Monument to Teobaldo Power

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Art · Subcategory: Sculpture · Year: 1976 · Authors: Enrique Cejas Zaldívar

The sculpture dedicated to Teobaldo Power (1848-1884), perhaps the most outstanding musician and composer born in the Canary Islands, is located in the Plaza de los Cantos Canarios, named after one of his most important compositions. The space is a small terraced garden situated between Benito Pérez Armas Avenue and the educational premises of the secondary schools Andrés Bello and Teobaldo Power.

The monument was created in 1975 by the sculptor Enrique Cejas Zaldívar and inaugurated with great solemnity during the May Festivals the following year. The sculpture is made of stone and artificial marble. Positioned on a pedestal, we see the musician covered with a large cloak and holding a rolled-up score in his hand. 

Teobaldo Power y Lugo-Viña was born on 6 January 1848 in a house on Plaza de la Candelaria in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, a space now occupied by the Dialdas building (Plaza Hotel). From a very young age, he showed great aptitude for music, especially piano, becoming known as a performer in small social gatherings. At the age of ten, he moved to Barcelona, where his father was assigned as an official of the Diputación, and it was in the Catalan city that he began to receive lessons from prestigious musicians of the time. Between 1862 and 1866 he moved to Paris, where he studied harmony, piano, counterpoint, and fugue at the Imperial Conservatory of Music and Declamation. After finishing his studies, at eighteen years old and with several works composed, he began a career as a professional musician performing in Barcelona, Madrid, Cuba, and other American countries.

Always with delicate health, Teobaldo Power returned to Tenerife in 1878 seeking rest and here he found a group of friends (Zerolo, Pulido, Dugour, Gil Roldán, etc), active intellectuals who were involved with the recently founded Revista de Canarias . After partially recovering from his ailments, Power left the Islands again, this time heading to Lisbon, where King Luis of Braganza named him "Chamber Pianist to His Most Faithful Majesty", but this did not hold him back. He travelled to Málaga and, again ill, returned to Tenerife, settling in a house in Las Mercedes, where he had been advised to live because of the mildness of the fresh air in his fight against tuberculosis. It was here that he wrote some articles of interest for the local press and above all his Cantos Canarios , his musical masterpiece, inspired by island folklore and whose first public presentation took place in August 1880 on the occasion of the inauguration of the premises of the Philharmonic "Santa Cecilia".

In 1882 he travelled to several Andalusian cities and settled in Málaga as a conservatory teacher, although that same year, in October, he won a position at the Madrid conservatory and later another post as second organist of the Royal Chapel. But his health worsened increasingly and on 16 May 1884 he died in Madrid, where he was buried. He was 36 years old. His mortal remains were transferred to Santa Cruz in 1923, where, once received with great honours, he was laid to rest in the Church of the Conception.

28.46386, -16.26919