried out at the Municipal Conservatory of Music of Barcelona and especially at the Professional Conservatory of Music of Badalona, an institution he directed until June 2010.
