The Argentinian composer Garlos Guastavino was born in Santa Fé in 1912. He first studied chemical engineering, but won a provincial government scholarship that enabled him to study music in Buenos Aires, where he entered the National Conservatory in 1938 as a student of the composer Athos Palma, professor of harmony. He studied further in Europe in the years after the war. His compositions include songs, song-cycles and piano pieces. Notable among his orchestral works are the ballet Once Upon A Time, written in 1942, and the Suite Argentina, while his chamber music includes a violin sonata, written in 1952. In style he relies heavily on Argentinian traditional dance rhythms and melodies, writing in an idiom that clearly proclaims its national origins. His best known songs include La rosa y el sauce (“The Rose and the Willow”) and Se equivoco la paloma (“The Dove”).

Tres Romances, “Three Romances”, for two pianos, published in 1951, opens with Las Niñas (“The Girls”), in the key of E-flat minor, a moving piece that again treats the two instruments with great delicacy.

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