Birth

(Photo- Palacios de la Sierra- 1947)

Alejandro Yagüe's father, Palmiro Yagüe de Miguel, worked in the 1940s as a forestry guard in Palacios de la Sierra, the place where Alejandro was born on 27 February 1947 and where he lived until he was four years old. The first birds he heard singing were palatial, influencing in some way his way of composing. In 1951 the family moved to Santa Cruz de Juarros.

Early years

(Photo- Alejandro as a child)

In Santa Cruz de Juarros Alejandro spent entire days drawing on a blackboard. On a visit by the schoolmaster to the family home, he saw the Burgos Cathedral painted on the slate. He congratulated his father, thinking he was the author, and was surprised to learn that it was seven-year-old Alexander himself who had drawn it. The teacher instructed his father to take him to study at a drawing academy as soon as possible, stating that he would become a great painter from Burgos.

At school in Santa Cruz they had never been told about music. Alejandro painted everything he could get his hands on. He was very struck by some sketches that he called strange drawings. Such tracings came on Christmas greeting cards. They were drawings with five parallel stripes, on top of which were small black circles the size of pinheads with a kind of tails. He liked to paint those mysterious things.

Trip to Valladolid

(Photo- Marianistas. Valladolid. 1958. The boy holding the ball)

Alejandro, aged 10, left Santa Cruz de Juarros by bus for the Marianist Postulancy at La Rubia in Valladolid. There he will meet other children from all regions of Spain. He will not see his parents again until next summer's holidays.

His start in music

(Photo- Madrid- Television Colegio Niño Jesús-Marianistas)

Alejandro would always remember the first day he entered the chapel of the boarding school in Valladolid. A Marianist named Antonio Bringas began directing the Postulancy choir. Alexander was totally impressed by the sound that reached him. He was positioned behind the seniors (tenor-basses) and the acoustic effect that reached his ears was extraordinary. In fact, he never forgot it in the composition of his polychoral works. This encouraged him to join the choir. One day, Don Donato told them that he was going to teach them music and to their surprise, the teacher began to paint on the blackboard the same strange drawings that he painted on his blackboard in Santa Cruz. It turned out that it was called... music! Music was the art of drawing strange pictures and the best drawer would end up being the best musician.

He was soon recommended to join the boarding school's rondalla. Within a few weeks, Alejandro learned to play the guitar. He stood out in the joint performance of the Marianist choir and rondalla in Madrid, on Televisión Española. It was in the 1960s when this organisation took its first steps on the Paseo de la Habana. They also gave 14 more concerts in Madrid.

From a very personal point of view, Yagüe's dream was to become a pianist and, subsequently, his efforts were focused on the piano.

Discovering his vocation

(Photo- Valladolid, Marianistas)

He then moved to the novitiate in Avila, where he worked as an organist on a small harmonium. But his vocation was not to be a friar. Therefore, on Monday, 17 August 1964, he left the Marianist novitiate and returned to Burgos. In September of the same year, his father enrolled him in the sixth year of the baccalaureate at Cardenal López de Mendoza, although Alejandro had already decided to become a musician. Little by little he got to know the cultural life of Burgos on his own.

Immersion in their musical studies

(Photo- Colegio Menor Generalísimo Franco de Burgos- 1966)

History of Art was studied in the sixth year, but the only art that was not studied was music.

One day Alejandro saw a young man carrying a violin in Laín Calvo Street. He followed him and realised that he was entering the Municipal Academy (the origin of today's Municipal Conservatory of Music). In April 1965, at the age of eighteen, he went to the house of the teacher Ángel Juan Quesada, director of the Academy, to explain that he wanted to study there. Alejandro had been self-taught and had no formal musical training, so Quesada discouraged him from trying. But Alejandro presented him with a composition of his own and the director immediately told him to enrol at the centre.

Alejandro studied Music at the Teacher Training College. In the meantime, he stayed at the Colegio Menor Generalísimo Franco in Burgos. When she finished her second year of teaching, she was awarded a scholarship to study music pedagogy in Madrid.

He finished his teacher training studies with distinction and with an Extraordinary Prize.

The Ministry of Education organised a national competition between Teacher Training Schools, in which Alejandro won the National Teacher Training End of Career Award (B.O.E., 10 April 1969).

In the 1968-69 school year, there were no competitive examinations for the teaching profession and he was employed as a Physical Education teacher at the Jesuit school.

At the Conservatory of Burgos he continued his piano studies, and on his own he began to study harmony.

Resourceful student

(Photo- Alejandro Yagüe giving a piano concert)

During the summer of 1966 Alejandro worked in the Sargentes de la Lora oil field and during the following summer in the Huidobro copper mines. During his holidays, Alejandro had to travel to Sedano, where he could not perform any piano exercises. The only option was to play the church harmonium. Alejandro came up with the idea of building an ingenious keyboard out of cardboard and wooden keys to exercise his memory.

