About
Pedro Ximénez Abril Tirado, or Pedro Ximénez Abril y Tirado (Arequipa, Peru, 1784 -1856 Sucre) was a composer and chapel master in the Cathedral of the city of Sucre, Bolivia. His musical legacy encompasses classicism. He is considered the most important musician of his time in Peru and Bolivia.
His production includes hundreds of songs and pieces for guitar, forty symphonies, several tonadillas, fifty masses, a large number of duets and triplets, motets, and various musical pieces.
His work stands out in relation to his contemporaries and belongs to the Latin American composers during Latin American independence.
He was born in Arequipa on November 17, 1784, the natural son of Don Buenaventura Ximénez and Doña María del Carmen Abril. He married Juana Bernedo in Arequipa on January 7, 1819. From an early childhood he devoted himself to musical pursuits, becoming a "major teacher of Arequipa", he played organ and violin and directed the choral and religious music of this city. In 1814 he put music to the "Patriotic March" of the poet Mariano Melgar. Years later, he dedicated to his hometown ‘the pastimes at the foot of the Misti’. He taught for a short time at the American Independence College where he examined the students of the first class.
Traveling to Bolivia, he settled in Cochabamba where he composed his ‘Yaraví Cochabambino’. At the end of 1834 he moved to Sucre where he was appointed master of the cathedral chapel the following year by Marshal Andrés de Santa Cruz. Later he moved to Chuquisaca, where for a few years he was master of the cathedral chapel and was in this city where he died.