50 years after the death of teacher Jorge Peña Hen

On October 16, Teacher's Day is celebrated in Chile, and we cannot miss this occasion to commemorate and remember who was one of the great teachers that Chile had, and that we lost in an unfair, tragic and cruel way on the 16th. October 1973, we are referring to maestro Jorge Peña Hen, distinguished teacher and creator of the Children's Orchestras. His musical legacy transcended the horrors of his death and today we pay a fitting tribute 50 years after his death.

Jorge Peña Hen was born in Santiago on January 16, 1928, into a family linked to music. His mother Vitalia Hen was the daughter of a luthier, she played the piano and his sister was also a piano teacher. Jorge's father, Tomás Peña, was a doctor, and due to his profession, they went to Paris, but they did not last long in Europe due to the enormous tension caused by the start of World War II.

Returning to Chile, in 1939, Joge Peña wanted to study piano. His teacher, Olga Cifuentes, perceived the conditions and talents that Jorge possessed. She prepared him to enter the National Conservatory of the University of Chile. There he was a composition student of Pedro Humberto Allende and a companion of Gustavo Becerra. At the age of 14, he finished the cycle of music theory and solfege and composed his first work, but he could not continue his studies at the Consevatory, because the family decided to leave for La Serena. It is precisely in this city where Jorge will expand all his artistic, social and cultural work, directing the Ateneo Polyphonic Choir when he was just a teenager. He also formed the Mixed Choir with students from the Lyceum of Girls and Men and presented his first works for choir and orchestra, Chanson d'Automne, and, for piano and orchestra, Concertino in C minor, which he performed himself.

He returned to Santiago in 1948 to study Law, but his bond with music was much stronger, and he returned to the Consevatorio, where he studied composition with Domingo Santa Cruz and René Amengual, with whom he had an immediate rapport. As he was a friend and companion of Gustavo Becerra, they made a tour together to the IV Region to spread learned Chilean music, which would later bear fruit such as a headquarters for the National Conservatory in the north of the country and the creation of contemporary music festivals. This relationship between Jorge and La Serena also resulted in the creation of the Bach Society, in charge of disseminating all musical art made in Chile.

The figure of Jorge Peña became increasingly fundamental not only as a teacher, composer and cultural manager, but also as a conductor, when he was invited, in 1958 by the Chilean Symphony Orchestra to conduct it, which allowed him to gain experience as conductor and, thus, found, in 1959, the La Serena Philharmonic Orchestra. Orchestra made up not only of members of the Bach Society and the city's chamber orchestra, but also of instrumentalists from the Arica Regiment, who joined the orchestra to strengthen the learned music in that region of the country.

As the site Música Popular - La Enciclopedia de la Música Chilena reviews about the La Serena Philharmonic Orchestra: "In 1959, it premiered A Ceremony of Carols, by Benjamin Britten, with the choir of the Girls' Lyceum, while in 1960 it was performed the St. Matthew Passion, by Johann Sebastian Bach, a concert that Peña had dreamed of since he graduated from the Conservatory.

The challenges arose for Jorge Peña, when the Bach Society no longer had funds to perform the concerts, and the realization that musical education was for a few, which caused the desire to expand musical studies to the less fortunate, especially children.

With low-income boys and girls in mind, he traveled to the United States with his wife, pianist Nella Camarda, to look for a method that would allow him to teach an instrument as a group. This is when he came across the Suzuki method, which allows learning group instrumental.

That idea of expanding the teaching of instruments stimulated him to return to Chile with the firm intention of creating children's orchestras, thanks to his "Experimental Plan of Teaching Extension". In 1964, this work was recognized by having his students play in the La Serena Children's Symphony Orchestra. Thus, in 1965, in the northern headquarters of the National Conservatory, the Experimental School of Music of La Serena was created, with the objective of integrating children from low-income families.

The Orchestras were created in tribute to Pedro Humberto Allende, Enrique Soro, René Amengual and Acario Cotapos, which even toured abroad. This effort, never before seen in the country, generated a movement of musical expansion in Latin America, with a repertoire created for children, such as the children's opera La Cenicienta, composed by Jorge Peña Hen.

The desire to democratize musical education, as well as its interpretation and access to those who barely had a livelihood, provoked staunch reactions against Peña Hen, which ended up costing him his life when he was infamously accused of trafficking weapons with the children of the orchestra. He ended up being executed by the military weeks after the 1973 coup d'état.

To learn more about the life and work of this noble Chilean musician, visit the following website:

https://www.musicapopular.cl/artista/jorge-pena-hen/