Lydia Mills and Carlos Miró

I first met Dr. Carlos Miró in a small coffee shop in Valparaíso, Chile, in 2009. I was visiting family and had heard there was a Kodály professor living in Chile! Our first meeting was delightful. Carlos had a warm heart; he was charming and witty. After sharing about our families, our travels and teaching experiences, I told him I had begun teaching Kodály training courses in Puerto Rico and was hoping to start an intensive three-week certificate program there. I explained I was looking for someone (my wish was a Hungarian!) who could teach musicianship, conducting and choir. He was quiet for a moment and then said, “This sounds like a job for me! Except, I am not Hungarian! But!” he exclaimed, “I speak Hungarian, and what’s more important, I speak Spanish!” That was the beginning of a long friendship.

Carlos and I taught together at summer courses in Puerto Rico, training programs at the Catholic University of Valparaíso in Chile, and in numerous smaller conferences and workshops in Santiago over the years. In the past two years, Carlos participated in our Summer Kodály Levels program at the Instituto Kodály Fundación Ibáñez Atkinson, leading workshops in his research of the traditional melodies from the northern and southern regions of Chile. Music teachers delighted in Carlos’s presentations, as they were filled with charisma, joy and a tremendously deep reverence for regional music. The folksong research team for the Institute had begun conversations with him to incorporate his research into their project to create a Kodály-style analyzed database for music teachers in Chile and South America.

Carlos studied at the University of Chile and The Catholic University of Chile and then moved to Hungary for Kodály studies. He lived 30 years in Hungary, where he studied and obtained his Doctor of Musical Sciences from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, taught at the Liszt Academy, married Mrs. Ida Kiss and together raised two children, Andrés and Gabriela Miró. Carlos returned to Chile in 2005. With his clear conviction about the benefits of moveable-do, his understanding of Chilean universities and connections (and I am sure his charm!) Dr. Miró convinced the Catholic University of Valparaíso to switch from teaching fixed-do to moveable-do. For anyone who knows anything about music education in Latin America, this is a huge feat! Not only did he convince the board of directors back then, but the program thrives today as one of the only universities in Latin America that teaches all its undergraduate musicianship classes using moveable-do!

The musicians and teachers who have taken his courses both in musicianship as well as in music analysis and choir, speak of him as one of their best and favorite teachers. I believe this is because Carlos taught beyond “the curriculum.” He was brilliant, a true academic, and passionate about analysis. I fondly remember one student coming out of choir in Puerto Rico and exclaiming with joy something to the effect of, “I have no idea what we just did! We moved do so many times I couldn’t keep track! Dr. Miró raved about the composition and what each interval and each melodic motive created in the piece! I couldn’t follow it all…All I know is it felt amazing to sing it!” He was often inspired to move far ahead of the students, leaving many of us, myself included (!) in the dust through his deep understanding of the music. And at the same time, Carlos was extremely approachable. In remembering Carlos, one teacher from Puerto Rico recently wrote, “That summer I went through many tough health situations and Dr. Miró always had words of encouragement when we went to lunch as a group. I still remember and share with other people a phrase he told me that his wife once shared with him: ‘Despite (what happens to you or how you feel) I love myself.’”

Carlos took the time to talk to his students, ask about their lives, their families, their studies and jobs. I had the blessing of spending special time with him on our trips to Puerto Rico, where we would talk over habicuelas, arroz y maduros (traditional rice and beans with sweet fried plantain); where once we woke at 5:00 AM to catch the boat with our student John who took us to a small island off Puerto Rico; where we often walked to the beach just 20 minutes from the conservatory. On one trip we had a particularly long layover in Panamá. Instead of being frustrated with the long layover, Carlos said, “How wonderful! We can sit and have coffee and talk of other things!” He asked all about my family, the hardships I was enduring, and counselled me as any loving uncle would counsel a niece, or a father a daughter. And whenever he called me, it was not just to talk about the next Kodály course. He called to find out how I was, how my children were, my mother, and then, my Kodály activities.

Carlos will be deeply missed by his widow Ida, his two children Gabriela and Andrés and the hundreds of students and teachers he taught throughout his lifetime.

The Kodály Association of México remembers him this way, “Those of us who had the privilege of working with him are certain that his legacy persists in every note, in every song that is rescued, and in every new musical challenge we face. His presence remains with us, in the melodies we recover, and in the efforts to build meaningful musical education for Mexico and Latin America.”

Alfredo Torres, musician and teacher at the Conservatory of Music in Puerto Rico remembers, “Carlos Miró had a gift, he was a good man and had a magnificent sense of humor. I will remember his ‘I give you a fis’ and ‘in the depths’, humorous comments he used to correct some detail in our classes. We love him and will remember him singing, smiling and playing like an elementary school child. That was Dr. Miró.”

It is my hope and commitment to work together with Mrs. Miró, the International Kodály Society, the folksong research team at the Instituto Kodály Fundación Ibañez Atkinson, and the Kodály music educators in Chile to honor him by assuring his Chilean folk music research is made accessible to many music students and teachers for generations to come.

Lydia Mills
Pedagogical Director of Educa Musica in Santiago, Chile