Musical studies at the Conservatory of Burgos

(Photo Identity Card of the Conservatorio Elemental de Música -Antonio de Cabezón)

The school year began and Yagüe had to combine his teaching studies with his studies at the Conservatory. In one academic year he finished all his solfège studies and three piano courses.

On alternate days, in the afternoons when he finished his time at the Teacher Training College, he would run straight to the Orfeón Burgalés, where there was a piano where he could practice for half an hour. Music scores were very expensive, and his concern for money led him to participate in various poetry and painting competitions, among others, in which he won several prizes.
During the 1966-67 academic year, the Ministry of Education granted official validity to the musical studies at the Conservatorio de Música de Burgos.

In three years he completed all the musical studies that could be taken at the Conservatorio de Burgos. He had to take the rest of the subjects unofficially, with private classes with the teacher Quesada, and take exams on his own at the Valladolid Conservatory.
From the beginning, it was clear to Yagüe that he wanted to be a composer, so it was very important to focus on harmony and piano studies.
In October 1970, after passing the competitive examination for the teaching profession, he was assigned to the Alejandro Rodríguez de Valcárcel school, as he obtained the best marks in Burgos. His first teacher's salary was spent entirely on buying sheet music.

The need to learn a good compositional technique led him to the conclusion that if he wanted to continue his studies he would have to go to Madrid.

His life at the Junior College

(Photo- Choir of the Colegio Menor directed by Alejandro Yagüe during the 1970-71 school year).

For one year (1968-69) Yagüe was Educator of the Colegio Menor. But what really interested him was to continue his musical studies with maestro Quesada, and he needed to buy a piano. He therefore proposed to the headmaster of the Junior College to advance him his annual salary and thus acquire a second-hand piano. In return he founded and conducted the choir at the Colegio Menor in 1969. The headmaster agreed, and from then on he had his piano in the assembly hall where he could study late into the night without disturbing anyone.

At the Colegio Menor, the choir rehearsals started, they were always looking for pieces to sing, in Burgos there were no choral scores. If Alejandro ordered them from Madrid they were expensive. That is why he had to use a pseudonym so that no one would suspect that he was the author of the works they began to sing. He came up with the name "Diaghelis", that's how it all started.

The soprano and alto voices were sung by the students of the first and second year of baccalaureate. The rest were done by students in higher education or teacher training courses. They participated in three national junior college choir competitions.

In the Badajoz competition they win an accésit (1969). In Zaragoza (1970) the compulsory work was not to Yagüe's taste and he decided to harmonise it in his own way, bypassing the rules of the competition. The president of the jury told him that although they had brought a more interesting work than the compulsory one, they were disqualified. His choristers were angry and booed him when he came out to the theatre.

In the choir, very curious anecdotes took place on a daily basis. Every day, after dinner, Alejandro rehearsed for an hour in the assembly hall.

Rondalla and Choir

(Photo- Choir of the Colegio Menor directed by Alejandro Yagüe during the 1970-71 school year).

Faced with the need to cover expenses, it occurred to him to make a new proposal to the director of the Junior College. As well as leading the choir, it would also lead the rondalla. The director agreed. Therefore, while Yagüe was preparing for the competitive examinations, he also ran the rondalla and the choir of the Colegio Menor.

Winning their first prizes

(Photo. Official Bulletin- National End of Degree Awards-)

The Ministry of Education presented the rules for the awarding of ten National End-of-Degree prizes. Those for teachers were endowed with 10,000 pesetas. Yagüe was eligible to apply because he had been awarded the Extraordinary Prize at the end of his teaching degree in June 1968.

The National Prize consisted of a written exam of about two hours on a subject imposed by the Ministry of Education in Madrid in which he had to demonstrate a good capacity for synthesis of all his knowledge related to pedagogy in general, didactics and methodology. It was an opportunity to solve their precarious economic situation.

When Dolores Abelenda, the director of the Teacher Training College in Burgos, told him that he had won the National End of Degree Award, he thought that, at least for a while, he would not have any financial problems.

Teacher Training Examinations

(Photo. Clipping from Diario de Burgos - Tribunal de Oposiciones a Ingreso en el Magisterio Nacional-.
)

Having obtained the number one position in the competitive examinations in Burgos, his first provisional post (1970-71) was as a teacher at the Alejandro Rodríguez de Valcárcel School, in Gamonal, in Burgos itself. The scores for each exercise were published in the Diario de Burgos.

In that first assignment, Yagüe was in charge of a group of forty-two six-year-old pupils. Their job was to teach them to read, write and perform the most elementary mathematical operations.

That same 1970-71 academic year, in which he worked as a teacher in Burgos, he combined his teaching work with his eighth-year piano studies, the last year of his piano degree. He continued to board at the Colegio Menor, where he had his piano in the assembly hall.