Francisco José Debali

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Francisco José Debali (July 26, 1791 Kinnen, Wallachia, then Hungary, now Romania - January 13, 1859 Montevideo) was the composer of the national anthems of Uruguay and, possibly, Paraguay.

[edit] Name

In Hungary, where he was born, the name was Debali Ferenc József (the surname comes first there). His Christian names were later in Uruguay translated into the Spanish version, but his surname is known to be spelled as de Bali, Debáli, Debally, and Debály.

[edit] Life

In 1829 he left Hungary to pursue his musical career in Italy. There, in Alessandria, he married Magdalena Bagnasco, from Genoa. They had several children, some of which were born in Uruguay. After a short stay at São Paulo, Brazil, which he fled because of a yellow fever epidemic, Debali arrived in Uruguay in 1838. Here he was the director of the orchestra at the Sala de Comedias in Montevideo from 1841 to 1848. In 1845 he composed what would be adopted three years later as the Uruguayan national anthem, to a text by Francisco Acuña de Figueroa. It was played for the first time in public on July 19, 1845. Fernando Quijano, his assistant, who had submitted the composition to the government's selecting contest, was credited with the authorship because of Debali's failure to grasp the content, in the Spanish language, of the governmental decree that adopted his composition as the Uruguayan national anthem.