Francisco José Debali

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Francisco José Debali (July 26, 1791 - January 13, 1859) was a Hungarian-born composer who lived most of his life in Uruguay. He authored the national anthem of Uruguay and, possibly, the tune to Paraguayos, República o Muerte, which became the Paraguayan anthem.

[edit] Name

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

[edit] Biography

Born in a place known as Kinnen, in the Habsburg-ruled Kingdom of Hungary, he left in 1829 to pursue his musical career in the Kingdom of Sardinia. 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 country's anthem.

The national anthem of Paraguay is officially credited only to the author of the lyrics, Francisco Acuña de Figueroa, not mentioning who composed the music. It is thought that Debali composed the music, repeating the theme of the Uruguayan anthem, but was not credited due to his difficulty to understand the Spanish language.