Composer and orchestra conductor born in Guatemala City in 1940. He began studying piano at an early age in his country with his mother. In 1959 he moved to Europe, and after two years at the University of Lausanne, he settled in Paris, where he pursued the fundamentals of his musical formation. In 1964 he married Arlette Katja Ernst Struby, a notable Swiss painter of Hungarian origin.
Between 1960 and 1964 he studied harmony, counterpoint and fugue with Simone Plé-Caussade. He attended analysis classes with Olivier Messiaen in 1963. From 1963 to 1965 he studied composition with René Leibowitz, simultaneously working in Henry Dutilleux’s classes throughout 1964. He studied conducting with Igor Markevitch in 1966 and in Salzburg with Bruno Maderna in 1968.
In 1964 he composed his Sonata for Piano No. 1, for which he received the Dutilleux Class Award. Between 1964 and 1971 he composed the vast cycle “Livre pour Piano”, consisting of Foreword (1963), Sonata for Piano No. 2 (1965-1966), No. 3 (1966), No. 4 (1966-1967), No. 5 (1968-1971) and No. 6 (1968-1969). This work was followed by the Concerto for Cello and Orchestra (1971-1975); the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra “The Garden of Forking Paths” (1976-1979), in the form of mobiles, in homage to Jorge Luis Borges; the “Livre pour Orchestre” (1979-1990), comprising Symphonies No. 1 (1981), No. 2 (1984), No. 3 (1986), and No. 4 (1990); and the “Livre pour Soprano”, the Serenade pour Guitare (1982), the Banquet of Clouds (1986-1991), twenty-one songs after texts by Juan Ramón Jiménez for voice and piano.
In 2005 he composed Voyage au monde des enfants, cycle for piano around the world of children and literature; followed by …pour alto et piano 2006 for viola and piano; Mouvement de Spirales pour Deux Pianos (2007); Arco Iris de Tiempos, concerto for String Quartet soloist and instrumental ensemble (2008); Passacaglie per tre quintteti et tre percusionisti in omaggio a M. C. Escher (2011-2013); and Mosaïques de Temps, concert for violin and orchestra and/or violin and piano (2014); ); Homenaje a Buster Keaton, five imaginary scenes for bass solo and a version of the same work for cello solo. (2015).
His compositions have been performed in the International Piano Festival in Bergamo and Brescia, the Estate Fiesolana, Casa de América de Madrid, Las Vegas Contemporary Art Festival, Thonon Festival, Festival of Genève, Festival d’Evian, Festival A Tempo of Caracas, Encuentros Internacionales of Buenos Aires, Festival of Saint Germain-en-Laye, and the Sibila Festival in Seville, Biarritz Festival, Saarbrücken Festival, Les Nuits Pianistiques d’Aix-en-Provence (2003 and 2006), Societá La Nuova Consonanza di Roma, Ensemble Productions of London, Autunno Musicale di Caserta and Festival internacional de la Cultura Paiz (La Antigua Guatemala 2007, 2009, 2011 and Guatemala City 2014). They have also been performed at the Universities of Columbia, Princeton and Berkeley, the Arnold Schoenberg Institute in Los Angeles, the Moscow Conservatory, The Honolulu Academy of Arts, and many others. His works have been published by C.F. Peters (New York), APNM (New York), and Durand-Eschig-Salabert (Paris). Compositions by Asturias are frequently played in Europe, the United States and Latin America. They are broadcasted on radio networks such as the Suisse Romande Radio Television, Radio France, the BBC in London and the RAI in Italy.
In 1980, Rodrigo Asturias was the first composer to receive the Karlheinz Stockhausen Musical Composition Prize for his Fourth Sonata for Piano, in which the Jury was chaired by Karlheinz Stockhausen and in which the pianists Claude Helffer, Alfons Kontarsky and Maurizio Pollini participated as members. He was invited to participate, as a composer, at the Institute de Recherches Acoustiques Musicales (IRCAM) in Paris in 1989. In 2016 he was awarded the Order of Arts and Lettres by the Government of France.
