Barrios Mangoré, Agustín (Pío)

[Barrios, Agustín Pío]

(b San Juan Bautista de las Misiones, 5 May 1885; d San Salvador, 7
Aug 1944). Paraguayan guitarist and composer. In his youth in
Asunción he studied the guitar with Gustavo Sosa Escalada and
composition with Nicolo Pellegrini, and practised his compositional
skills by transcribing works by Bach, Beethoven and Chopin. In 1910
he left Paraguay intending to give a week of concerts in Argentina,
but such was his success that he was away for 14 years, playing in
Brazil, Chile and Uruguay (where he studied with Antonio Giménez
Manjón). He found a patron in the diplomat Tomás Salomini, who
arranged recitals for him in Mexico and Cuba. His first real successes
date from about 1919, when he played for the President of Brazil. In
1930 he adopted the pseudonym Mangoré (after a legendary Guaraní
chieftain), and in 1934 he went to Europe with Salomini, living in
Berlin and visiting Belgium and Spain. In 1936 he returned to Latin
America, and taught at the conservatory in San Salvador from 1939
to 1944. Critics compared Barrios Mangoré with Segovia as an
interpreter and with Paganini as a virtuoso. He was the first Latin-
American guitarist of stature to be heard in Europe, and made
numerous recordings between 1913 and 1929.
Although he lacked a formal musical education, Barrios Mangoré
wrote guitar music of high quality that combined many of the
characteristics of his predecessors, Sor and Tárrega. He reputedly
composed about 300 works for solo guitar, of which over a third have
been located either in manuscripts or from his recordings. These
include La catedral, Danza paraguaya, Un sueño en la floresta,
Preludio, op.5 no.1, Julia Florida, Una limosna por el amor de dios,
Mazurka apasionata, Vals, op.8 nos.3 and 4, and Variations on a
Theme of Tárrega, all of which have become part of the repertory.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
R. Stover: Six Silver Moonbeams: the Life and Times of Agustín
Barrios Mangoré (Clovis, CA, 1992)
PETER SENSIER/RICHARD D. STOVER