Miguel Yuste

Miguel Yuste Moreno (Alcalá del Valle, Cádiz, 20 June 1870 – Madrid, April 1947) was a Spanish clarinetist, composer and teacher. He held the chair of clarinet at the Madrid Royal Conservatory from 1910 to 1940 and is regarded as a founding figure of the modern Spanish school of clarinet playing.

Biography Orphaned at the age of eight, Yuste was placed in the San Bernardino orphanage in Madrid, where he began his musical studies under the clarinettist José Chacón. He entered the Royal Conservatory in 1883, taking classes in solfeggio, clarinet and harmony, and was awarded first prizes in those subjects.

Yuste was a noted clarinet soloist and gave the Spanish premieres of Brahms's Clarinet Quintet in B minor, Op. 115, and his Clarinet Sonata No. 1 in F minor, Op. 120, first heard in Madrid in 1893 and 1896 respectively, on both occasions only a year after their first performances in Berlin and Vienna. Both concerts took place at the Salón Romero, the concert hall founded by the clarinettist and teacher Antonio Romero y Andía.

Family Yuste married Purificación Azofra Barilonga (b. Logroño, 1870), with whom he had nine children, three of whom died in infancy. His son Miguel Yuste Azofra followed his father's career as a clarinettist. Widowed, he married the pianist Feliciana Agero García, who was the first teacher of the pianist Isidro Barrio. A daughter of this marriage, Ascensión Yuste Agüero, taught solfeggio and music theory at the Madrid Royal Conservatory.

Works Yuste's catalogue, numbered by opus, is devoted largely to wind instruments, whose solo repertoire was scarce in Spain at the beginning of the twentieth century. His writing combines technical demands with a lyrical treatment of the instrument, with cantabile passages that imitate the human voice and virtuosic display reserved for cadenzas and closing sections.