In 1982, he established “Los Grandes Conciertos de Guatemala” in Guatemala City. The purpose of this society was to acquaint the Guatemalan public with the greatest musical compositions of the past, those never previously heard in Guatemala, as well as the most important pieces of the contemporary repertoire of the 20th century (Boulez, Stockhausen, Carter, Babbit, Ives, Denissov, Sessions, Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Symanowski, Scriabin and others, to cite the most relevant ones), but due to the ignorance and incomprehension of the then Minister of Culture, Los Great Guatemalan Concerts were prematurely closed; Probably if they had not been so, they would still be in force, fulfilling their deeply cultural function.
In 1989 he began a musicological research and came across the work of Manuel Martínez-Sobral (1879-1946), a Guatemalan composer whose work had been considered irretrievably lost. He then became interested in recovering and revising the music by Ricardo Castillo (1891-1966) and by Manuel Herrarte (1925-1974). These compositions have also been edited under his supervision in Paris by Editions Musicales Max Eschig Co., a total of 72 scores. He also orchestrated the suite Guatemala, serie de Impresiones by Ricardo Castillo and in 1995 he transcribed for piano the last three dances of Paal Kabá by the same author. He also completed several unfinished projects such as Castillo’s “Vocalise of Paal Kabá” and “Scherzo for Two Pianos” by Manuel Herrarte, among other pie.
The first five compact discs with pieces by Manuel Martínez-Sobral and Ricardo Castillo were recorded for Naxos-Marco Polo under his initiative and artistic direction. The first two volumes were performed by the Moscow Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Antonio de Almeida (Marco Polo 8.223710 and 8.223719). The last three were performed by Suzanne Husson (Vol. 3, Marco Polo 8.225104) with the complete piano music by Manuel Martínez-Sobral, and by Massimiliano Damerini (Volume 4, Marco Polo 8.225077) with the complete piano music by Ricardo Castillo). Volume 5 published in 2004 was performed by Suzanne Husson and Michel Bourdoncle with the music for two pianos also by Manuel Martínez-Sobral.
Beginning in 1995 he dedicated himself to codify and expand his most important contributions to musical techniques. Since then his music uses in full conscience, eight dimensions instead of the regular four used until then: O, I, OR, and IR. These supplementary dimensions in the direction of the sound material, either ascending or descending, gives two unique models for each series in the serial form, system never used before. It is also applied to the parameter of durations by means of series that grow and decrease in arithmetic or geometric progression, which at the same time constitute temporary elements of the sound material. Another contribution was the introduction of a whole system by derivation based on what Asturias calls “multiple refractions on a sound complex”, which enables a wide and logical base development, speculative, coherent and flexible and the complex of deflective sounds, non-continuous which constitute themselves as positive and/or negative. The deliberation on these new possibilities and its elaboration explain his creative silence during several years after the composition of the Book for Orchestra and The Banquet of the Clouds.
During his frequent appearances as orchestra conductor, Asturias has devoted special attention to a repertoire of twentieth century music. In 1995, he was invited by the Suisse Romande Radio Television as a guest for six radio interviews on his work as a composer and about his musicological research. These conferences were accompanied by a series of illustrative concerts. In 1997 he was the chosen composer to inaugurate the Sibila Festival in Seville, where in addition, he was invited as a conferencist on his work and his research.
Rodrigo Asturias is considered the most important Central American composer and one of the most notable contemporary Latin American composers. In the period 2002-2005, composer Xavier Beteta became his only composition student. In 2006, to obtain his master's degree at the University of Cincinnati, Beteta wrote his professional thesis entitled "Compositional Techniques in Rodrigo Asturias's" The Banquet of the Clouds "; thesis that in the year of its publication became the fourth best-selling university thesis in the United States. In 2010, the Costa Rican pianist and musicologist Jorge Eduardo Carmona published his university thesis entitled “Sonatas for piano of serialist construction in Central America (1980-1997), in which, for the most part, it deals with piano sonatas by Rodrigo Asturias.